RAY FUNK

This weekend, theatregoers have a rare chance to see one of Errol Hill’s most memorable plays, Dance Bongo, directed by Michael Cherrie.

The play is one of mystery and discovery, focused on a bongo dance in a small village. Written in free verse, it is rooted in traditional Afro-Caribbean traditions. The bongo dance and songs, part of traditional wakes for enslaved people from Africa, have taken place through much of the Caribbean to different extents, though it has been in decline.

Dance Bongo was published in three different anthologies, starting in 1965, and on its own in 1972 in the UWI Extra Mural series of published plays. It went through multiple printings.

Hill called it a “fantasy.” His widow, Grace Hill, recently recalled the backstory to its creation: “Errol was invited to teach playwriting at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada one summer. On the first day of class, he told his students that they would be required to write a one-act play, and that he would also write one!”

In an online list of the best Trinidad plays, playwright Zeno Constance noted Hill’s Dance Bongo evolves “around a three-sided conflict between the ‘Stranger,’ a ritualistic bongo dancer, who came to the village loaded with mystery and an ominous premonition – he only danced ‘for the dead’; Jeremy, the pompous, headstrong, village bongo dancer of whom they were most proud; and Sarah, the old woman whose firm conviction it was that Jeremy had spitefully murdered her grandson because he was a better bongo dancer.”

The play has been staged many times. It was performed on TTT in 1976, and several schools in secondary school competitions from 1967-2014, as well as in St Vincent and the Grenadines; the Virgin Islands; at Spellman College in Atlanta; the Black Theatre Workshop in Montreal; and the Hemispheric Institute at New York University.

Director Cherrie is an assistant professor at the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) and one of the country’s most respected actors in film and stage. Only Netflix knows when Shirley, directed by Academy-Award-winner John Ridley – a film Cherrie worked on last year and early this year – will be released. The film is based on the life of Shirley Chisholm, first black woman in Congress who in 1972 ran for president of the US. Cherrie plays her husband.

Cherrie has also been featured in local films such as Maya Cozier’s She Paradise and Horace Ove’s The Ghost of Hing King Estate, as well as a UK Channel 4 production of Caryl Phillips’ The Final Passage and VS Naipaul’s The Mystic Masseur (2001), directed by Ismail Merchant. Cherrie has also performed in many stage productions, both in the US and the Caribbean and has been a regular in 3canal stage shows. He was featured in Tony Hall and David Rudder’s calypso musical The Brand New Lucky Diamond Horseshoe Club.

[caption id="attachment_989668" align="alignnone" width="768"] Dance Bongo is rooted in traditional Afro-Caribbean traditions. It is directed by Michael Cherrie, at right. It will be staged at NAPA, Port of Spain,