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Reading Time 6 mins
Wednesday November 25, 2020
Calypso has long been associated with carnival for well over 175 years but perhaps it was not until 1933 we saw the introduction of Calypso Drama in the Calypso Tent. One may ask what would have been the cause of such a delay. This may have to do with the individualistic approach to the art form. A calypso is sung by a single singer who is not necessarily willing to give up his personal style and idiosyncrasies in performance for the teamwork effort that is required for a dramatic performance.
However, it took another thirty-plus years again to see the resurgence of Calypso Drama back in the nightly program of a Calypso Tent in 1964. Such sketch comedies and Dramas as the Trial of Mano Benjamin, Stella Wedding Scandal, The Governor’s Ball were billed as Calypso Comedy and Calypso Drama at the Original Young Brigade Tent. It is interesting to note that the entire cast for these sketches were the Calypsonians themselves. Starring such luminaries as Lord Brigo, Lord Blakie, and the tent’s MC Bill Trotman. In these presentations, the story of one calypso would be developed into a sketch comedy or drama.
In his seminal book, The Trinidad Carnival- Mandate for a National Theatre, Errol Hill argues that these musical skits in the Calypso Tent, ‘enjoyed considerable popular appeal and in a period of emerging nationalism, they contain the rudiments of a national drama and theatre’
Johnny Cayonne @ University of Toronto Faculty of Education Graduation, 1983. (Photo courtesy Wilma Cayonne).
Between 1966-68, The Trinidad and Tobago Association in Montreal, the precursor to Black Theatre Workshop under the Direction of Trinidadian, Playwright and Director, and Caribana first Artistic Director, Johnny Cayonne staged two Calypsopras, Calypso in the Flesh and Fact and Fantasy. It is safe to say that the idea of a Calypsopra started in Canada with Cayonne, the creator of the artform in 1966 with his Calypso in The Flesh production. While the very first Calypso opera in Trinidad was executed in 1986 by Malick Folk Performers with Obeah- ‘A Calypsoretta’ as described by Earl Lovelace for the Prime Minister’s Best Village Competition. Cayonne’s contribution precedes the Trinidad Calypsoretta by twenty years.
However, I would opine that Cayonne’s inspiration for his Calypsopra form may have its genesis on Broadway in New York. It was in 1947 when the International Theatre produced, Caribbean Carnival– billed as ‘The first Calypso Musical Ever Presented,’ featuring Trini-American, Pearl Primus and the calypsonian, Duke of Iron. It was Directed by Sameul Manning with Choreography by Pearl Primus and Claude Marchant. The New York critics were not too kind and perhaps this may have well put an end to Calypso Musicals on Broadway.
It is interesting to note that Cayonne studied in New York and worked on one of Primus’ Dance Productions as a singer. Some nineteen years later, in 1966, his Calypso in the Flesh was premiered at the Revue Theatre in Montreal and two years later he opened Fact and Fantasy in 1968.
Norvan Fullerton’s Obeah was the winning Production of The Prime Minister’s Best Village Competition in 1986. In this Calypsopera, Fullerton departs from Sparrow’s Obeah Wedding and Duke’s Visina where one-foot Visina and her daughter Melda scheme their way into marriage using negromancy. Fullerton would have been following the similar technique used in the tent twenty years before; where the calypso composition is fleshed out into a story. In this case, Obeah Wedding and Visina.
The music for the entire Calypsopera was calypsoes and not the regular folk song fare of the competition. Malick made a bold statement then with this production’s music and the gamble paid off by winning the competition.
In 1991, Playwright, Director and University Lecturer, Rawle Gibbons took the nation by storm with his Carnival production of Sing de Chorus which premiered at Queens Hall for the carnival season that year. It was Directed by Louis McWilliams with Choreography by Felix Harrington. The first of a trilogy of Calypso Musicals, SDC examined the local and international social, political, and econoscape of the 1930s. The calypsoes of that era and the sentiments made in song then became the vehicle to tell the story of Siparee, a country boy who comes to town to sing Calypso. The music of Growling Tiger, Lord Executor, Attila the Hun, The Roaring Lion are just some of the bard’s music used in this musical that reflected the great depression, post World War 1 and 2 and all the Imperialist sentiments the world was experiencing at the time.
