Fae Ellington who has been with us for years in almost every aspect of the media and theatre arts and who has endeared herself to all and sundry, backstage and in front of audience, took a new and adventurous turn recently when she made her debut at professional level as a director of plays.

At the Dennis Scott Auditorium, Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts, she brought a carefully controlled and disciplined realisation to a one-man show about a black woman who was convicted of murder and executed in Georgia (USA) 60 years ago; indeed the only woman ever to have been so dealt with in Georgia.

The play by Janice Lee Liddell is one of those constructions dear to the heart of the gender rights (women's division) campaigners --- aren't we about to or haven't we just had another 'gender' conference? Where the argument, almost without fleshing out, is the thing and one hardly becomes involved in the characters (in this case, character). Much depends on the recurrent battle cry: "He raped me!"

At the end, the audience is asked to add its signatures to a petition to grant Lena Baker a posthumous pardon and to clear her name.
Who Will Sing For Lena? is indeed a question to be asked.

The play gives us the rape incident though it's not clear whether it was a standard assault --once or many times-- or one usually described as 'unnatural' before these days of Tiney Winey contests, not to mention Jamaica Carnival, where the intent is to encourage the male to attack what is described, with our usual alacrity in adopting Harlem terminology, as 'booty'.

I quote from a daily newspaper's description this week of a new-style folk-festival in Ewarton.
"One such exciting showdown took place when Oscar B asked women with 'extended' bums to come on stage. The women were only too happy to do so, and to the chant of "make the bumper jump"...each, regardless of size, rolled and shook with almost dizzying speed.

The victor...was asked to match skills with the 'Winer Boy' himself...but.... The vibes master...appeared on stage, ready to engage in some of her sizeable goodies. Positioning himself behind her, Jerry D barely moved his waist though as his willing partner worked in front....."

To return to "Lena", whatever happened, I would quite like to have known whether Lena clobbered Mr EB Knight, for whom she was hired to care after he broke his leg, or rather blew holes in him with the shotgun after the first "He Raped Me!" Couldn't have been, since she seems to have taken the $10 bill and the bottle of hootch that he left for her compensation (presumably the attack/s came after he had recovered from the broken leg!). Was it then a situation that went on for some time?

Was there no alternative way out for Lena? And what made her finally blow?
Makeda Solomon (Lena) does well to even begin to put together the gaps in the story and Lena's psyche. She plays the character with restraint mercifully. One can imagine the carry-on some other actresses might have employed.

I would guess also that a majority of the audience would support abolition of capital punishment but, in signing the petition as requested, would they not also be saying "death's okay for the rapist"? Punish him capitally!
Rape is an abominable crime, but are we not back in gender-land with "Lena"?

DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN

If Lena was an underdog, the other side of the gender thing as it is today explodes hilariously in Diary of a Mad Black Woman (Palace Amusement circuit).

An eminent black lawyer honoured at a testimonial dinner for his eminence in the profession, paying tribute to his lovely wife for 18 years of love and support, drives her home to their house that looks like a national monument. The gander opens the car door and tells her to git.

Dolly house mash up. Turns out the guy really wants to install his somewhat tough, brazen mistress (and mother of his kids) in the monument ---gosh, he doesn't have much taste! -- and that wifie had signed a marriage contract entitling her to nothing should the marriage end.

The doll-like, pampered, gentle one is out on her ear without a cent. The fact that the driver of the moving-van that husband provides to transport her things wherever, turns out to be Shemar Moore from that tedious soap opera we can't avoid on TV, wearing his hair curled in fat cane-rows like a helmet (a style we've already seen spread to the strips of Kingston and St Andrew - such is the power of the media), indicates that baby doll's future may not be a truly unhappy one. Would one normally have wasted much time on this? No, except for one very good reason, and that is Mr Tyler Perry.

I have to confess I must have been asleep like Rip Van Winkle this many a month for I don't know the name at all, but he must have been out there doing great things.

Here he bursts on to the screen as actor (several roles), writer, director and producer, like Venus full-blown from the wave. Actually, he ain't no Venus but he's as full-blown as you can hope for.

Apart from the rollicking nature of the script which revels in discomfiting the bourgeoisie, one of Mr Perry's impersonations is a rip-roaring, no holds barred portrayal of the aggrieved wife's grandmother, Medea. Big and bosom mislaid in the folds of her size 26 frock, she rules her own household with a pistol present in her handbag at all times.

One of the biggest of the many laugh sequences is her determination to divide the estranged spouses' property in half---with a buzz-saw! Lena should have had a friend like this!

The people in Finding Neverland (Palace Amusement) would have had the vapours in the unlikely event they encountered Medea.

It is such a switch to this quiet, visually beautiful piece set in post-Edwardian Britain, elegant gowns, housemaids, butlers and nannies and all, about the playwright JM Barrie and his attachment to the Llewellyn-Davies family and particularly the boy who has been regarded ever since as the model for "Peter Pan", that wonderful play for children with its flying heroes and heroines, fairies and pirates; Peter Pan, the boy who would never grow old and never has.

The Peter Pan royalties still support the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London as Barrie's will decreed.

