Derek Walcott's latest play O Starry Starry Night premiered at Essex University' Lakeside Theatre on May 3 with Trini actors Nigel Scott and Wendell Manwarren leading the cast along with UK-based compatriots Martina Laird and Brian Green.
Walcott's writing, whether poetry or drama, has been influenced by visual art throughout his long career. He himself is a keen watercolourist and it is the artist's eye as much as the literate writer's lexicon, which has informed his unique imagery. So his choice of subject matter-the stormy relationship between the Post-Impressionist painters Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin�is understandable; moreso when we delve into Gauguin's background. His mother was of Peruvian extraction and the young Paul spent five years of his early life in Lima, before returning to France. The year before the 1888 time frame of the play, Gauguin, had spent time in a hut outside St Pierre in Martinique following an abortive couple of weeks' labour on the Panama Canal. After the nine week sojourn in Arles, southern France with van Gogh, his latter days in Polynesia were fictionalised by another Nobel Laureate, the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, in his novel The Way to Paradise.
The title of the play references van Gogh's most famous painting, executed during his hospitalisation for the same breakdown which saw him threaten Gauguin with a razor blade and ended with him cutting off his lower ear lobe and giving it to an Arles prostitute.
Contacted towards the end of intense rehearsals, Scott and Manwarren graciously took some time out for a joint cyber interview. They pinpoint the dynamics driving the drama: "The two artists spend nine weeks at Arles at the height of their creative powers. Perhaps this was the most prolific and productive collaboration in the history of Art. It was a critical point in their careers, both were searching for new ways to express themselves via painting."
Both Scott (who plays van Gogh's brother Theo who acted as agent for both artists) and Manwarren (who plays Gauguin) have researched (and doubtless been instructed by the playwright himself) the two artists' trajectories: "The two men were on a journey of discovery; Vincent travelled to the South of France to find the sun and Gauguin had been to Martinique to use the tropics as his backdrop. Their separate quests brought them to the realisation that they might contribute to each other's development. Both were seeking their own truths through their art. When Gauguin has some early success and Vincent's work is not selling (He only sold one painting during his lifetime), this creates a tension in the relationship that eventually culminates in the latter's mental breakdown."
One could view the Gauguin-van Gogh collision as the old dichotomy between body and mind�the sensualist Gauguin and the angst-ridden van Gogh. Scott and Manwarren elaborate: "Gauguin remonstrates with Vincent at one point: 'Forget the metaphysics and just paint. He is tired of the constant references to the spiritual and shuns the Church...He is about the flesh and conveys this in his work. Although the two men often painted the same subjects, the different philosophies often came through in their interpretations."
Both artists sacrificed convention for creation, and their rejection of restrictive bourgeois norms and ultimate isolation is a theme which must be close to Walcott's heart. As the actors note: "Vincent was always considered eccentric if not mad...Gauguin gave up a conventional life in favour of his art. Both suffered tremendous deprivation and pain to pursue their craft."
Both longstanding members of Walcott's Trinidad Theatre Workshop Scott and Manwarren agree that their most challenging role to date was as Don Juan in Walcott's Joker of Seville (they both played the title role in productions 20 years apart) "Because it challenged and stretched the actor to act, sing, dance and fight for two and a half hours straight at full speed." O Starry Starry Night poses a new challenge to Manwarren, as it's his "first opportunity to develop a character that lived."
The duo acknowledged the "total immersion and focus on the work" of all those involved in the Lakeside Theatre production, concluding "It is only fitting we respond in like manner and do justice to the production by bringing all our talent and skill to bear so we make its author proud through our performances."
