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My Ramleela Journey – Rawle Gibbons
Growing up in Belmont, Port of Spain, all I knew of ‘Indian’ culture was its food and music. The first I loved; the other I had no particular taste for. Indian families in Belmont were either creolized or privately well-off and secluded. We all knew of the Muslim Hosay in St. James, but the life and customs of rural Indians were worlds away, filtering through unflatteringly in calypsos or the catchy tunes of Sundar Popo. My first encounter with Ramleela, therefore, was during my graduate research in the mid-70’s. In exploring the idea of a national theatre, I contested the thesis that a ‘national’ theatre could or should be based solely on Carnival. As popular and evidently theatrical as Carnival was, there were many other performative modes in multi-cultural Trinidad and Tobago that competed for inclusion in any such construct. At a time when my only faith was theatre, I was deeply drawn to the idea that, in the middle of a field in the country somewhere, one could witness the sacred in performance. This first encounter happened in St. Augustine, just across the highway from UWI. There I documented 10 evenings of performances that took place through rain and shine, light and looming darkness. It would be another decade, however, before the opportunity came to actualize some of what I’d written. As founding Director of UWI’s then Creative Arts Centre, I introduced Ramleela to the curriculum for the certificate and, later, undergraduate programmes in theatre. Read More
