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Gus Edwards Caribbean Narrative: Carnival Characters— In Life and in the Mind Historian Isidor Paiewonsky, in his book Eyewitness Accounts of Slavery in the Danish West Indies, describes the performative heritage and practice of Caribbean blacks from the Virgin Islands during their time of forced servitude. He describes the African drum music and the violent dancing, which planters came to fear as a source of rebellion and eventually outlawed. He also describes the tradition of “‘lunatic balls’ in which the imagination ran riot and the costumers and decorators outdid each other in preparing the weird, the grotesque, the comic, and satirical outfits for the masqueraders and the setting for the ball.”1 Elsewhere in that book he observes, “One of the links of attention between planters’ children and their Negro nurses might be traced directly to storytelling. Some of the Nanas on the plantations developed this form of entertainment into a fine art.”2 Of the storytellers, Paiewonsky says, “None were better known than Nana Bela, a member of the Bantu tribe of Angola. As a storyteller, Nana Bela’s variety of tales, her ability to express them, to convert African folklore into a West Indian setting earned her a wide reputation. She was in great demand at garden parties for children which were well attended by grownups as well.” Thus Paiewonsky suggests that public performance skills in drama, dance, storytelling, and mimicry are a key part of Caribbean/Virgin Island heritage. Although I was born and raised in the Caribbean, I remained unconscious of my rich heritage until I was an adult wrestling with questions of identity and seeking information about my culture. For more years than I care to admit to, I have worried and struggled over my identity and choice of profession . I live in the world of the theatre in the United States, where my plays have both been produced and published and where I teach Theatre Arts to aspiring dramatists, particularly aspiring black artists. I puzzled far too long over the question, “Was I an American writer who just happened to be born in the Caribbean? Or was I a Caribbean writer who just happened to be working in the United States?” I was born in Antigua, which was a British Colony at the time, brought up in St. Thomas, V.I., a U.S. possession, and educated to the theatre in New York City, one of the greatest cities, if not the greatest and most cosmopolitan city, in the world. So who was I? And out of what ethos did I write? These were profoundly important questions to me. If I could answer them, I thought, I would be able to bring clarity to a creative landscape that was confused and labyrinthine in the extreme. I spoke with a West Indian accent but my outlook and value system were definitely American. I worked in American theatre but I wrote like a Briton. One New York critic referred to my first professionally produced play as “Pinter comes to Harlem,”3 and indeed, culturally speaking, I was a man without a country. So it was only natural that I take up residence in someone else’s. I continued in this state of confusion and rootlessness for several years, even managing for long periods of time to shunt aside the nagging questions of cultural identity and place to which I could find no satisfactory answers. Then one day, at a symposium made up of theatre scholars and professionals, I was asked to define and discuss what the concept of theatre meant to me. Without preparation or hesitation I stood up and said, “My cultural heritage is Caribbean. Speaking specifically from the framework of this heritage, ‘theatre’ to me is a construct made up primarily of music, color, movement, some natural ingredients (vegetables, fruit, fish, etc.), sounds (music , cries, grunts, chants, etc.), and rhythm. Not the art but the rhythm of life. Life that was vivid, spontaneous, unpredictable, and natural. There was no formal sense of language or preplanned structure. No deliberate attempt at passion or spectacle, yet it was there for all to see in a variety of ways.” Once I had made this statement, a flood of memories animated the words I had spoken, presenting the characters and situations and textures of the world that had shaped me. If you’ve ever seen a hen decapitated, then plucked and cleaned for dinner, you never forget it. Every Sunday my brother and I...

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