Published:Wednesday | June 29, 2016 | 4:10 PMMichael Reckord
Because at this time of the year, the lingering sun keeps pushing dusk further and further away from the official six o'clock start of evening, Sunday's Jazz in the Gardens concert at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel could begin and continue for nearly an...
Published:Wednesday | June 22, 2016 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
This summer, Digital Technology meets Culture is being offered by the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech), from July 4-29 at the university's Centre for the Arts. Musical Theatre is being offered by Avant Academy of Music, 66 Paddington...
Last Thursday, the School of Art and the performing arts schools at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, 1 Arthur Wint Drive, St Andrew, did a joint presentation.A Taste of the Arts featured the 2016 Final Year Exhibition of 26...
A Ministry of Education, Youth and Information (MOEYI) document on the new national curriculum, which comes on stream in September, refers on almost every page to the importance of our heritage and...
Published:Wednesday | June 1, 2016 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
"Writing is not just sitting and imagining," Fabian Barracks told said last week in the Phoenix Theatre (formerly The Theatre Place), Haining Road, New Kingston. After a performance of his latest production, Barrel Pickney, Barracks explained his...
Published:Wednesday | May 25, 2016 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
There is a lot to learn from Catherine Mulgrave - an African Odyssey, now playing at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts (PSCCA). University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. In four and a half months it was transformed from magazine...
Although Jamaican culture is lauded internationally, the performing arts (music, dance and drama) are scorned by many school administrators.That was clear during a recent performing-arts workshop organised by Excelsior Community College's (ECC)...
A jump start programme is now available for high school students planning to attend the School of the Performing Arts (SOPA), Excelsior Community College (ECC). As...
Published:Wednesday | April 27, 2016 | 10:30 PMMichael Reckord
In making decisions, should you follow your head or your heart?The age-old question of balancing intellect and emotion was addressed by Athenian playwright Euripides in his 405 BC tragedy The Bacchae, which was staged at the Edna Manley College of...
Published:Wednesday | April 20, 2016 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
In the 1980s when I was a lecturer at the then College of Arts, Science and Technology (CAST), there was no arts course in the academic curriculum. Now that the institution is the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech), students can do dance,...
Published:Thursday | April 14, 2016 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
"A journey of 1,000 miles begins with one step" is a well-known adage. It seems that, for an acting career, it literally involves physical exercise.That is how it was introduced to 15 teenage boys at the Alpha Institute, South Camp Road, Kingston,...
Published:Wednesday | April 6, 2016 | 6:45 PMMichael Reckord
"We have a vision that on November 20, our National Storytelling Day, which is also UNESCO's Universal Children's Day, all our children across Jamaica - in schools, churches, institutions, hospitals, wherever they are - will be involved in...
Published:Thursday | March 31, 2016 | 5:42 PMMichael Reckord
Over the Easter weekend, both the two-year old Jamaica Praise Chorale, founded by Ian Hird and Spanish Town's Cathedral Concert Choir, which organist Trevor Beckford has been leading for 55 years, staged cantatas based on the events leading up to...
Published:Thursday | March 31, 2016 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Recently, the University Dramatic Arts Society (UDAS) has been staging dramatisations of some of the poetry, prose and drama being studied by students taking CSEC English Literature examinations.The productions have been mounted at the Philip...
The National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) mounted a 'total theatre' concert involving dance, music, drama and art at The Little Theatre, Tom Redcam Avenue, St Andrew, on Easter Morning.Starting at 6:05 a.m., for just over an hour, the audience was...
Published:Wednesday | March 23, 2016 | 12:27 PMMichael Reckord
The audience at the talk on Writing and Publishing Children's Literature last week Monday perked up noticeably when the speaker said he was going to reveal the secret to the success of the Harry Potter series.Up to then Michael Katz, a publisher and...
Published:Wednesday | March 23, 2016 | 1:10 PMMichael Reckord
SIDEBAR TO COLPLEASE USE HIS NAME AT END OF STORYLIST 1 COL LEFTSome of the books published by David Katz's company, Tradewind Books, which were on display at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, last Monday had black characters and Katz...
Published:Thursday | March 17, 2016 | 5:41 AMMichael Reckord
During last Friday's Kingston Book Festival discussion at the Spanish Court Hotel, New Kingston, blogger Emma Lewis proposed six main points on writing book reviews. They are:1. Don't make them too long (1,500 1,800 words) but do capture the...
Published:Thursday | March 10, 2016 | 7:27 PMMichael Reckord
When asked about the success of the eighth staging of Jamaica Dance Umbrella (JDU) at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts (PSCCA), Michael Holgate, the centre's tutor-coordinator, declared, "It was wonderful!"Since he organised the...
Published:Thursday | March 10, 2016 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Recently retired director of the School of Drama, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Eugene Williams, is trying to find a gateway to a new type of Caribbean theatre. He believes a technique he has devised for the development of...
"It's okay to have a love affair with literature," Tanya Shirley, lecturer in the Department of Literatures in English, told her audience at the University of the West Indies, Mona, recently. "You can be quite open about it. You can even bring a...
Published:Thursday | March 3, 2016 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
Fabian Thomas and his performing arts collective, Tribe Sankofa, staged an afternoon multimedia show at the National Gallery as a part of its February Last Sundays programme.Black Bodies honours the memories of four Jamaicans (Vanessa Kirkland,...
Published:Friday | February 26, 2016 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
The transformative power of theatre on individuals and communities was one of the themes of a workshop at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts (PSCCA), Mona, last Friday. Part of...
Published:Thursday | February 18, 2016 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
"The colliding black holes that produced these gravitational waves created a violent storm in the fabric of space and time, a storm in which time speeded up, and slowed down, and speeded up again, a storm in which the shape of space was bent in this...
Published:Tuesday | February 16, 2016 | 12:00 AMMichael Reckord
The well known saying, 'The show must go on', may well have been show business' response to Murphy's law, 'If anything can go wrong, it will.'Despite the various unscheduled occurrences at the recent Jamaica Musical Theatre...
