— for outstanding contribution to Caribbean Theatre

GUYANESE Ken Corsbie was awarded the Earl Warner Trust 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contribution to Caribbean Theatre. The presentation was made on Monday, February 29 by Ms Karen Ford-Warner, widow of Earl Warner at the Walcott Warner Theatre, UWI Cave Hill Campus.
The 85-year-old Corsbie gave a packed theatre audience, which included many Barbadian cultural personalities, interim Counsul-General of the Guyana Consulate, Ms. Monique Jackman,  Corsbie’s wife, Elizabeth, and family, a vintage performance. Also present was previous winner, Guyanese Clairmont Taitt.
The Earl Warner Trust is a charitable, non-profit entity established to honour the work of noted Barbadian director, actor and dramaturge Earl McDonald Warner, and to facilitate the development of the theatre arts in the Caribbean through scholarships, endowments, archiving and productions.

Since the inception in 1999, the Trust has awarded several scholarships and bursaries to theatre arts students of the Barbados Community College, the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts and the University of the West Indies.

The Trust, through the Earl Warner Lifetime Achievement Award, recognises and honours the work of outstanding individuals who have made significant contributions to the development of the performing and theatre arts in the Caribbean.

FIRST SOLO
Forty years ago, Ken Corsbie gave his first solo performance in a community theatre in Georgetown. The piece, entitled “Caribbean Voices”, was a reading of selected poetry from across the English-speaking Caribbean. Out of this reading, he developed a one-man show called “HE-ONE”, which included folk songs and a dramatised selection of the then rapidly evolving bibliography of Caribbean Literature.

Already known in Georgetown as an athlete, radio announcer, actor, theatre director and designer, Ken’s show, “HE-ONE”, was an instant hit.
Within a year, the production grew to include his friend, poet/actor Marc Matthews, and was renamed “DEM-TWO”. The success of “DEM-TWO” led to the legendary performances across the English-speaking Caribbean, but still searching for an ever more profound performance, “Dem Two” evolved into “ALL-AH-WE”, with the inclusion of actor/stage designer, Henry Muttoo, and poet, John Agard.

“ALL-AH-WE” continued to tour the Caribbean until 1979, when all the members of the brief but remarkable group emigrated from Guyana. Matthews and Agard went to the U.K.; Muttoo went to Jamaica and then on to the Cayman Islands; and Ken went to Barbados, where he developed a project for UWI Cave Hill called, Theatre Information Exchange (TIE).

Ken continued to design and direct theatre productions while in Barbados, and to tour the English-speaking Caribbean with a reinvented version of his show, “HE’ONE”. He also continued to work in broadcast media, teaming up with film-maker, Christopher Laird to become the host of the ground-breaking documentary series, “Caribbean Eye”.

“GIMISTORY”
After 17 years in Barbados, he migrated to the USA, where he continues to perform as a storyteller throughout North America and the English-speaking Caribbean, including an annual appearance at the “Gimistory Festival” in the Cayman Islands, which he helped create with his friend, Henry Muttoo.

Ken has received numerous awards from the Cayman Islands, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, New York and Barbados. He is also one of the Caribbean’s foremost storytellers of folk, literary and personal stories.

Previous awardees of the Earl Warner Trust Lifetime Achievement are Dr. Cynthia Wilson of Barbados; Mr. Errol Jones of Trinidad and Tobago; Professor Emeritus Errol Hill, also of Trinidad and Tobago; Dr. Michael Gilkes of Guyana; Mr. Kendel Hippolyte of St. Lucia; and Mr. Clairmont Taitt of Guyana.