By Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
Lloyd Reckord changes his appearance drastically for a scene in 'Adios Carenage'.
- Contributed
WESTERN BUREAU:
ADIOS CARENAGE, the one-man poetry performance by Lloyd Reckord which is currently running on weekends at the Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts, Arthur Wint Drive, St. Andrew, has been years in the making.
"I have been thinking of this programme for a long time, how to get the poems in visual shape for television," Reckord told The Gleaner.
'A long time' seems to be a bit more than two decades, dating back to when another one-man show of his, Beyond The Blues, toured the United States, 10 English and French Caribbean speaking countries and the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom (U.K.) tour culminated with six performances at the Cottesloe Theatre, the national theatre of Great Britain.
"I was approached by a television director to do it for television. It was something I wanted to do, so I did not take up the offer," Reckord said.
There was a pause of several years, then Reckord decided that this would be the year that the production would be put on.
Adios Carenage covers 23 poems, placed in five categories 'Home', 'Flight', 'Nature', 'Abuse' and 'Death'. The work of Derek Walcott, which lends its title to the production, is at the start of 'Flight'.
Choosing the poems was not much of a struggle. "It is just a case of research into several anthologies and doing those which appealed to me," Reckord said. "It is like a singer giving a concert and deciding which songs are suitable to the presentation, if you like the enough to put your interpretation on them."
In addition to choosing the pieces, though, he had to learn quite a few of them. "I only knew one, (Edward Baugh's) Nigger Sweat. It is a poem I had liked years ago," Reckord sad.
As much as he respects Louise 'Miss Lou' Bennett 'tremendously', considering her very 'clever', her classic Colonisation in Reverse was among the many pieces he had to memorise over the past six months or so that he has been working on Adios Carenage.
"Is Me is a clever piece of satire," Reckord said, referring to another Miss Lou poem included in the production. The third is Roas' Turkey.
Other poems, such as Mutabaruka's A Siddung Pon De Wall and H.D. Carberry's Nature are prerecorded and delivered with the help of a large screen set up at the rear of the stage.
The intention is to tour the Caribbean, the U.K. and the United States (U.S.), targeting colleges especially.
"I think it is beautiful literature. They (colleges) should certainly have a curiosity about Caribbean literature," Reckord said.
The same certainly goes for Jamaican educational institutions, as Reckord says he has been getting a lot of requests from schools. At least one corporate entity has chipped in, sponsoring 50 students from a school he has identified. There are other schools which have made requests. "I put them on a waiting list. As I get the sponsorship I pass it on," Reckord said.
However, while money may make the mare run, it cannot give her the gleam of delight in her eyes. In this case, that is reserved for the poems. "It is the life and breath," Reckord said of literature. "It is a joy for me to perform this quality theatre. I am privileged to have material like this to perform," he said, making passing reference to other material 'out there'.
"I am not being snobbish, I am being honest," Reckord said.
And while the poets whose material he has chosen for Adios Carenage are all established writers, Lloyd Reckord has been keeping tabs on the next generation.
"I have been to see some of the young poets on 'Last Tuesdays' at the Edna Manley College (Poetry Society of Jamaica meetings)," he said. "It has been fascinating. It is wonderful to see these young men and women writing poetry."
