Dismal NCC conditions force postponement of ‘Til Ah Find Ah Place 3’

Jul 12, 2026 News

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…NCC targets October closure for upgrades, ahead of CARIFESTA 2027

(Kaieteur News) – Ongoing structural decay, failing technical systems, and an unpredictable centralised booking policy at the National Cultural Centre (NCC) have forced veteran playwright, director, and school administrator Ronald Hollingsworth to postpone his highly anticipated production, “Til Ah Find Ah Place 3”.

The final catalyst for the postponement came when Hollingsworth personally attended a staging of the comedy ‘Nothing to Laugh About’ at the Homestretch Avenue facility. He described the auditorium conditions as intolerable and said he was unable to return to his seat after intermission.

“It was terrible,” Hollingsworth said. “I was there and I couldn’t go back in after the intermission. I was dripping wet. It was too hot for me. That’s when I made the decision. I went outside and told Sharon Cadogan, who bought tickets for us to go, ‘Look, I can’t stay in here. It’s just too hot.'”

Beyond patron discomfort, Hollingsworth pointed to acoustic failures that undermined the performance itself. With the sound system faltering, actors were forced to shout over ambient noise just to be heard.

“There’s problems. They’re yelling just to get by,” he said. “If I can’t sit in the Cultural Centre and watch a comedy, I don’t think I could sit in the Cultural Centre and watch a drama. Til Ah Find Ah Place has so much, it’s got to be more nuanced than that, especially with so many sound cues and lighting cues. It’s a very dramatic play. If I can’t sit through it, I don’t want anybody to be subjected to that.”

Those concerns were echoed the following Monday during a scheduled rehearsal. Several cast members including popular local actors Michael Ignatius and Mark Kazim, roughly half of whom were also performing in Nothing to Laugh About, described the physical toll of the venue’s conditions, saying their voices were giving out from constant yelling. They reported that the heat and the strain of projecting over the faulty sound system caused subtler, nuanced moments to fall flat, effectively reducing performances to a “yelling match.” Given that “Til Ah Find Ah Place” relies on technically demanding, atmospheric scenes including a nighttime cemetery sequence where vocal clarity is essential, the cast ultimately supported postponing the show rather than compromise it.

Kaieteur News reported in June that the NCC is set to undergo restoration and modernisation this year, following the completion of its design and procurement phases. That update came from Minister within the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, Steven Jacobs, in an interview with the Department of Public Information. Efforts to reach Minister Jacobs for comment on this story were unsuccessful.

Financial losses and “unserious” ministerial disregard

Hollingsworth, who resides overseas and travels to Guyana specifically to coordinate and stage his annual productions, voiced deep frustration with the ministry’s booking arrangements, which he characterised as unbusinesslike. Independent producers, he said, must now wait on direct scheduling authorisation from the minister himself, rather than coordinating with the facility’s management.

The production team’s original preferred date was already held by another theater practitioner and was denied. The ministry then allocated July 26 as the next available option, which Sharon Cadogan-Taylor accepted on the company’s behalf, despite it conflicting with Hollingsworth’s obligations as a school principal overseas, whose academic term reopens July 20. Weeks later, the ministry abruptly moved the date forward to July 19, citing a scheduling conflict with a ministerial event on July 25. The change upended the company’s marketing timeline, travel bookings, and financial planning.

“When you commit to something, now we got to start planning our ads, doing flyers, and all that kind of stuff,” Hollingsworth said. “I’m going to plan a flight so I could get a good flight, and then you change the date on me just like that, without even considering that it’s an investment I’m making. It’s so unserious of them to presume that. They don’t see it as a business. And if they see it, then why the disregard?” He added that independent producers absorb these costs with no recourse: “Nobody’s going to pay you back for it. At least I don’t know if there was even an attempt to do anything like that.”

Budget assurances, repairs, and demolition rumors

Hollingsworth told Kaieteur News he recently held a productive bilateral meeting with Director of Culture Tamika Boatswain, though he remains cautiously optimistic about the timeline she presented.

Boatswain said the NCC would close temporarily for extensive infrastructure work, targeting an October completion, and guaranteed that “Til Ah Find Ah Place” would receive the first available booking once the venue reopens. Planned repairs include fixing a structural wall, overhauling the sound and lighting systems, and installing new air conditioning units, which have already arrived in the country and are awaiting installation. She said hundreds of millions of dollars have been allocated to restore the facility to its former prominence.

Boatswain also confirmed that Guyana is slated to host CARIFESTA next year, making the NCC’s physical readiness an infrastructural priority for the state. To meet that deadline, she urged local theater practitioners to form a unified representative body to submit structural proposals and provide direct guidance to ministerial leadership.

Degradation of the arts and the collapse of drama enrollment

The NCC’s deterioration comes even as the state promotes growth in the “Orange Economy” — the creative and cultural industries. Hollingsworth rejected that narrative, saying his observations over the past decade point to steady decline rather than growth in Guyana’s theater sector.

“I’m not seeing any development. For me, the theater, that’s my domain, I don’t see anything. I’ve just seen a degradation of the arts in terms of theater. I haven’t seen growth,” he said.

He pointed to a shrinking pool of theatrical talent, noting that production companies are forced to rely repeatedly on the same core actors because new performers aren’t being cultivated. He traced the problem to plummeting enrollment at the National School of Theatre Arts and Drama, which he attributed to passive administrative leadership and a lack of structured recruitment.

“They don’t understand that you don’t just open a drama school and feel like people are going to walk in the door,” he said. “While the Unit of Allied Arts has all this dramatic poetry and you can write all of that at the CXC level, the school has got to do recruitment. They’re just waiting for people to come.” He recommended that school leadership launch active recruitment drives every January, visiting high schools, working with drama teachers to identify students with artistic potential, conducting interviews, and building dedicated scholarship pipelines.

A history of centralised gatekeeping: from the 1990s to 2020

The current dispute over venue access reflects a long-running tension between the state and the arts in Guyana — a theme Hollingsworth documents extensively in Chapter 32 of his book, The Reckoning: A Life Between Curtain and Classroom, titled “The Keys to the Culture: Gatekeepers, Ministers, and the Battle for a Stage.”

Under Minister of Culture Gail Teixeira in the late 1990s, the administration moved away from a decentralised scheduling system that had historically given diverse local productions inclusive access to the venue. The resulting delays collapsed one of Hollingsworth’s productions, sparking public controversy that ultimately forced a direct cabinet intervention by President Janet Jagan.

Hollingsworth contrasted that era with the tenure of Dr. Frank Anthony, whom he credited with building an accessible, collaborative relationship with the theater community, engaging directly with practitioners, integrating the drama school, and regularly attending the National Drama Festivals without political interference.

Since the 2020 political transition, cultural management has shifted back toward centralization, requiring direct ministerial approval for independent NCC bookings. Under the current framework, full financial backing goes only to productions staging works from a pre-approved list of award-winning scripts. While Hollingsworth acknowledges this offers baseline opportunities for emerging performers, he says it creates an unpredictable environment for independent creators producing original, contemporary work and notes that even state-curated productions offering free tickets see inconsistent attendance. “A government can fund a stage,” he said, “but it cannot legislate authenticity or audience connection.”

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