Forty years ago, writer, educator and performing artist Owen “Blakka” Ellis stepped out into the working world having completed his course of study at the School of Drama at the Cultural Training Centre, now the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.

Armed with a wealth of knowledge he was eager to share, Ellis embarked on a successful career as an actor, but has poured a lot of his time, talent and attention into using theatre for community development, something he learned a lot about during his years at the School of Drama.

While he cannot pinpoint a defining moment which led to his decision to enrol at the School of Drama, Ellis shared that he had always had an interest in acting and the theatre so it wasn’t a stretch to imagining himself at the institution.

“It was a continuous exploration of self, art and the discovery of self,” Ellis told the Jamaica Observer in describing his years at drama school. “Getting there was really part of my evolution. I was always involved in the drama club in high school. I really wanted to become a lawyer but I knew my family could not afford law school. In 1977 while at Excelsior High I won best actor in the Secondary School’s Drama Festival — the year before Bello (Winston Bell) won the same award for Camperdown — it was then that I said, ‘Wow, this looks like something that I could do.’”

Ellis still gets excited when he speaks of his drama student years. The political and cultural climate of 1970s Jamaica would have a profound impact on what was happening at the school and informed the way the graduates of the period saw themselves and the work they had to do.

“These were wonderful years. At that time we saw ourselves and multi-disciplinary cultural activists. We had a tripartite programme for the Diploma in Theatre Arts and Education. Unlike like today where there is specialisatio, we equipped with the skills necessary to work in theatre as an actor or director, teach theatre arts or use our art of social intervention.”

“In addition to the programme there were the people at drama school. My seniors included [dub poet] Oku Onura, [poet] Mikey Smith and [theatre practitioner] Kenny Salmon. There was also a strong representation of other Caribbean nationals, so this resulted in a strong arts advocacy movement as we all carved out a sense of Caribbean cultural identity. There were people like Earl Warner from Barbados, Ray Gongara, Eugene Williams from Guyana. Then we had the most fantastic team of lecturers and mentors. These included Raul Gibbon, Dennis Scott — the greatest actor, writer and director, and Honor Ford Smith. All this really created a great space for us as students,” Ellis recalled.

Two moments from these days at the School of Drama are forever etched in Ellis’ consciousness and continue to inform the work he does.

“Honor Ford Smith taught a course — Improvisation and Play Making. One morning she came to class with a bundle of black, plastic garbage bags and instructed us to use them to make costumes. The class then loaded into the back of her Mazda pick up and went to the [Simon] Bolivar statue at Heroes’ Circle. We were then instructed to sing, act and dance and when the community came out to watch and be entertained we were told to begin a conversation about the improvements they wanted to see in their community. This taught me how to engage an audience and showed that theatre did not just belong in a classroom or on the stage, this was living theatre. There was Caribbean Theatre Lab taught by Jean Small which looked at how traditional folk forms can be used to inform experiments on Caribbean theatre. Here we used things like Rastafari, and folk songs to create a Caribbean theatre vocabulary,” said Ellis.

These outside-the-box ideas set the tone for some of the work in theatre for development that Ellis has gone on to do, of which he’s really proud.

Upon graduation he joined the Graduate Theatre Company which continued the social intervention through theatre to which they had been introduced. One of the projects saw the company touring schools and, with the use of drama to understand their literature texts. He later teamed with Winston Bell and Sheila Graham to establish the Area Youth Foundation which used these theories and techniques to achieve its mandate of helping young people transform their lives.

“Although there are still pocket of this being done, it is still not enough. We were not the first. Sistren was doing it for years to assist women in certain communities. But today there is a great need to reach certain groups and communities and this is a viable means. Just look at Omaall Wright, also known as Majah Bless. he came through the Area Youth Foundation and is now a trained drama educator, using the techniques he was taught to help other who are just like he was. That’s the positive cycle we want to continue,” he noted.

As for the future, Ellis, who is currently the acting head of the Department of Arts Management at the Edna Manley College, says he just wants to pay it forward.

“My generation stood on the shoulders of some great persons. It is my hope that I will have done enough that when it is time to pass on the baton to the next generation they will be able to take it and run wid it,” Ellis noted.