Theatre
The Banjo Man
Roderick Walcott · 1956
Synopsis
In a village in Saint Lucia, a family prepares for the feast of La Rose, one of the island's two great flower societies. Rosalie, Son Son's young bride, is to be its queen; an anthropologist, who has come with a politician to record the festival, wants to photograph her, and her husband takes offence. Estephan, the banjo player, a musician who never stays long in one place, hurts with a joke Iris, the daughter adopted by the household, shy and still unmarried.
Context
Written with the composer Charles Cadet, who wrote the music, the play is one of the two works that Roderick Walcott devoted to the flower festivals of Saint Lucia, along with Chanson Marianne, devoted to La Marguerite. It was performed at Carifesta in 1972, in Guyana, then in the Caribbean, and published in 1976 in A Time and a Season, a collection of Caribbean plays assembled by Errol Hill. The island's Catholic Church banned it for immorality and sacrilege. It is regarded as his greatest play.
Who it is for
For discovering a Saint Lucian festive tradition and the popular theatre that the Walcott brothers led on the island.
Prizes and reception
Staged at the great Caribbean festival of 1972, revived on the island in 2004; the Catholic Church had banned it.
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