WINSTON SILL/FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER
Students of the Queen's School performing at the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission's (JCDC's) National Speech Finals 2005, held at the Little Theatre, Tom Redcam Avenue, last Wednesday.
Christina Benjamin, Gleaner Writer
DAY ONE of the finals for the speech segment of the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission's (JCDC's) Festival of the Arts was just that a festival. It was a carnival of colours, talents and attitudes, as the youngest of the contestants competed for gold medals.
Class one of the competition commenced with an explosive performance.
Young Springbonet McCarthy from St. John's Primary School performed the poem 'A Mirror, Mirror' which was positively dripping with the vanity her character commanded. She was followed by the comic performance of Jhonte Wright who recited the poem 'Big Sister', and the beautifully costumed Kajai Francis who brought an end to the Standard English round of this section in the competition.
CROWD-PLEASER
One true crowd-pleaser was in the Experimental Speaking section a double act from the Lucky Valley All-Age School called 'Beggy, Beggy'. These two talented girls took the crowd back to the schoolyard at lunch time.
I am sure all of us remember being annoyed and conned into giving away some of our banana chips or chocolate chip cookies to pesky classmates. Now, of course, our return to the schoolyard doesn't end there. We all remember the times we finally got annoyed enough to refuse to give these 'beggaz' some of our food.
Back on stage, the girls were only too happy to show us what happens then they learnt a lesson about selfishness and ended up finding something enticing to beg the 'beggaz' for. We know how that goes, cah when yuh beg an' yuh cyan' give back yuh nah get nuttin outta yuh beggin'! Positively hilarious!
The performances came nothing short of excellent, yet class two of the speech finals was littered with serious subject matters. The children of Friendship Primary School stood confidently on stage as they recited the poem 'A Child's Cry' in which they begged the crowd to "just stop it! This ya situation a reach crisis!" Onlookers could not help but feel touched by this reference to the violence and problematic state of affairs that Jamaica is in.
I silently agreed with the children of Howard Cooke Primary School referring to "cellphone(s) in every pickney han'" and the lack of discipline among the youth of today, and I found myself struck into a state of reflection by the seriousness of the poem 'Gunman power', performed by Sharmalee Johnson of John Mills Primary & Junior High School. The poem featured a young girl's trauma at witnessing her father's murder. I can only look back to my prep-school days performing in the Festival of the Arts; in those days we recited poems about 'mongoose' and ackee, not gun violence and criminality.
PLAYING IN THE SCHOOLYARD
The Jamaican dialect and Standard English segments provided some relief from the 'Gun poetry'. Roxanne McGrowder's performance of 'Grade One Talk' brought back the imagery of children, as they should be, playing in the schoolyard. The crowd rose in fits of laughter as parents and teachers in the audience imagined their kids giving the same over-dramatised complaints as they pretend to have horribly injured themselves in order to attract attention from their elders. Other performers in the section were Li Shaun Paul and Shenell Gayle who were also very good.
The Standard English Section and the Dub Poetry Section re-introduced the familiarly sordid subject matter of current Jamaican troubles. The performances 'What a Time' (Fellowship Primary and Junior High School), 'AIDS' (Ascot Primary School), and 'Look Out' (Little London Primary School) all referred to problematic issues in Jamaica. They were beautifully presented, yet as a boy in a skeleton costume talking about 'AIDS' yelled to the crowd, "Beware, I am out there!" I found myself thinking 'These children represent the youth of Jamaica: all extremely talented, all confident onstage, all relatively well spoken, and all begging us to see what we have made of our country. These performers just make up a small piece of 'the future' yet they are on stage preaching to the crowd about gun violence and AIDS awareness.
The first day of the Festival of the Arts Speech competition was dynamic. What talented youth Jamaica has!
