Caribbean premiere for Walcott’s new play
From Guardian media
Derek Walcott’s newest play, O Starry Starry Night!, will have its Caribbean premiere in St Lucia in August at the 16th Triennial Conference of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language (ACLALS). The play originally opened at the University of Essex in England in May. The ACLALS attracts more than 350 delegates from the world of academia and related fields such as publishing, printing, and research. Previous ACLALS conferences have been held in Vancouver and Cyprus.
This year, St Lucia has been chosen from a wide field of possible host countries because of an established track record in hosting such events, and because it is the home country of Walcott—a leading English language poet, playwright and Nobel Laureate. Walcott agreed to the staging of O Starry Starry Night! in St Lucia to mark 
the event. The play re-enacts the meeting of artists Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin who spent time together in Arles, France in the late 1800s. The cast includes Wendell Manwarren, Brian Greene and Nigel Scott—all of whom have longstanding professional relationships with Walcott and his work. All three have agreed to appear in the St Lucia production now confirmed for August 8, 9 and 10, 2013. UK-based actress Martina Laird is also a cast member.
The event will be celebrated with an elegant Opening Night Champagne Gala on August 8, 2013, which will include ACLALS conference delegates, local and international media, notable patrons of arts and culture, and distinguished personalities from corporate, government, and diplomatic circles. The St Lucian premiere of O Starry Starry Night is a joint production of Landmark Events and Warwick Productions.
For more on this story go to:
http://www.guardian.co.tt/entertainment/2013-06-26/caribbean-premiere-walcott’s-new-play
See related story:
Around the Corner: World Première of Derek Walcott’s “O Starry, Starry Night!”
From Repeating Islands
Nobel Laureate Professor Derek Walcott has brought together an outstanding international cast for the world premiere of his new play—“O Starry, Starry Night!”—which looks at the turbulent relationship between Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. The play will premiere at the Lakeside Theatre at the University due to the close links with its creative team and Essex academics.
The play is set in the South of France and follows Gauguin’s visit to a troubled Van Gogh while he was living in Arles in 1888. London-based actor Martina Laird plays the prostitute Van Gogh and Gauguin fight over. A Trinidadian actor now based in London, Martina was one of the stars of the acclaimed National Theatre production Moon on a Rainbow Shawl and is well known to UK television audiences after appearing as Comfort Jones in Casualty for five years.
She travelled to St Lucia for initial rehearsals with Walcott and the rest of the cast before completing preparations at the Lakeside Theatre at the Colchester Campus this month. She said: “Working with Derek is the pinnacle for any West Indian actor. This experience is challenging and moving for so many reasons both personal and professional.” Paris-based Brian Carter-Green will play Vincent van Gogh. He said: “It is a real joy and a little bit crazy to be asked by such a great playwright to be in the premiere of his new play. It is also quite a responsibility.” Celebrated Trinidadian actor and musician Wendell Manwarren will play Gauguin and renowned Trinidadian actor Nigel Scott will play Theo Van Gogh.
This new play is the latest product of an incredibly creative period for Walcott. In 2011, he won the prestigious T S Eliot prize for his collection of poetry White Egrets. As Professor of Poetry at Essex over the past four years Walcott has developed exceptionally strong creative links with the team at the Lakeside Theatre and academics in the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies (LiFTS).
On previous visits to Essex Walcott has directed new productions of his plays Moonchild and Pantomime and the idea for the new play first came to him on his last visit to the University of Essex in 2012.
For more on this story go to:
Another related story:
Trini actors shine in O Starry Starry Night
By Simon Lee, Guardian Media
Derek Walcott’s latest play O Starry Starry Night premiered at Essex University’ Lakeside Theatre on May 3 with Trini actors Nigel Scott and Wendell Manwarren leading the cast along with UK-based compatriots Martina Laird and Brian Green.
Walcott’s writing, whether poetry or drama, has been influenced by visual art throughout his long career. He himself is a keen watercolourist and it is the artist’s eye as much as the literate writer’s lexicon, which has informed his unique imagery. So his choice of subject matter-the stormy relationship between the Post-Impressionist painters Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin–is understandable; moreso when we delve into Gauguin’s background. His mother was of Peruvian extraction and the young Paul spent five years of his early life in Lima, before returning to France. The year before the 1888 time frame of the play, Gauguin, had spent time in a hut outside St Pierre in Martinique following an abortive couple of weeks’ labour on the Panama Canal. After the nine week sojourn in Arles, southern France with van Gogh, his latter days in Polynesia were fictionalised by another Nobel Laureate, the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, in his novel The Way to Paradise.
The title of the play references van Gogh’s most famous painting, executed during his hospitalisation for the same breakdown which saw him threaten Gauguin with a razor blade and ended with him cutting off his lower ear lobe and giving it to an Arles prostitute.
Contacted towards the end of intense rehearsals, Scott and Manwarren graciously took some time out for a joint cyber interview. They pinpoint the dynamics driving the drama: “The two artists spend nine weeks at Arles at the height of their creative powers. Perhaps this was the most prolific and productive collaboration in the history of Art. It was a critical point in their careers, both were searching for new ways to express themselves via painting.”
Both Scott (who plays van Gogh’s brother Theo who acted as agent for both artists) and Manwarren (who plays Gauguin) have researched (and doubtless been instructed by the playwright himself) the two artists’ trajectories: “The two men were on a journey of discovery; Vincent travelled to the South of France to find the sun and Gauguin had been to Martinique to use the tropics as his backdrop. Their separate quests brought them to the realisation that they might contribute to each other’s development. Both were seeking their own truths through their art. When Gauguin has some early success and Vincent’s work is not selling (He only sold one painting during his lifetime), this creates a tension in the relationship that eventually culminates in the latter’s mental breakdown.”
One could view the Gauguin-van Gogh collision as the old dichotomy between body and mind–the sensualist Gauguin and the angst-ridden van Gogh. Scott and Manwarren elaborate: “Gauguin remonstrates with Vincent at one point: ‘Forget the metaphysics and just paint. He is tired of the constant references to the spiritual and shuns the Church…He is about the flesh and conveys this in his work. Although the two men often painted the same subjects, the different philosophies often came through in their interpretations.”
Both artists sacrificed convention for creation, and their rejection of restrictive bourgeois norms and ultimate isolation is a theme which must be close to Walcott’s heart. As the actors note: “Vincent was always considered eccentric if not mad…Gauguin gave up a conventional life in favour of his art. Both suffered tremendous deprivation and pain to pursue their craft.”
Both longstanding members of Walcott’s Trinidad Theatre Workshop Scott and Manwarren agree that their most challenging role to date was as Don Juan in Walcott’s Joker of Seville (they both played the title role in productions 20 years apart) “Because it challenged and stretched the actor to act, sing, dance and fight for two and a half hours straight at full speed.” O Starry Starry Night poses a new challenge to Manwarren, as it’s his “first opportunity to develop a character that lived.”
The duo acknowledged the “total immersion and focus on the work” of all those involved in the Lakeside Theatre production, concluding “It is only fitting we respond in like manner and do justice to the production by bringing all our talent and skill to bear so we make its author proud through our performances.”
PHOTO: In Walcott’s latest play O Starry Night, Nigel Scott, right, plays Theo the brother of artist van Gogh, who is played by Brian Green, left. COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX
For more on this story go to:
http://www.guardian.co.tt/entertainment/2013-05-07/trini-actors-shine-o-starry-starry-night
Other PHOTOS from Amy Yardley Please go to:
http://www.amyyardley.co.uk/oh-starry-starry-night
