JADA holds AGM - five years late

Michael Reckord, Gleaner Writer

Five years after it was constitutionally due, the Jamaica Association of Dramatic Artists (JADA) recently held its annual general meeting (AGM). The major agenda item, the election of a new executive, resulted in Scarlette Beharie being unanimously elected president.

Her elected officers on the new executive council are Christine Bell, first vice-president; Aston Cooke, second vice-president; Ruth HoShing, secretary; Carol Lawes, assistant secretary; Hugh Martin, treasurer. The other council members are Pierre Lemaire, Carmen Tipling, Basil Dawkins and Dahlia Harris.

Fewer than a dozen members of the 19 paid-up members of JADA participated in the elections. At the period of its highest membership, the nine-year-old association had close to 90 members.

Giving her acceptance speech, Beharie said she believed in the importance of JADA to theatre in Jamaica and the region. She pledged to work hard and expressed the hope that the new executive would work with her to continue the good work accomplished by the association in the past. She said she "looked forward to an exciting year".

Activities and projects

In the president's report, outgoing president Dorothy Cunningham told the small gathering about some of the activities and projects JADA had been involved in since the last AGM. They included 'JADA Spotlight', a bimonthly meeting spotlighting the contribution of theatre practitioners, some outside the island, held at the Dennis Scott Studio Theatre, Edna Manley College School of Drama.

JADA got involved in 2007 with the Private Sector Development Programme 'clustering' project, sponsored by the European Union and the Government of Jamaica. One outcome was the establishment of the creative cluster which placed drama, dance, film, graphic and fine arts under one umbrella for the purpose of grant-funding applications. Two other benefits were the securing of funding for a JADA website and sponsorship for JADA treasurer, Nicole Brown, and Cunningham to attend the International Theatre Institute (ITI) World Congress in Madrid, Spain, in 2008.

Jamaica was the venue of the 2009 ITI committee executive meeting hosted by the ITI Jamaica Chapter and Jamaica Association of Dramatic Artists. From the meeting came a series of workshops for the Jamaican theatrical community conducted by internationally recognised theatre practitioners.

Cunningham also expressed the association's desire for the establishment of a JADA benevolent fund to assist members in need of financial support. In October 2010, two short plays were staged at the Theatre Place, Haining Road, as fund-raisers.

During discussions after the elections, the new first vice-president, an actress and public-relations practitioner, said that JADA needed a strong PR and marketing programme to attract new members and get new projects going.