Published:Wednesday | December 19, 2018 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Dr Henley Morgan thinks Trench Town’s musical heritage can be utilised to transform and enrich not only that community, but Jamaica. Bucking the warnings of friends and well-wishers against going into the area (“Too dangerous,”...
Published:Wednesday | October 3, 2018 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Last week, Professor Clinton Hutton told an audience at the University of the West Indies, "I'm trying to find a way to link with younger people ... so I'm writing a novel." He followed up that announcement by reading a poem he'd written recently.Dr...
Published:Wednesday | July 25, 2018 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
The large letters at the top of the flyer for Case of the EX, showing at Jamaica Shopping Club Theatre on Cargill Avenue, states that the play was written and directed by Dahlia Harris. But that's less than half of the story.Harris is also one of...
Published:Wednesday | June 6, 2018 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Last Wednesday at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, drama student Neil Waithe staged his one-man show, Man Child, which primarily asks the question, How does a boy know he is a man? The main characters are childhood friends...
Published:Thursday | January 4, 2018 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
The two productions I saw on Sunday afternoon are a judicious mix of lightness and laughter on one hand and seriousness and solemnity on the other. They were the LTM National Pantomime Dapper Dan The Anansi Man at the Little Theatre and the National...
Published:Thursday | December 28, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Serendipity lifted its lovely head on the University of Technology's three-year-long Fi Wi Jamaica project as it headed into its final six months. This United States Agency for International Development-funded project ends in May 2018. A concert had...
Published:Thursday | December 21, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Christmas concerts have been coming at us thick and fast since early December, and on Sunday, places of worship were the chosen venues for several. The Temple of Light Centre for Spiritual Living was one, but Campion College avoided Sunday's rush by...
Published:Tuesday | December 12, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
The first documentary on the Rastafari movement made in Jamaica was celebrated with a screening and discussion at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, last Friday. Made in 1977, Jah Lives is a 40-minute, black and white film produced by...
Published:Thursday | December 7, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Musical youth were up front and centre in two temporally overlapping concerts on Sunday. The National Youth Orchestra's (NYOJ) Musical Enlightenment at St Joseph's Teachers' College was scheduled for 4 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. The Edna Manley College of...
Published:Thursday | November 30, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Last week was a good one for storytelling in Jamaica. It began with a Sunday morning church service at the Temple of Light Centre for Spiritual Living on Fairway Avenue, attended by members of Ntukuma Storytelling Foundation of Jamaica, including...
Published:Thursday | November 23, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
The two comedies staged at Phoenix Theatre, Haining Road, over the weekend are dissimilar in structure and content. Rosemary Murray's Slice of Life, which I saw on Saturday, is a coherent one-woman show about Murray's interests and incidents in her...
Published:Wednesday | November 22, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Lounging on the grassy mounds or sitting on chairs they had carried, some 400 people (according to one official) enjoyed Sunday afternoon's concert by the Jamaica Military Band (JMB). Held at the Shell Bandstand, Hope Gardens, it was one of many in...
Published:Tuesday | November 21, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Acknowledged as one of the giants of Jamaican theatre, Scottish-born Douglas Bennett (July 23, 1919 - October 30, 2017), was remembered by family and friends in a thanksgiving service at the University Chapel, Mona, last Friday. Not surprisingly,...
Published:Thursday | November 16, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
As the audience left the Dennis Scott Studio Theatre, School of Drama, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, last Saturday night, I heard many persons complimenting the show and singing snatches of its five of six songs. Earlier,...
Published:Thursday | November 9, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
As a child, I used to go with my family to hear the Jamaica Military Band play on Sunday afternoons at Hope Gardens. Paul Johnson has reassured me that the more than half-century-old tradition continues every third Sunday. He said the military band...
Published:Wednesday | November 1, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
This is a big week for two top-class storytellers, Dr Jean Small and Amina Blackwood Meeks. On Sunday Small launched a book of her short stories at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts (PSCCA), University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona,...
Published:Thursday | October 26, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
According to Dr Keino Senior, a dean at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMCVPA), "Preconceived notions of the (low) value of the arts and their seeming lack of viability, sustainability, and income-generating capacity...
Published:Tuesday | October 17, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Visitors to Jamaica for last week's Rex Nettleford Arts Conference at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMCVPA) got a chance to also see our society through the eyes of others.Performing and visual artists communicated...
Published:Thursday | October 12, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
The Government has restarted the Values and Attitudes programme launched in the 1990s by Prime Minister P.J. Patterson. It was revived in February 2014 by Minister of Education Ronald Thwaites as the Respect Agenda campaign and endorsed by current...
Published:Thursday | October 5, 2017 | 5:57 AMMichael Reckord
Jamaica's arts and culture can provide the means for the island's national, social and economic independence. That's the premise of the fourth biennial Rex Nettleford Arts Conference at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (...
Published:Tuesday | September 26, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
"I am a trainer, tutor and facilitator in the use of drama and theatre with people at risk," Tony Cealy informed via email from his England hoe on Sunday. But that was not the career he initially wanted, Cealy told some Edna Manley School of the...
Published:Thursday | September 21, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
The Actor Boy Awards (ABA) administration committee has been discussing solutions to problems it faced last year, as well as planning for the 2018 judging exercise (for 2017 productions) and the awards ceremony. Items on its agenda include fund-...
Published:Thursday | September 14, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Two Jamaican cultural icons, the Hon Louise 'Miss Lou' Bennett-Coverley and Dr the Hon Olive Lewin, were honoured at concerts last weekend.Two Miss Lou concerts were mounted on September 7, the 98th anniversary of her birth. One was at the Norman...
Published:Thursday | September 7, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Along with a new name and structure has come more entertainment related programmes at the institution which began in 1974 as the Caribbean Institute of Mass Communication (CARIMAC). After morphing years later into the Caribbean Institute of Media...
Published:Wednesday | August 30, 2017 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Jamaican theatre-lovers in New York City over the next seven months might be tempted to attend a musical called Jamaica at the Tato Laviera Theatre, 240 East 123rd Street, Harlem.They might well like the Harlem Repertory Theatre's light, breezy...
