Dazzling the nation for decades… This week’s ‘Special Person’ is cultural icon Daphne Rogers

Feb 07, 2010 News

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“I have gained great maturity; I have had rich experiences in dealing with people. It has given me quality of life. Our culture is what makes us who we are as a people and I am proud to have done my part.”

By Neil Marks

Providence or not, Daphne Rogers was born the year the world welcomed the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, a product of ingenious creativity.
She is now 81 years old, but her vigour and agility betray her age, and her inborn creative streak has not waned with the passage of time. She has been a lady on the move as far as she can remember and is rightly revered as special, a cultural icon, a woman who dazzled the nation for years, silently.
Seated in the mid-morning cool under her house in Cross Street, Werk-en-Rust, Daphne Rogers opens up about a life lived to the fullest – a life immersed in the evolution of the Guyanese identity. The early years Daphne Rogers was born on September 29th, 1928 to parents Augustus and Estelle Rogers in Charlestown, Georgetown. Her mother served as a housewife who perfected the art of improvising and finding a way out of challenging situations. Estelle Rogers did more however.
“She made our clothes and saw to it that we would grow up straight,” she says of her mother. ‘We’ included Daphne and her brother Oswald, who now lives with his family in Holland.
Her father Augustus Rogers worked the gold and diamond mines of the vast interior to provide food on the table.
“We were not rich, but we were happy,” Ms. Rogers remembers of her days as a child.
She attended the St. Phillips Anglican School and later Washington High School in Charlotte Street. Those days, though, were filled with much more than schoolwork.
Daphne’s schedule included a programme of Bible study and sewing classes. During school days, she also attended school to learn typewriting, something every girl in those years seemed to have done.
But school days were also filled with competitive sports. Daphne was caught in the middle, and competed in athletics such as the 100-yard sprint. Later, she would join a school committee organising sporting activities.
At age 17, Daphne Rogers taught her first school class and was quickly appointed at the Broad Street Government School. She later went on to serve for 17 years as a teacher at the Dolphin Government School. She ended her stint there in 1959 and was seconded to the Government Teachers’ Training College to develop her skills as an Arts and Craft teacher.
In between all of that, she was also an active member of the Young Women’s Christian Association, and remembers vividly dong such things as teaching the children of Albouystown proper social behaviour.

‘Guyana Spectacular’
The Guyana Festival of 1962 featured “Guyana Spectacular,” a circus presentation introducing elaborate Papier-mâché (French for ‘chewed-up paper’ due to its appearance) sculptures together with feather craft and wire bending frames to display pages from the Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway hits.
These were essential skills to be mastered if costuming carnivalling was to grow. Daphne Rogers was instrumental in organising several workshops where these skills were shared with upcoming costume designers and producers.
In 1969, she received a scholarship to attend a university in Calgary, Canada, where she was also schooled in Arts and Craft. 1970, the year the country gained Republic status passed her in the cold, but she returned for the ground-breaking Caribbean Festival of Arts in 1972 which saw the participation of 1000-plus artistes from over 30 Caribbean and South American countries, giving expression to their creativity in music, dance, drama, painting, sculpture, folk art, photography and literature.
The vision of then Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, who is most directly credited with the emergence and success of this Caribbean event, was to have a “Caribbean Arts Festival, featuring Guyanese and Caribbean artists whose work in poetry, painting and sculpture project our dreams and visions and help us to foster and develop a Caribbean personality”.
He envisaged the hosting of the festival as an ongoing event in different Caribbean territories and it has happened. And Daphne Rogers was there all along.
How come? After returning from Canada, she was seconded to the Department of Culture and when American Lavinia Williams came to Guyana with a Haitian Dance Group, she helped set up the National Dance Company.
Daphne immediately stepped into the design shop, churning out costumes upon costumes. She had to. Guyana was on show and ‘ours was the glory” had to be spectacular. Once the costumes were made, she made sure they looked good, whether it was decorating then with sequins, making flowers for the hair, or putting together other trimmings.
In other words, she was the woman who made everything dazzle.
In 1976, a contingent from the Chronicle Atlantic Steel Orchestra, including musicians and dancers from the National School of Dance went on three-month tour of Guyana’s giant South American neighbour Brazil, visiting such cities as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Ms. Rogers accompanied them.
At that time, she had assumed duties as Administrator of the National School of Dance and the National Dance Company after Geraldo Lastra returned to Cuba.
She was also directly responsible for co-coordinating the dance teachers training programme until she assumed duties as administrator of the National Cultural Centre several years later.
Her duties involved travelling way up to the Corentyne to buy “suitable” material for making costumes. Poor quality material was just not used.
At the Department of Culture, she was among the group that also started the children’s costume competition. “I am proud to know that we left a legacy that is just as good and in some cases even better,” she says in retrospect.
Of course, she said, a lot of help came. The Ministry of Youth got the children involved and workshops were conducted with teachers. Designers of the float parades also worked with the teachers on colours and other forms of selection to make sure their designs were good enough for the road.
“I am very proud of what we did,” she says. In the early days the practice sessions were held at the National Park, but when the heat came on, things had to change.
“Children were dancing and crying; it wasn’t fun anymore,” she recalls. The venue was changed to the indoor facilities of what is now the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall.
In those times, the work was started to diversify Mashramani, taking activities to all parts of the country, and the very best were selected to come to Georgetown to take part in the national competition.
Ms. Rogers also played an integral role in the heyday of the Theatre Guild, and, no surprise, she was in charge of costumes. Today, one of the rooms at the renovated Playhouse in Kingston has been named in her honour.
Later on, she served as the Administrative Manager of the National Cultural Centre and held on to that position for 17 years. She saw how theatre flourished and she acknowledges that theatre is not as “prolific” as in the days when she served.
During her time, she also encouraged schools to hold graduation ceremonies so the children could feel proud leaving school.
“I felt that children did not know how to display,” she said. And so graduation at the National Cultural Centre helped them to showcase whatever talents they had.
In the turmoil of the post-independence period, theatre provided a peaceful escape.
All of her experiences have helped Daphne Rogers to understand what culture really is.
“Taking part in these (cultural) activities helps us to remember who we are as a people. You know we would sit and eat Chowmein and don’t say we’re eating Chinese food; or we might be eating Pepperpot and we don’t say we are eating Amerindian food. Some things just become part of us, and we identify with it,” she says.
Daphne Rogers has benefitted from those experiences in no small way. She has travelled the length and breadth of Guyana helping Guyanese to celebrate symbols of nationhood and she has also travelled the Caribbean and other parts of the world showcasing the Guyanese identity.
Ms. Rogers retired in the year 2000, but that doesn’t mean she has stopped working. She today serves as the National Coordinator for the Royal School of Music and this year you might see her again helping to revive the Guyana Music Festival.
She also gives her advice willingly, but feels the time has passed by for her, and younger ones should become more involved in cultural activities, in whatever way they are skilled.
“I have gained great maturity; I have had rich experiences in dealing with people. It has given me quality of life. Our culture is what makes us who we are as a people and I am proud to have done my part.”

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