THE 130th Anniversary of the birth of Marcus Mosiah Garvey will be celebrated during the month of August 2017, worldwide. This African hero, Founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association & African Communities League (UNIA & ACL), was born in the parish of St. Ann’s Bay in Jamaica on August 17th, 1887 and met his demise on June 10th, 1940 in London, England. Garvey also founded the Black Star Line, a shipping and passenger line, that promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. Marcus Garvey visited British Guiana (Guyana) in October, 1937.

Ron Bobb-Semple, whose professional theatrical career began at the Theatre Guild in Guyana some 50 years ago, has been keeping the name, spirit, ideologies and philosophies of Garvey alive for the past 35 years with his one-man cultural and educational presentations.

Fellow Guyanese and friends of Guyana will have the opportunity to experience “The Spirit of Garvey” of which a critic with the Jamaica Gleaner Newspaper wrote, “As we watched, Bobb-Semple seemed to become Garvey”. Ron was the recipient of the Marcus Garvey Award for the Arts 2016 in Jamaica.

Commemorating the 130th Anniversary of Garvey’s birth, “Looking Back, Moving Forward: The Spirit of Marcus Garvey” will be staged at the Theatre Guild, Parade Street, Kingston, Guyana, on Friday, August 18th, 2017 @ 20:00 hrs and the Berbice High School, North Road, New Amsterdam, Guyana on Saturday, August 19th, 2017 @ 15:00 hours. The evening’s 90-minute edutainment programme highlights Marcus Garvey’s sojourn in the United States from 1916-1925, with an interlude of drama, poetry and comedy featuring poetic works of Caribbean notables such as Martin Carter and Kamau Braithwaite.

For further information please call 813-956-6770 (USA) or 592-692-6258 (Guyana). Tickets will be available at Nigel’s Supermarket and Carmen’s Grocery in Bourda Market, in Georgetown.

This production is sponsored in part by Surinam Airways.