In­nis Fran­cis

Bud­ding play­wright, teacher and lec­tur­er Del­lon Math­i­son is bring­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al sto­ry with a Caribbean twist to the stage with his lat­est pro­duc­tion, Mas and Melody, a re-imag­in­ing in­spired by Dis­ney’s Beau­ty and the Beast.

The pro­duc­tion, which Math­i­son de­scribes as “the first Caribbean Dis­ney princess sto­ry,” is set to run at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) from May 22 to June 2, in­clud­ing a mati­nee per­for­mance.

Math­i­son said the idea for the play emerged af­ter watch­ing Dis­ney’s Beau­ty and the Beast from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive.

“He said he saw the Dis­ney pro­duc­tion and thought how nice it would have been to do a Caribbean Dis­ney princess sto­ry. He said it was out of that thought that I de­cid­ed, ‘to write the first Caribbean Dis­ney princess sto­ry.’”

A teacher of the­atre arts at San Fer­nan­do West Sec­ondary School and act­ing head of the Vi­su­al and Per­form­ing Arts De­part­ment, Math­i­son al­so lec­tures in the School of Ed­u­ca­tion at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. He is in­volved in the Bach­e­lor of Ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme with­in the de­part­ments of Mod­ern Lan­guages and Lo­gis­tics, Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion.

Mas and Melody marks Math­i­son’s sec­ond ma­jor pro­duc­tion, fol­low­ing his 2024 school play Dream, which he both wrote and di­rect­ed.

Be­yond en­ter­tain­ment, the pro­duc­tion al­so has a fundrais­ing goal. Math­i­son said pro­ceeds from the play will go to­ward re­build­ing the mul­ti-pur­pose hall at San Fer­nan­do West Sec­ondary School, which was de­stroyed by fire in 2008.

“He said pro­ceeds from the event would be­gin work on the San Fer­nan­do West Sec­ondary School’s Mul­ti­pur­pose Hall, where he had been teach­ing for the past four years. His am­bi­tion for the school since he start­ed teach­ing has been to re­build the hall af­ter it was gut­ted by fire in 2008.”

How­ev­er, fund­ing re­mains one of the biggest chal­lenges fac­ing the pro­duc­tion. Math­i­son ap­pealed to NGOs and cor­po­rate spon­sors to as­sist with ex­pens­es as­so­ci­at­ed with stag­ing the play.

“He said there are two ma­jor ar­eas where the pro­duc­tion des­per­ate­ly sought as­sis­tance, ‘We are reach­ing out to per­sons for spon­sor­ship or do­na­tions. We are try­ing to get as many com­pa­nies on board to off­set the cost of the pro­duc­tion. The pro­duc­tion costs a lot. The ma­jor cost we are look­ing at is the rental of SAPA, which is a heavy bill to cov­er, and the con­struc­tion of our set. Those are our biggest bills right now.’”

Ac­cord­ing to Math­i­son, the play ex­plores themes of iden­ti­ty, cul­tur­al ground­ing, friend­ship, se­cre­cy and self-dis­cov­ery through a dis­tinct­ly Caribbean lens.

“He said af­ter see­ing BATB from an adult per­spec­tive, his in­tu­itions for the pro­duc­tion grew deep, the pro­found tale that ex­plores an in­ner beau­ty theme, so­cial ex­pec­ta­tions, and the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of love.”

The sto­ry cen­tres around two main char­ac­ters, Mas and Melody, who sym­bol­ise in­ter­con­nect­ed as­pects of Caribbean cul­ture. Math­i­son ex­plained that Mas rep­re­sents the mu­si­cal el­e­ment of cul­ture, while Melody em­bod­ies de­sign and cre­ativ­i­ty.

“He said the play per­son­i­fies Mas and Melody as liv­ing peo­ple. Stat­ing that Mas in the play rep­re­sents a prince in the sto­ry, who is a song­writer/mu­si­cian and an as­pir­ing de­sign­er and Melody, who grew up not know­ing her moth­er, but on­ly her fa­ther. Math­i­son said it re­veals the en­tire fam­i­ly cloaked in se­crets, and how the two halves of the same whole come to­geth­er to sym­bol­ise our cul­ture as what we might con­sid­er our iden­ti­ty.”

“I didn’t want Melody to be mu­sic-re­lat­ed. Melody is re­lat­ed to the de­sign as­pect, and Mas is the mu­sic as­pect; the con­cept is how they find them­selves ex­ist­ing in each oth­er,” he said.

The pro­duc­tion fea­tures a cast of 35 stu­dents and mu­si­cians drawn from Forms One to Five across the school’s de­part­ments.