Lewis

THE ROSE SLIP, which played recently at The Edna Manley School of Drama, was written by Trinidadian Douglas Archibald in 1962. Classified as a barrack-yard play, it is among several others of the 'yard theatre' genre which appeared in the following two decades. Coming as it does when the historical and cultural commemoration of the anniversary of the abolition of slavery is under the spotlight, the play should be seen in light of renewed interest in, and attention to, the voice of the inner city.

Archibald himself believed, as he indicated in an interview in 1975, that an ideal in yard theatre is to 'put people on the stage and let them talk, let them act'. It was also generally felt that such drama was considerably more authentic because dialogue and action are more self-explanatory and have more immediacy than the other genres of poetry, short story and novel with their wide scope for authorial intrusion.

It should be worthy of note that in 1968 and 1972, both Cecil Gray of Guyana and Trinidadian Errol Hill presented their findings on the emergence of this unique indigenous drama in the English-speaking Caribbean, which linked physical environment with local idiom, and focused on the growth of folk themes fired by urban lower-class tenancy and, to a lesser extent, rural peasant life.

Gray did not gloss over the fact that the educated writer had to rely on second-hand experience based on what he observed, as well as on existing 'stock assumptions' formed by a small reading public. That several such works flourished around that time, mainly in Trinidad, showed that there was sustained effort to enunciate for the urban poor who were perceived as continuously seeking avenues of escape out of frustration, poverty and the trauma of landlord eviction in particular.

This significant output included Archibald's Junction Village (1954) and Errol John's Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (1958). Errol Hill wrote Ping Pong, styled as a backyard comedy-drama, and Man Better Man (1955 and 1956) and Wey-Wey (1966). These were made available to the Extra Mural Department at Mona, as were Mamaguy and Zingay by Freddie Kissoon, in that same year. The Kingston tenement was represented by Della (1954) written by Barry Reckord, and Don't Wake the Baby (1977) by Gloria Lannaman. In 1976 Lloyd Reckord produced The Rose Slip with a professional cast including Ranny Williams and Pauline Stone, and included school tours.

The title, The Rose Slip, was chosen by Archibald to reflect not only the transitory nature of tenancy in the barrack yard, but the element of uncertainty in that existence. A slip of plant cutting may or may not 'catch'; therefore it is presented figuratively as a symbol of hope and survival. The plant has been tended and nourished by a character in the yard known as Flossie, who hopes it will live and grow despite the trampling feet of both adults and children, and will eventually blossom, even after eviction occurs.

This in itself is a difficult undertaking in a yard setting where the single standpipe is at centre stage, surrounded, as expected, by decrepit buildings, with outhouse and lean-to serving as bath and kitchen. Water is perhaps the most precious commodity there, and it is water, or lack of it, which draws all occupants to that centre, in communal or conflict modes.

Flossie as an outsider is there to represent Archibald the observer. Flossie is in the yard but not of it. The writer's use of her voice to enunciate for the protagonists caught in a hopeless situation is therefore a successful dramatic ploy. The situation itself turns on the eviction notices served on the tenants by one Mr. Lastide, the landlord's appointed agent. His role is as much to introduce the theme of tenant-eviction as one of the concerns of West Indian writing, as to personify the 'last tide' - a powerful socio-psychotic force often used to wash the occupants away from their tenuous mooring.

(A poem of significance, 'I turn you out of doors/ tenant desire/ you pay no rent,' penned in the same era by Edward Lucie-Smith comes readily to mind, in support of this idea).

When Mr. Lastide enters the yard and hands out three notices to Susanna, who is a mother of three, it is Flossie, the childless woman, who suggests to his face that he must be mad, for the 'munt does not en' twice inone week'.

FLOSSIE : Why? Why we has ter leave?

LASTIDE : The buildings have been condemned.

FLOSSIE : Who condem' dem?

LASTIDE : The Authorities. They are unfit for human habitation.

FLOSSIE : We is human. We livin' in dem.

LASTIDE: You won't be, in six weeks from now ...

FLOSSIE: It ent rite. It jus' ent rite. Ah settle heah. A mek dis ma home afta all dese six years. Dis is whey a come ter res' an' fin' peace.

The characters started out as warm and even humorous in their idiosyncracies, their fellow-feeling strong in the face of adversity. They lent what little money they had, offered a mug of hot cocoa, raced to pick up a breadfruit fallen from the lone fruit tree, but this sustainer of life in the compound has to be cut down on Mr. Lastide's orders. Mr. Dalbad practised 'good' by giving credit at his shop, old man Bucket refused to bathe ('Put me in wata an ah'll ketch ma deat'), Susanna's mother, Arabella, has always worn her spectacles devoid of glass, and Flossie's male friend, Gus, could not seem to rid himself of his little dead brother.

Flossie is the guiding and benevolent spirit of the yard, who shows concern for all.

The characters end up disoriented. A young girl - Eva - who, we suspect, should stand for the innocence of an Eve, and who refused to accept money from Gus, will lose that innocence in the nearby nightclub. Gus has turned more to drink; Bucket is finally emptied into the hospital, though his pride was such that he would not accept cocoa from anyone who mentions the word charity; Susanna, forced to move to the country, gets a good view of the sea, but the ground is tough and infertile, and her two children are farther from school. Needless to say, the children have long been deserted by their 'two separate farders'.

Archibald successfully balances the themes of hope and despair while accurately reproducing the rhythms of speech. There are no tragic overtones, for all accept their fate. Appropriately, Flossie transcends the domestic and embodies the maternal; thus it is no coincidence that she is the last to leave the compound, summing up thus:

'We is all de Lawd's flowers place on dis eart' ter ketch a lil sun an a lil rain, an' den ter fade away an die.'