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Miss Lou celebrated in poetry, play at Coke Methodist

Published:Friday | November 1, 2019 | 12:12 AMMichael Reckord/Gleaner Writer
Director Kenny Salmon welcomes the audience to the opening show during Skip To My Lou  Lou at the Coke Methodist Church hall in Kingston.
Director Kenny Salmon welcomes the audience to the opening show during Skip To My Lou Lou at the Coke Methodist Church hall in Kingston.

A theatrical production, ‘Skip to My Lou – Lou’, which celebrates the life and work of Louise ‘Miss Lou’ Bennett-Coverley in poetry and play, is now on the stage of the historic Coke Methodist Church hall, East Parade, Kingston.

It’s where Miss Lou had her first professional (paid) performance. On one of her visits back to Jamaica from Canada, where she lived in her final years, she told me how that performance came about.

Eric ‘Chalk Talk’ Coverley, who was to become her husband, had heard her recite her poetry at Excelsior High School, where she was a student between 1936 and 1938. He was impressed and subsequently went to her house to invite her to perform at the Christmas Morning concert he was producing at Coke Church. She was not there and he returned three more times.

Said Miss Lou: “Chalk Talk came four different times to see me but I was never there. But Christmas-morning Mama sent me, to the concert with other relatives. Chalk Talk introduced me as this poet from Excelsior, and all the poems I would recite were things I wrote myself. I did well. I got three encores that morning.

“After the show, I saw a line of people going up to Chalk Talk. I didn’t know what it was for, but I joined it. Chalk Talk handed me an envelope, and in it was one guinea – one pound, one shilling. That was my first professional fee for performing.” With the money, she purchased a lovely pair of shoes at a King Street store.

Skip to My Lou – Lou opened on Monday and was scheduled to play daily to mainly school audiences until today. After this morning’s presentation, beginning at 10 o’clock, the show takes a short break. A tour to other parts of the island is planned.

Written by Amina Blackwood-Meeks, the show was directed by Kenny Salmon, founder of the centre for Values-Based Arts, the theatre company that produced the work. The performers are Blackwood-Meeks, Faith D’Aguilar (who plays Miss Lou), Deon Silvera, Shanice Henriques, Keneisha Robinson, and Courtney Henriques.

MISS LOU’S MOTHER

According to the director: “The production highlights Miss Lou’s relationship with her mother, capturing interesting moments in their relationship. We also demonstrate her regards for women and her strong patriotism.”

Those objectives are fulfilled, and we do get the messages and life lessons that the work is promoting. Happily, they are delivered in entertaining, dramatic ways through song, storytelling, ring games, and poetry.

Blackwood-Meeks’ script has a simple format. Dressed in a bandanna and white dress and seated centre stage as Miss Lou, D’Aguilar looks through a large album and reminisces on her life. Her memories trigger onstage activity.

The storyline is flexible and enables the writer to skip about in time. It starts in Miss Lou’s childhood, where we learn about her close relationship with her mother, Kerine Robinson (‘Miss Kerrie’, to family and friends), a fine dressmaker, and see her reciting poems on the street near Parade.

It moves to her teen years at Excelsior High School, where she blossomed as a dialect-writing poet and got a chance to get published in The Gleaner; then to her adult years, when she started her decade-long radio programme ‘Auntie Roachy Seh’; and finally to the evening of her years. Along the road of her life, we meet a motley cast of Jamaicans – street criers selling their goods, countryfolk selling produce, King Street vendors, and girls modelling their bathing suits on the beach and the boys admiring them.

The actors make full use of the performing area, not only the large stage but the space in front of it, just feet away from the audience. That activity and the many costume changes provide much visual variety.

Among the numerous items we hear, sometimes only in part, are the songs Howdi an’ Tenk You and De Long, Long T’read; the Miss Lou poems ‘Kas-Kas, Jamaican Woman’, ‘Spread Out Yuself’ and ‘Excelsior’; and Blackwood-Meeks’ story Anansi and Peel Head Fowl.

A memorable line from the show is a statement by Miss Kerrie to her daughter: “If you can write as well as I can sew, yu going be a great poet.” Miss Kerrie must have been a very good dressmaker, for her daughter became one of Jamaica’s most revered poets – and one of the country’s best-loved personalities. In a thoroughly entertaining way, Skip to My Lou – Lou helps us to see why.