The launch of the digital Jamaica Poetry Archive is set to shake up the access to and understanding of literature and Jamaican culture by increasing accessibility to Jamaican poetry. A digital treasure trove of seminal works, it will serve as a...
Dr Amina Blackwood Meeks answered with passion when she was asked this question on Saturday: “Why should Jamaicans be interested in our own storytelling when we have all sorts of online entertainment from all over the world?” “First, you have to...
It’s 7:30 Saturday night at the Philip Sherlock Centre, Mona. Milling around you are scores of beautifully dressed people. The ones wearing multicoloured Pitchy Patchy T-shirts are focused on specific actions related to the main event of the...
We’re living in hot times, just now. First, there’s the crime and violence. Then there’s the weather, with July reportedly having been the hottest month on record. Among the ways people are seeking relief is by going to the Little Little Theatre....
In his short Message from the Artistic Director, Marlon Simms refers several times to wanting the 61st season of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) to engage emotionally with the audience. He writes of taking us “on a journey of movement and...
It’s as if the University Singers are trying to make up for the last three annual concert seasons they missed because of the COVID-19 lockdowns. The 2023 season is bigger, bolder and brighter than before. In other words, “extra-large”. Consider the...
In opening the School of Visual Arts Final-Year exhibition at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts on Saturday evening, Minister of Education and Youth Fayval Williams shared the hope that it would bring “calm and solace” to a...
Over the past two weeks, hundreds of visitors to and residents of Jamaica have heard a play which, in the words of the author, is “a devastating exposé of the Anglican Church’s involvement in the Codrington Estate in Barbados” during the period of...
The intriguing title, Bathroom Graffiti Queen, that Opal Palmer Adisa gave to her play may suggest a fun show. But the piece is, in fact, quite harrowing. Produced at The University of the West Indies’ Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts (...
What happens when Christian meets Rastafarian? For decades in Jamaica there was hostility, violence and even death. But when Jon Williams, a committed Christian and a musician, encountered Bob Marley, an avowed Rastaman and a musician, it was the...
Evan Jones, one of Jamaica’s most prolific writers, who rose to international acclaim, was laid to rest on Wednesday. “Uncle Evan was buried today (Wednesday) in London in a private ceremony attended by wife, daughters and his four grandchildren,”...
Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms proved less popular than Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Ashbourne and Daniel Hass at a concert in the University Chapel, Mona, last Thursday evening. Music by the two groups of composers was presented in the different...
Acclaimed soprano, Lori Burnett, had the honour of being the inaugural performer in an annual music series planned for the Mico Centenary Chapel at The Mico University College in the Corporate Area. Her hour-long recital in the chapel last Sunday...
The latest Patrick Brown comedy, Guilty with Explanation, got a favourable verdict at its matinee staging on Saturday at the Courtleigh Auditorium, New Kingston. Judging from the enthusiastic applause and laughter throughout the show, the jury –...
It’s Easter morning. Part of an audience of hundreds, you are sitting in the Little Theatre, Tom Redcam Avenue. At 6 o’clock sharp, the lights go down in the auditorium and up on the stage in front of the red curtains. The aprons at the sides of...
It’s a tribute to both the universality of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the creativity of the directors that the current School of Drama production of the tragedy – though one the playwright couldn’t have imagined – is a complete success. One...
The manager of Bob Marley and the Wailers had to threaten and actually “get a little rough” with the radio disc jockeys who refused to play his clients’ music in the early 1970s. In fact, it seemed to him that the music of the group, and of other...
It’s not every day you see the Indian high commissioner to Jamaica running down a young woman to douse her with coloured powder. But this happened on Sunday in the India-Jamaica Friendship Garden at Hope Gardens, St Andrew. The laughing “victim” of...
With its splendid set, gorgeous costumes and a story that’s just the right combination of fearful and fun-filled events, JamRats is theatre that most children will enjoy. It closes its two-weekend run on Sunday (March 12) in the Dennis Scott Studio...
Theatre practitioners and lovers of theatre generally got a double dose of delight at the National Gallery of Jamaica on Sunday. The first was visual – 100 beautiful posters from all over the world which were entered in the 2022 International...
A farmer with no experience in storytelling has earned himself the top prize of $375,000 in Jamaica’s most financially attractive storytelling competition. Not only did the second- and third-place winners also walk away with generous cash prizes ($...
Jamaica’s most lucrative storytelling competition climaxes on Sunday with huge wins for the top three contestants. For telling their true-life stories in only six minutes each, they will leave the stage with a combined total of $750,000. Sponsored...
The state of music in our schools engenders both delight and dismay in the music development specialist at the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC). Avory Crooks has reasons to believe both sides of the paradox. On one hand, she can...
“We were performing at Devon House one time,” Renford Foster, leader of the Southwest St Andrew Jonkunoo group said, “and I heard a lady tell her child, ‘Don’t watch dem. Dem is obeah. Dem worship devil. See de devil deh wid him pitchfork...
Training begins today for about 15 new and established Jonkunoo groups around the island, most immediately for a competition next month. To be led by the Institute of Creative Training and Development (ICTD) in consultation with the Jamaica...
