Exploring Jamaica’s rich theatrical history; how this company plans to showcase a small island on an international stage

BY JANIECE CAMPBELL

Jamaica, a land everyone loves. Often viewed as ‘the’ ideal tropical vacation destination, the island is a tourism and cultural hub of the Caribbean best known across the globe for being the birthplace of ska and reggae music, world-class sprinters, ganja culture, and beautiful sandy beaches. Though the little island is definitely a breathtaking getaway, there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to Jamaica.

What many people fail to realize is that the nation possesses a rich theatrical legacy with encouragingly analytical approaches to decolonization, language reclamation, community development and nation-building. A narrative that’s often quite under looked or universally unheard of, a close-knit group are on route to expanding that one-track minded tale that the world is too familiar with.

Akiba Abaka Arts is a U.S. based international theatre production company consisting of an international team of professional actors, directors, designers and producers. Together, they create plays, concerts and discourse centered on narratives from the global black world, while also touring the places they are representing.

“When we formed Akiba Abaka Arts, we wanted to humanize the experience of black people in the world. We wanted to put out dignified narratives of who we were and how we show up in the world that doesn’t show us defaulting to other races and cultures. We are dignified human beings with very diverse stories. There is no one black story. There is no one black experience,” says Akiba Abaka, the founder and artistic director of the company. “We don’t only develop and produce plays; we build pipelines and relationships and pathways for creatives within the black world to connect with the rest of the world.”

The latest project coming out of Akiba Abaka Arts is a free dynamic series of weekly discussions with Jamaica’s leading theatre artists and professionals entitled “10 Weeks in Jamaica: Theatre Conversations from Jamaica to the World!” Each week, the series sets to explore a different theme based on the history of Jamaican theatre and contemporary narratives presented on the Jamaican stage. The talk show was created as a direct result of the pandemic and travel restrictions.

“10 Weeks in Jamaica was a pivot because of COVID. We were supposed to be in Jamaica, but it was a pivot online to immerse ourselves in the Jamaican theatre community and engage in what those stories were. At first, we thought we would enter into it by breaking it down into who were the legends, playwrights and actors. As we looked at that type of narrative arc, we saw that it was limiting, because as a team we realized that it wasn’t telling us actual stories. It would only tell us who these people were, a biographical narrative,” says Akiba.

She continues.

“We wanted to really home in on the stories of the Jamaican people represented in theatre. We wanted to understand how these practitioners approached representing the narratives of Jamaican people. And we thought that if we entered from a journalistic approach rather than a biographical approach, we would have more engaging and objective content.”

The highly produced and carefully curated show is far from your average video conference call. The first few weeks of the series featured legendary Jamaican theatre extraordinaries such as Fae Ellington, Oliver ‘King of Comedy’ Samuels, Keith ‘Shebada’ Ramsay and countless others. Originally premiering on November 5, 2020, the series will run every Sunday through January 3, 2021.

A major part of Akiba Abaka Arts that sets them apart from other theatre production companies is their engagement into the communities that they choose to work in, an immersive process that they refer to as the Multiple Port System.

“The Multiple Port System develops plays in areas that were either once a slave port or practiced slavery. It’s our process of creating work about black cultures globally. We center that inquiry into the stories of black cultures on the people who are descendants of the transatlantic slave trade. We felt that starting there, we would explore multiple questions around what happened to these people and where they are in the world now. And that means on both sides, not only the African descendants. We want to know who the descendants of the traders are as well,” says Akiba. “What that means is that when we’re putting on a play, we’re working in the area that the play originates in. We’re presenting plays from cultures all over the world. We don’t want to work in isolation in a rehearsal hall. We want to be embedded in the community.”

Once borders begin to open again to travellers, Akiba Abaka Arts plans to return to the island to work on a new play, Bar Girl of Jamaica by Robert Johnson Jr. The play is set to premiere in 2022.

You can catch next Sunday’s episode of 10 Weeks in Jamaica at 4 p.m. EST on www.howlround.com or on the Akiba Abaka Arts Youtube. This episode will feature dancehall professor Orville Hall, artistic director of the National Dance Theatre Company Marlon Simms and dancer-choreographer Neila Ebanks!