A group calling itself Friends of Louis Marriott have put on the table plans to stage a year-long celebration in recognition of the 75th birthday of one of the oldest living practitioners of the over 300-year-old Jamaica theatrical history. Marriott will be celebrating this milestone on Saturday May 22, 2010.

Chairperson of the group which is planning the series of events is Alvin Campbell, who is also cousin to Marriott.

“Louis has … defacto … become the dean of Jamaican theatre,” Campbell asserted. “He is the only surviving regular practitioner of theatre arts. You have Lloyd Reckord but Lloyd Reckord hasn’t been doing theatre recently. Lloyd would be in front of Louis if he was active. But with the passing of people like Charles Hyatt and Trevor Rhone, we are losing some of our theatre pioneers,” noted Campbell whose main role in the theatre is stage management.

“Louis has … defacto … become the dean of Jamaican theatre,” Campbell asserted. “He is the only surviving regular practitioner of theatre arts. You have Lloyd Reckord but Lloyd Reckord hasn’t been doing theatre recently. Lloyd would be in front of Louis if he was active. But with the passing of people like Charles Hyatt and Trevor Rhone, we are losing some of our theatre pioneers,” noted Campbell whose main role in the theatre is stage management.

“Of course,” he goes on, “we have lost many others like Ms Lou etc. So Louis thought that he should mark his 75th anniversary this year by doing something special. He hasn’t done any theatre…not in terms of doing a play or a review for quite a little while now,” explained Campbell.

The main highlights of the celebration will be the re-staging of some of the distinguished playwright/director’s best known works, chief among which are his one-man play of 25 years ago titled Over The Years and Bedward, the first play he produced in 1960.

Over The Years will kick off the year-long celebration on May 19, at the Theatre Place on Haining Road. Premiered as an lunch-hour concert in November of 1985, the response from an overflowing audience was described as rapturous.

“Few other persons in Jamaica, if any, have written plays, songs, poems, short stories and prose at the professional level as Marriott,” said popular theatre reviewer Lloyd Reckord at the time. “His sense of timing, dramatic portrayal of themes and wide-ranging acting abilities left audiences enthralled,” the review concluded.

And what does the man himself have to say about what is shaping up to be probably richest accolade to date. “I feel kind of special, it’s a big thing for me,” Louis Marriott told the Sunday Observer. “It has been a long time … a long haul. I’ve been on the stage from age two, so I’ve gone over 70 years in the theatre,” he added.

On reflection of one of his famous works, the playwright who is also celebrating his 50th anniversary as producer, said, “Over The Years was the first ‘one-man-show’ (there was another one Bellas Gate Boy by the late Trevor Rhone), but mine was the first one in which the actor was also the author of all the material.”

There are also plans to update Marriott’s 1996 book, Who’s Who and What’s What in Jamaican Arts and Entertainment “…dedicated to the memory of those icons of Jamaican art and entertainment who went before — to the likes of painters John Dunkley, Ralph Campbell, Karl Parboosingh; sculptors Edna Manley and Alvin Marriott; musicians Granville Campbell, Don Drummond and Bob Marley; writers Claude McKay, Vic Reid and Roger Mais; dance artistes May Soohih and Ivy Baxter; dramatic artistes Eric Cupidon and Ranny Williams; Buskers Slim and Sam; and catalysts Vere Johns, Greta Bourke Fowler and the one who promoted not only concerts but also germinal ideas, the Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey,” the introduction to the book reads in part.