The National Drama Company’s storytelling through sound

ANANSI: the spider, the trickster, the man. His tales of cunning and mischief have interested children for generations, from the tales dating back to African folklore in places like Ghana. The stories of Anansi have managed to survive and become a part of Guyanese and Caribbean culture as we know it and, in recent times, have made their mark by stepping out of mere storytelling tradition and becoming a part of the curriculums taught in schools. Tales like these will become a part of our people. And it is tales of the people that the National Drama Company (NDC) seeks to tell.

Some time ago, members of the NDC saw the profound need and opportunity to produce the plays taught in schools. It was done with the curriculum of schools in mind, and as such, they worked together to create captivating recorded versions of plays like ‘Ti- Jean and his brothers’ and ‘The Tempest’. Al Creighton, Ayanna Waddell, Tashandra Innis, along with the actors and various other members of the NDC, are now in the making of the legendary story of Anansi.

After the COVID-19 lock down and resulting momentary standstill in Guyana, everyone felt its impact. But the drama industry in Guyana took an especially hard blow. With the restrictions placed on gatherings, only in February did the NDC return to the stage with the play ‘Sauda’. But that doesn’t mean that it has been dormant. After producing Ti-jean and his brothers, members of the NDC say that even while they were facilitating students, the plays had become performances that adults enjoyed just as well.

Ayanna Weddell, who is a part of both the NDC as well as at EDYOU FM, played a primary role in connecting drama and education. She explained how, after seeing the need for the dramatic re-enactment of the plays, at EDYOU, she turned to the NDC with a chance to educate and perform. “Here at EDYOU FM one of my tasks is that I have to ensure we have programming for the schools. We are now venturing into the secondary schools. So we have evolved as a unit and we have to fill that gap,” she said. “We focus on the primary level with broadcasts to schools. So now we have the higher secondary levels to reach. And that was where the NDC came in, because I know we do drama for schools. But because of COVID, we, the NDC, haven’t returned to the stage as yet. And knowing that I still have the means to reach the students through radio, it was a ripe opportunity to bridge those two things. And next year we are hoping to do a stage performance.”

Bringing the story to the radio

Director of the production Al Creighton expressed just how big of an influence productions like these have on the students. Catering to both theater arts and English B students, Al stated that although not a stage performance, it serves many of the same purposes. And it is just as captivating. “We have a history of doing plays that will help students doing English B. We have done ‘Lion on a Jewel’, ‘The Tempest’ and we have done ‘Ti-jean and his brothers’ on stage so that the students could actually see the play live and that always helps when studying the play as literature,” he explained. “Anansi is now on the syllabus and we decided to start by doing it on the radio. To help the students, we said let’s do it on radio so that they could at least listen to it. For the theater arts students, they could listen to Aansi because it is a performance and that would help them fulfill the obligation of critiquing performances.”

Whether on stage or on the radio, putting together performances have its own host of unique intricacies. The different major factors, as Ayyana explained, lay in the technical aspects of radio production. “On stage, you marry everything live and you see it and hear it. But on the studio, you have the unique opportunity to have the actors come and lay down their voices. The musicians can come and do what they have to do and then the editor can put that in the software and put everything together,” she said. From a playwright’s perspective, Al emphasised that radio is an entirely new discipline that requires different tasks from the actors. ”When you are doing a play on stage, there are certain things you take for granted because there is an audience looking at it. But for radio, the audience can only hear. So everything that you want to tell the audience you have to tell them through sound. So you have to do the play in such a way that the audience can follow it clearly without seeing anything.”

Also sharing his views was Nickose Layne, who plays the role of Anansi himself. As an actor, he stated how drastically different radio productions are for him. “I want to do more plays on the radio. It kind of feels like marrying some elements of the stage with some elements of film. With filmmaking, you rehearse and then you shoot. With radio you rehearse and then you record. With stage you are big, with film your acting is more laser-sharp, stage is more flood lights. I think radio for the acting wasn’t like film, it was like stage. Because people can only get what you convey through your voice. It feels like marrying a film with a stage play and putting it on the radio. And it was so cool,” he described.

Wider audience

Initially, the plays were done with and advertised towards students. But it is becoming clear that they have reached beyond those studying them. According to Ayanna, they are working to change the perception of drama to everyone in Guyana. “Where the Guyanese audience is concerned, it’s not until they are introduced to something that they know they like it. On the outside, they ask, ‘What is that?’ but when you package it and you share it is like, ‘Oh! This is fascinating’,” she said. Sharing similar sentiments, Al stated, “While we have an objective of helping the students, We don’t want them alone to be our audience. We always go for a wider general audience and we perform for a wider general audience. And we perform for a wider general audience. Along the way, the student will benefit. In fact we would prefer it if people other than the school kids listen to it.”

The plays, both recorded and stage-performed sprang from a need, and the NDC took the opportunity to fulfill that need. In talking to the students and teachers, Ayanna stated that it could be said that they completed the task they had set forward to and much more. The team now moves into the final production stage, adding music and perfecting the sound and editing. Members of the NDC say that the public could expect the release of ‘Anansi’ by mid-July. Tashandra Inniss, President of the NDC told the Pepperpot Magazine how she felt and what the public could look forward to saying, “These productions will be ongoing and, as a company, we not only cater to schools but the wider public so our aim is to bring back more stage productions come 2023 and we also hope to stage Anansi in 2023. I am overall proud of the company for achieving this much over a period of time. We are committed to the development of the arts and will continue to push this and encourage the younger ones to study the art form, whether it be acting, stage management or production management. I am most proud of the NDC’s creativity in bringing a production like this to life on radio, with the use of live music, singing, and characterisation in the casts to bring to life a forest of stories through their voices. The same way we had produced Ti Jean for radio, Anansi will also be another stellar work of art.”