The scenario slips easily from the representational into the scenes of the imagination and is mounted with exquisite taste. Johnny Depp behaves convincingly as a Brit in his portrayal of Barrie and well he might, leading a cast of seasoned British players.

It is also a pleasure to see Julie Christie, coming back more frequently recently in films and growing old gracefully. As Peter Pan's grandmother, she wins respect in an unsympathetic role. It's a long way from Darling, Billy Liar and Doctor Zhivago.

HOTEL RWANDA

If it's still around, all those who wallow in nonsense about Africa (undefined) as Shangri-La and moan about what the British did to us poor Caribbean colonials, should take a look at Hotel Rwanda (Palace Amusement), one of the most powerful films I've seen in many a month.

How well we recognise the points the film makes quickly and subtly, the bribery required to get things done be it cash or alcohol (and the importance of the label), tension between sections of the post-colonial community, the surface effect of the UN presence in a country engaged in as close to genocide as you can get, and the reality that the situation is of minimal importance to the outside world. Journalists and peace-keepers make this point strongly, the TV news pictures that switch from catastrophe to catastrophe while the viewer overseas goes on happily munching his dinner.

I don't think anyone here would realise the enormity of the conflict in Rwanda. Yes, black killing black, the carnage running into millions. See the film and your eyes may open. We ourselves may have been saved such a situation for two reasons.

The British, with whatever faults, left some civil structure and some concepts of probity (sadly breaking down now perhaps). With the Diaspora, the tight tribal system had broken up and we could pretend to be 'out of many one people'. Despite politicians' attempts to herd us back into warring tribes.

The film tells us that the Belgians, once the colonial power, championed the Tutsi tribe over the Hutu. When the Belgians left, the Hutu were ready for revenge and proceeded to destroy systematically as many Tutsi as they could lay their hands on. The consequences are played out in a true story by the Hutu who ran the Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali whose wife was a Tutsi.

It all happens at a time when help from abroad is drying up, the UN is withdrawing its protection gradually and massacre seems inevitable. Don Cheadle gives an excellent performance without hysterics as the man who finds himself protector of those about to be eliminated and must thread his way towards escape.

One sequence at least will remain in my memory. When the group finally gets exit permits and, setting off in motorised transport, is told the river road is clear, it travels in the darkness on road surfaces bumpier and bumpier.

When it stops to investigate, it is to find to its horror and ours that the obstruction is the corpses gunned down across the highway.

HOOP DANCE

I finally found my way to UTech on Tuesday where Theodore Varqa Anderson, an expert in Native American hoop dance was to appear between 1:00 and 5:00 pm. Arriving at 3.30 pm, I had, of course, missed the performance but had a quick chat with the performer who was still there.

The occasion was a church fair promoting religious communities such as the Baha'i Faith. Anderson, quite admirably, was spending his Spring Break not tearing up Margarita's, but, under the Baha'i auspices, touring communities in Jamaica doing his hoop dancing.

His theme with his 30 red, white, yellow and black hoops is to promote unity and understanding between people of all shades and back-grounds. He tells a story in the 45 minutes or so that the dance lasts but wonders if, with our motto - Out of many..." we aren't already there. I told him I thought there was still room for his ministry.

I discovered that, although the 17 year-old was born in Canada and is at school there, he was brought up in Rwanda so, naturally, I talked to him about the film. He assures me that it does not lie and is successful in conveying the tragic situation in that country.

THE YOUNG GENERATION

My goodness, we're almost at the end and I did want to bring to your attention other events. The Young Generation (Mutual Gallery) is an annual presentation in which this gallery introduces new and perhaps not so new artists and craftsmen to the public. This year's collection is a lively one and varied. Particularly interesting is the sign of minds awakening.

Young artists like Oneika Russell will work through a theme in several aspects. In her case, she is held by the thought of a Jamaican Aunt Jemima doll interacting in various roles with ladies of a bygone era, mainly Edwardian; at their beck and call but once the ladies are toppled, we see that they have been cut-out figures mounted on a backing in order to stand up on their own.

There are several groups of photographs ---Stacy Ann Hyde has developed a personality round inanimate things which we mightn't look too closely at in normal life. Krishna Desai seems captivated by fish. Robert Patmore shows some pieces of jewellery using silver and cow horn, silver, bronze and gold and silver and bronze. Keisha Castello uses crushed moths as a recurrent theme in a series Mutilated Memory. Exhibition closes April 15.

You can have some amount of fun at the Wonderland Gallery (Red Bones Cafe) where work by Wayne Rodney, Shirley Rodney & Jacquelyne Hussey is on show. You can try to figure out what Wayne's symbolism means executed in his very, very naive style.

Shirley offers some soothing and very quiet pastels of floral still life and softly lit landscapes. Jacquelyne does what I think the Victorians used to call bric-a-brac: small pieces that could start from anything Roses Forever, a small cluster of buds behind glass, Snake Across something made from plastics.

At the Bolivar Gallery (1d Grove Rd) Bernard Hoyes shows another series of his vividly coloured, flatly painted, dancing designs inspired to a great extent by pocomania movement and activity. They're at their best as prints and could be very cheerful in a small flat or other restricted space.

(c)Norman Rae 2005

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