Latest update February 24th, 2025 9:02 AM
August Wilson’s Fences to be staged countrywide
Persons in the Theatre industry have taken a bold initiative targeting students preparing for the Caribbean Examination Council examinations.
Top Cat Theatre Productions in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Education will be staging August Wilson’s FENCES, for the timely benefit of students preparing for CXC, English B paper, this May 12.
Executive Director of Top Cat Production, Godfrey Naughton, told this newspaper that by targeting forms three through five, the fifth formers first, will have a fresh impactful concept of the drama.
He added that the fourth and third form students who are currently reading the text will have a great advantage over their form five counterparts, because they will now have one whole year to work with their teachers, on the special nuances that only live performances can bring out.
Naughton stressed that this educational experience is a boon for those youths now on the threshold of adulthood, as the play takes a harsh look at the role of parents that dictate a child’s future, even from birth, as in this case.
“The pitfalls that befall the family, where parents struggle with their will of their fledgling adult, can only be filled by a positive fresh new generational thinking,” Naughton lamented.
Fences has a cast of seven players, who will engage in a Master Class involving some 10,000 students and teachers across Guyana. The cast includes Best Actress Sonia Yarde as ‘Rose’, Lynden ‘Jumbie’ Jones as ‘Gabriel’, Godfrey Naughton as ‘Troy Maxson’; Travis Chase as ‘Cory Maxson’, Gerard Gilkes as ‘Lyons’, Clement Stanford as ‘Jim Bono’; and Oceanna Hoppie as ‘Raynell’.
The first stage play is slated for the National Cultural Centre Georgetown, the Lower Corentyne Secondary, the New Amsterdam Multilateral School, the Cotton Field Secondary School Essequibo Coast and Linden from April 13 to April 24.
All shows are slated to begin at 12:00 hours and tickets cost merely four hundred dollars each ($400).
The play ‘FENCES’ was presented on Broadway during the 1986/87 season, where it won every major award, including the Tony and Pulitzer prize.
The “Tour De Force Extraordinaire” that is Troy Maxson was played by James Earl Jones.
The same role in the current remake on Broadway, is starred by film best actor Denzil Washington.
In the play, Troy Maxson is a hard drinking, hard working man in his fifties, living far too long from payday to payday. His frustrations are rooted in the success of lesser players [Baseball], who live better lives than himself.
Whether black or white, Troy is disrespectful. His paranoia causes him to shape the life of his son Cory away from everything he has been. He however, achieves the opposite effect and the boy, when he begins to mirror his father, terrifies Troy, and develops into a huge continual fight that ends in a tragic climax.
This deep seated resentment comes from Troy’s father [whom he hated] role in his life, which Troy has tried to escape all his life. The fight envelops his wife of eighteen years, Rose, who acts as a stabilising force for Troy and a unifying force for the family. Someday she will have to choose sides.
Too soon that happens when Troy brings home his illegitimate baby, only a few days old.
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