LOCAL theatre productions enjoyed booming success last year with well supported shows and this year appears to be even better for major players.
Although figures for the total number of productions were not readily available, THE STAR was told that at Centrestage Theatre there has been an increase as against last year. At Barn Theatre, the other main Corporate Area playhouse, three scheduled quarterly productions were on target.
A representative of Barn said they usually book four plays per year.
Teck Dat Ting Meck Laugh was well supported but Louis Marriott's revue "Year 2000" could have had a greater audience turnout. Country Duppy is now playing at The Barn.
"What also happened during Year 2000 was Carnival was on at Mas Camp and the audience could not hear anything happening on stage so that affected the play a lot," the Barn's representative said.
Lenford Salmon, a director of Jambiz International Ltd, operators of Centrestage Theatre, said there was one production last year -- Oliver and Pinochio. For 2000, they have had two so far with another to be opened at the end of this month.
The productions, Salmon said, were well accepted and supported during the Kingston leg.
Breadfruit Kingdom surprisingly didn't do that well outside of Kingston, when you compare it to Oliver and Pinochio last year," Salmon said. "People are not able to spend the amount of money that they used to," he said.
Salmon said he was not at all satisfied with the level of attention being paid to the industry.
"In other countries, they receive far more help from government and corporate entities that we do," he argued.
Regarding growth within the industry, Salmon said Jamaica is way ahead of the other English speaking Caribbean Countries.
"Sometimes here in Jamaica we have five, six productions running concurrently for three months to a year. A very good production in the Eastern Caribbean runs for three weeks."
Salmon said the industry only attracted a small number of new faces this year due to lack of incentives.
"There has not been a lot of new faces because what you find happening is that non-commercial groups such as Ashe and Cathi Levy introduce a lot of young people to theatre but by the time they get to commercial theatre they opt to do other things," he explained.
Fortunately, Salmon said many of the popular theatre people are still relatively young.
"If God's willing then I think we still have a couple years left under our belt. People like Christopher Daley who have been in this thing from he was a child, and even myself, who has had many years of experience. I am only 38."
Another theatre veteran said this summer did not have the usual amount of plays normally out at this time.
"People are not going to the theatre as much as they used to because they just don't have the money to buy a ticket for $500," she said.
What has become obvious, she added, is that audiences prefer the comedy type plays.
"Last year we had The Father, which was sort of a classical play, something similar to Shakespeare and the houses were very empty each night," she said.