He followed this up the next year with Ah Wanna Fall, shining a light on the Calypsoes of the Mighty Spoiler. Spoiler’s calypsoes situate itself in a theatre of the Absurd, and while his thought process may seem uncanny, it made us pause to reflect on his truth rendered in song
The final part of his trilogy was Ten to One. This Musical Play focuses on the works of Mighty Sparrow and his trajectory to make the calypsonian and calypso a respected art form and profession that the world could recognize. His rise to fame at a time when a nationalistic euphoria took hold of the country. The entry of Dr. Eric Williams and his new PNM party designed to take the Trinbagonian and by extension the Caribbean region out of the claws of colonialism to self-reliance and independence. Unlike his first two trilogies, Gibbons paints a picture of Sparrow as a lone warrior taking on the world. Ten to one is murder!
Inspired by Gibbons trilogy, other playwrights like Zeno Constance and myself wrote Calypso Musicals to add to the Calypso Drama canon. Constance’s The Roaring 70s which was commissioned by Gibbons’ Canboulay Productions premiered at the Emancipation Celebrations in 1994 at the Mucurapo Senior Comprehensive School Auditorium directed by Louis Mc Williams.
The discography of Shadow’s music was made into a Musical Play I wrote and Directed called Bassman and presented by the Signal Hill Theatre Workshop. I told a story based on interviews I had with Shadow himself where he spoke of his very rough childhood growing up in the village of Les Coteau in Tobago, right up to his attempt to sing in a calypso tent in Trinidad and winning the Road March title in 1974 with Bassman.
In 1994, Tony Hall took Sparrow’s 1956 winning calypso, Yankees Gone aka Jean and Dinah, and collaborated with Susan Sandiford and myself to write a play. This play was in response to Sparrow’s bombastic claim in the song, ‘The Yankees gone and Sparrow take over now’. A calypso that made a statement on the nationalistic atmosphere of the country in 1956 and the US occupation departure from Trinidad. Using his Jouvay Popular Theatre Process, Hall sought to create a play from the women’s perspective. The play, titled Jean and Dinah who have been locked away in a world-famous calypso since 1956 speaks their minds publicly. It was not only a departure from the calypso but according to Hall, the play in itself, its construction was indeed one big calypso. Lines from calypsoes were borrowed freely as part of the narrative in the same light a Shakespeare text is lifted and manipulated. This form of using calypso text as part of a play’s narrative was also utilized in Carnival Medea, a re-imaging of Euripedes’ Greek tragedy, Medea that I co-wrote with Dr. Shirlene Holmes.
One may argue that Calypso in print loses its impact as it is such a visual and aural form. This can be refuted because a play is written first to be read before it is performed. Therefore any Calypso in print has the potential to be drama and a Director is well poised to give it its theatrical treatment. It is apt to say that Calypso is a literary form- it’s poetic, it’s storytelling, it is satirical, comical and it can also be a farce. Therefore, it is apt to say that Calypso is a literary form- it is poetic, it’s storytelling, it is satirical, comical and it can also be a farce. These no doubt are valid reasons to see its connection to Drama and when executed in performance this then becomes its Theatricality.
RHOMA SPENCER, MFA, is an award-winning actor and director, playwright, and cultural critic. Her works have been critically acclaimed in the Globe and Mail, Now Magazine and the Toronto Star. In summer 2014 she was the recipient of a US Proclamation from the House of Congress and a Citation from the Brooklyn Borough President for her contribution to Caribbean Theatre with the play Jean and Dinah. She is also named in the Who is Who in Black Canada and in the Trinidad and Tobago 50th Anniversary Publication of Distinguished Nationals in Canada in the field of Arts and Culture.