Audrey One of the Caribbean’s finest actresses

“She is a dancehall queen for life, gonna explode like dynamite…” Marcia.

That was the character that Audrey Reid played in the popular local movie Dancehall Queen.

Yes, it was five years ago but while some people may not remember the character’s name they still call her ‘dancehall queen’.

“It is like the film came out last week,” says Reid. “People still see me and call me that. As soon as I finished Dancehall Queen I left for London where I was scheduled to work. I live in Jamaica but there is more work in England for me.”

So Reid spends about eight months a year abroad, mostly in England, and four in Jamaica. In London she performs mainly with Blue Mountain Theatre Company, and has appeared in plays, such as ‘Confessions of a Black Woman’, ‘Wicked Bitches’ and ‘Irie Neighbours.’

But while London is good for Reid professionally, it places great stress on her family life and demands substantial juggling.

After all, she is a mother of three — the oldest of was 17 when Reid headed for England. But all things considered, children and mother have not done badly.

And Reid is happy and thankful for this. It shines through, for instance, in the pride she displays over 11 year-old Lejah Mai’s passing of her GSAT exams to enter high school.

“I feel so proud — it is like I had done it myself,” Reid says, recalling the many nights when she, while in London, and daughter in Kingston, and together they collaborated on Lejah Mai’s homework.

“The phonebills were enormous but it was worth it,” says Reid.

She was glad to make it back for Lejah Mai’s graduation from high school.

Reid’s eldest child, 22-year-old Adonica — everyone calls her Marie — recently moved to London. For the time being, Lejah Mai and eighteen month-old son, Anmer, remain in Jamaica.

During the interview, Reid was clearly consumed about back-to-school preparations. You could hardly get another subject in edge ways. She rattled on excitedly about Lejah Mai’s school uniforms. She had recently given those out to the dressmakers. To be collected in a couple of days. The books were being bought.

But perhaps the conversation was really about parenting and the need to pack in as much of it as possible while she is in Jamaica. In a way it is a reflection of the roving performer. Or, its just any example of a migrant parent balancing the needs of family and the economic realities. In that sense there is a direct link between the parents who took the Wind Rush and those who today head for Miami, New York, and Washington and other cities.

Clearly, though, Reid manages the juggling better than most.

“Mothering is first and foremost for me,” she says. “I don’t let this theatre thing get on top of my head or take over my life.”

She will be here to see Lejah Mai settled in her new school before she heads back to London in October. And there is support. Leroy. The father of the kids.

“Their dad is fabulous,” Reid says. “He puts so much into, that. Without the support, I dont know how I would manage.”

There is a laugh at this point. Reid calls her children ‘theatre kids’. Sometimes, when they are off from school they travel with her. In fact, the youngest has had quite a time behind the curtains.

“When my son was younger I had to be breastfeeding him whenever I got a break,” Reid says. “My friends would help out and keep him while I was on stage. Everyone takes care of them — they are everybody’s babies — theatre kids.”

For the next few weeks until October she will be juggling the responsibilities of motherhood with rehearsals as she is preparing for a musical in London.

Popular local actor and comedian Oliver Samuels will also be part of the cast. Reid credits Samuels with being one of the major influences in her professional development.

“Oliver has taught me a lot — when he is teaching or as a teacher that is when you see the serious side of him,” she says.

It was Samuels, she says, that encouraged her to take up overseas offers after she had spent about two years working and touring with his group, Oliver and Friends.

‘I had gotten an offer from Blue Mountain Productions to perform in a play but I was not sure if I should go or continue performing with Oliver’s group. It was through my tours with Oliver that these other people noticed me anyway. So I discussed it with him and he said go for it,” she recalls.

And that she did.

So much so that she was described by the UK-based paper, Leisure time, as “Jamaica’s hottest export.’ Reid’s popularity soared in 1998 after the release of Dancehall Queen, the biggest movie to come out of Jamaica since the 1970’s hit,

The Harder they come. She later starred in another popular movie, Third World Cop.

But between and after both movies, she was still doing plays in London.

Her performances in London also won her the respect of the English tabloid, The Voice, who in a two paged article two years ago described her as, ‘the queen of the ghetto who transcended her humble roots to become one of the Caribbean’s finest actresses.’

There were also several other accolades.

In December 1998 she was voted one of Jamaica’s top female achievers by our very own All Woman. In 1999 she got Jamaica’s Actor Boy Award for her role in ‘When the Cats Away.’ Shortly after, she received the Marcus Garvey Award for best Caribbean actress.

