David Cuffy

Ac­cord­ing to pro­duc­tion di­rec­tor Deb­o­rah Jean-Bap­tiste-Samuel, in a state­ment on the pro­gramme, it proved "an ex­hil­a­rat­ing chal­lenge to trans­form the prop­er­ly man­i­cured teenaged ladies of St Fran­cois Girls Col­lege in­to bat­tle-ready ca­lyp­so­ni­ans of the 1930s" for their roles in Rawle Gib­bons' ca­lyp­so mu­si­cal Sing De Cho­rus.

The suc­cess­ful re­sult stem­ming from that chal­lenge was vivid­ly demon­strat­ed when the pre­miere of the in­sti­tu­tion's three-night tenth an­niver­sary pro­duc­tion was staged at Queen's Hall in St Ann's last Fri­day evening be­fore an au­di­ence com­pris­ing par­ents, peers, and well-wish­ers.

The sto­ry­line in Sing De Cho­rus chron­i­cles the tur­bu­lent years of the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans in the 1930s and 1940s, and show­cas­es not just the many ca­lyp­soes of the era, but looks be­hind the scene at the lives of the men and women who were the mouth­piece of the peo­ple–the in­ves­tiga­tive re­porter who tried to give the sto­ry as it re­al­ly hap­pened.

The make-up duo of C Far­ray and L Fou­chong de­serves full praise for the work done in the phys­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion of the all-fe­male cast in­to be­liev­able-look­ing men to play the roles of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans with the style and char­ac­ter of the era.

While the cast would have on­ly read about artistes such as Atil­la the Hun, Lord Be­gin­ner, Lord Ex­ecu­tor, Growl­ing Tiger, King Ra­dio, La­dy Iere, and In­vad­er, to name a few, mem­bers were able to clothe their por­tray­als with the swag­ger his­to­ry records as be­ing a char­ac­ter­is­tic of the in­di­vid­u­als.

In the open­ing act we had glimpses of the re­la­tion­ships be­tween Bat­tler (An­na Bethel), Madame Dorothy (Can­dice Vil­lafana), Saga (Des­ti­nee-Ann Robin­son), and oth­ers who in­hab­it­ed their bar­rack yard com­mune, and the rite-of-pas­sage a new­com­er had to go through be­fore he could claim to be a true ca­lyp­son­ian.

We ex­pe­ri­enced per­for­mances in the La Cou Kaiso tent of Scan­dal In The Trea­sury from Atil­la (Sha­nia Shal­low)–the best singer among the cast; Coun­try Club Scan­dal from Ra­dio (TS Davis), and oth­er ca­lyp­soes from Ex­ecu­tor (Ar­lene Williams), Timer (Kis­han­na Ash­ton) and oth­ers.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od re­lat­ed to the sto­ry, one of the chal­lenges the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans faced was the cen­sor­ship of their songs. In­spec­tor of Po­lice (An­drea Richard­son) and his lack­ey Cor­po­ral San­tapee (Alana Atwell) brought the ar­ro­gance and bull­head­ed­ness to their roles that in­censed the singers who, nev­er­the­less, con­tin­ued to find a way to ex­pose the scan­dal and "bobol" among the rul­ing colo­nial class. The con­flict cli­maxed with the pass­ing of the The­atre and Dance­hall Or­di­nance that crip­pled the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans as their songs' lyrics had to re­ceive the stamp of ap­proval from the law (In­spec­tor and San­tapee).

The play al­so ex­plored the plight of work­ers that cul­mi­nat­ed in the But­ler Ri­ots in Fyz­abad and the in­flu­ence that "US dol­lars" had on the art form re­sult­ing in es­tab­lish­ment of the Bo­nan­za En­ter­tain­ment Cen­tre where we saw Ris­han­na Ash­ton, Dari-anne Camp­bell, and Des­ti­nee-Ann Robin­son as the An­drew Sis­ters do­ing Lord In­vad­er's Rum and Co­ca Co­la that be­came a huge hit for the trio in 1945.

Ac­cord­ing to Jean-Bap­tiste-Samuel, for the stu­dents, the ex­er­cise "was an ed­u­ca­tion in ca­lyp­so of the 1930s era, and an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the po­et­ry in those ca­lyp­soes, an ex­plo­ration of the cul­tur­al el­e­ments, and an ex­plo­sion in mu­si­cal song."

She ex­pressed the hope that the ex­pe­ri­ence of per­form­ing in the dra­mat­ic mu­si­cal will be etched in their mem­o­ry, and ex­pand their un­der­stand­ing of the oral art form of ca­lyp­so.

The St Fran­cois Girls Col­lege be­gan its an­nu­al dra­ma pro­duc­tion in 2005 with the stag­ing of Pene­lope Spencer's In The Blink Of An Eye at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um in Port-of-Spain.