 |
Welcome to Extra N.A. Online!
|
Tuesday September 7, 2010
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Allegorical play opens in Toronto
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
 | | | contributed - Jamaica-born playwright, educator and author, Pam Mordecai. | |
Neil Armstrong
TORONTO:
After 15 years, a story that began at a conference in the Netherlands, will finally open as a Canadian-Caribbean play this week in Toronto, thanks to Jamaica-born playwright, educator and author, Pam Mordecai. The world premiere of the play, El Numero Uno, takes place at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in Toronto, starting today.
El Numero Uno was hatched in 1995 where Mordecai was one of four storytellers invited to the 25th IBBY Conference, held in Groningen, Netherlands. Dutch author and illustrator, Max Velthuijs, created a series of illustrations, and three other storytellers, among them Zimbabwean writer, Charles Mungoshi and Mordecai, were invited to create tales to go along with Velthuijs's images.
The hero was a pig, and thus was El Numero Uno, aka Le Premier Cochon, aka the Number One Pig, born. He was a huge hit at the conference. In 2001, Mordecai produced a treatment for the play based on the story and a script was in the hands of an artistic director at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People by 2002.
The story is about a little town which is under siege by enchanted beasts from the forest who threaten the island with starvation. El Numero Uno, the teenage pig, is the person on whom the town depends. "The story is how the town manages to be rescued when it is this young man, who may be not as virtuous as he ought to be, who has to play a big part in the rescue," says Mordecai from her home in Toronto.
multiplicity
Mordecai uses a range of languages - what she calls a 'pepperpot' - in the play. She says the English-speaking Caribbean is not monolithic, there are many languages, cultures and traditions. She also wanted to address the problem of what Governor-General, Michaelle Jean, refers to as les solitudes.
This is the idea that there are many of us here but sometimes in isolation, certainly English and French Canada are not as close by any means as they ought to be if it's one country. Mordecai decided to envision the Caribbean as an ideal place. "I'm going to mash it up. I'm going to put French, Spanish, Trinidad Creole, Jamaican Creole, Rastatalk, everything is in there. And I think it works, in the hands of the actors, they are amazing," says Mordecai who thinks her script is the least of what unfolds on stage. As an educator she is very impressed with the many talented Black and Caribbean actors in Toronto.
"It's a Canadian-Caribbean story, with roots in Holland, an international character, and a sort of Jamaican pantomime approach.
The characters - most but not all - are borrowed from a variety of traditions and I've taken some liberties with them," is how Mordecai describes the play which is targeted for an audience from ages eight to 80.
The play has many animals as characters but it is the pig's encounter with Ras Onelove --- a speaker of heavenly truths - which helps the main protagonist.
"As for Ras Onelove's solving of riddles, I think he helps Uno begin to solve the riddle of who he is, what it really means to be El Numero Uno.
That is undoubtedly the biggest riddle in the play, and Ras Onelove starts helping Uno from the very first time that they meet. The other riddle solving is a job to which everyone contributes, with the crucial unraveling being done by the littlest ones," says Mordecai.
The play features some of Canada's more prominent black theatre artists including eminent Canadian actor and recipient of the Order of Canada, Walter Borden, along with John Blackwood, Andrew Broderick, Lisa Codrington, Jajube Mandiela, Jamie Robinson and Sabryn Rock. It play is directed by ahdri zhina mandiela, the founder and director of b current.
>>Read More News Stories
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
© 2006-2010, Gleaner Extra NA, All Rights Reserved.
|
|
|
|