It certainly is a long way for the poor girl from Franklyn Town in Kingston.

“I was born and raised in Franklyn Town. I grew up knowing it as a ghetto — the police was there and the crime,” she says. “I grew up in a tenement yard on Somerset Avenue — there was one toilet and everyone in the yard use that toilet. This week one group would clean it and next week another group.

“I am a product of the ghetto and I have no shame about that because I look where I am at now,” she says. Part of that pride comes from what her mother used to tell her as a child.

“My mother was very strict and disciplined. She instilled certain values in me so that although we were poor we had pride,” she said, referring to her family of six brothers and her single parent mom, Gloria May Hibbert or Goya, as she was affectionately called.

“Mom would say that if we were hungry no one would have to know. We did not go begging. She always said it is not where you are from but where you are going,” says Reid. She recalls days spent in the tenement yard playing with her brothers and her mom. With no money to go to movies and so on, they learnt to improvise and create their own dramas.

“My mother — she was a character, but the only thing was that she was not on stage. We used to have concerts in the yard; that is where I first started learning how to act,” she recalls. Her mother died in 1998 — the same time Dancehall Queen was released. “She was a single parent. She would do her days work and come home to take care of us. We had no father.’

Reid admits that growing up, her brothers were ‘a little rowdy’ and one especially would often get into fights. Eventually he ended up in jail.

“I have also experienced going to the General Penitentiary to look for my brother there and even Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) when he had gotten shot,” she says. While that brother went on to be a productive citizen she lost her youngest sibling by violent means.

While reflecting she tells All Woman that the popular practice of hanging out on the corner in the ghetto is a dangerous thing.

“I see hanging out on the corner with guys as leading to two roads: either the morgue or prison,” she says.

“My brothers have matured now and they are big people, abroad — that life is behind them but those experiences have made me stronger,” she says.

Those experiences have also added to her acting skills.

“My upbringing helps me to form different characters — if I play the good, the bad or the ugly, I can usually think of someone in Franklyn Town to model it after,” she says.

Reid’s character has been strengthened not only by dealing with her brothers’ situations but also by triumphing over teen pregnancy.

“It was rough on me but even tougher on my mother. She was strict — someone you would fear and when she found out that I was pregnant, it was like she just melted,” Reid recalls of her pregnancy in grade nine. “I was in denial until seven months into my pregnancy. Sometimes I knew I was pregnant and other times I did not know.”

“People would say that that was it for me. But I had my dreams and I worked towards it. My mom was supportive. I had been a bright student and participated in school but then lightning struck ú this baby came.”

As soon as she had the baby though, she went back to school. Her mother wanted her to do nursing but she had her heart set on drama and soon she was getting parts from various production companies, including Ed-Bim Productions, Ralph Holness and Ginger Knight.

Her roles throughout her acting career here been varied and some of the more outstanding ones still make her laugh heartily.

“Recently I did one of Shakespeare’s plays ú King Lear. In it I was one of his daughters, Gigi, the one who liked to dance. I had to do a pole dance (where you climb up on the pole and perform your dance moves.) Let me tell you it was not easy.”

“The first time I did it I had to get the next day off. I spent it in bed — pain-up. I thought I was crippled.”

But with some coaching from dancers from London’s West End she was able to master the dance.

“The trick is to put some gin on your skin so you can stay on the pole and do your thing,” she says.

In Dancehall Queen, she also done a lot of dancing even though some of the footage was not used.

“There was a scene where I was dancing on my head-top ú but they took that out. They wanted the mother-figure to have a more responsible image. I could understand their point but I was disappointed because I put so much effort in it ú I could have broken my neck dancing on my head-top,” she says, laughing.

“But for Dancehall Queen, one of the hardest scenes for me was when I had to push the handcart on the road. The cart was heavy because it had all the drinks and so on. So mi neck stiff up after mi done push it and mi haffi get massage after that,” she says in her dry, witty style.

Her wit is something that others like Oliver Samuels find remarkable about her.

“She is one of the few persons who can really make me laugh. She is fun to be with ú always the life of the party,” says Samuels, who has known Reid for over twenty years. “She is very energetic ú sometimes too energetic but I suppose that’s youth. She has a great personality and is a very talented actress.”

Both Samuels and Reid are doing research for their upcoming production in London. The assignment ú to learn the latest dance moves.

“For the musical we have to know dances like ‘Signal the plane’ and ‘Pon de River, pon de bank,” Reid says.