Zahra Gor­don

Zeno Obi Con­stance's clas­sic play The Rit­u­al is fa­mous for its style. The play-with­in-a-play tech­nique was new to T&T the­atre when the play was first per­formed 35 years ago at the 1978 Sec­ondary Schools Dra­ma Fes­ti­val. On Fri­day, at the Na­pari­ma Bowl, dur­ing a trib­ute per­for­mance and awards cer­e­mo­ny, The Rit­u­al at 50, there were plays with­in plays. Dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, ex­cerpts from The Rit­u­al were per­formed not on­ly by the orig­i­nal cast mem­bers, but al­so the Fyz­abad Dra­ma Con­nec­tion and the Fyz­abad Sec­ondary School Dra­ma Group.The dra­ma group per­formed the play dur­ing this year's Sec­ondary Schools Dra­ma Fes­ti­val and has qual­i­fied for the fi­nals on No­vem­ber 30. Fri­day's per­for­mances were mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional, with ac­tors of var­i­ous ages all tak­ing on the roles of Omega and her five friends.

The pro­gramme spoke to the last­ing rel­e­vance of The Rit­u­al, which is set in a sec­ondary school class­room. Five friends of preg­nant 16-year-old Omega take turns pre­tend­ing to be the preg­nant teenag­er.While giv­ing open­ing re­marks on Fri­day, Con­stance said the play was writ­ten at the sug­ges­tion of fel­low Sec­ondary Schools Dra­ma Fes­ti­val of­fi­cial Ken Ford. Con­stance was 26 and Ford sug­gest­ed he write a play about the school where he had re­cent­ly start­ed teach­ing. Af­ter ask­ing stu­dents what were some of the most press­ing is­sues fac­ing them, Con­stance found most said "teen preg­nan­cy."He start­ed out writ­ing a play specif­i­cal­ly about that and it mor­phed in­to a piece that spoke to much larg­er is­sues. The lin­er notes say, "The play is sub­ti­tled Fri­day Morn­ing First Pe­ri­od since at one lev­el the ac­tion takes place on any Fri­day morn­ing dur­ing the first pe­ri­od. This is the base to which per­form­ers re­turn af­ter each episode or rit­u­al. It is the re­al­i­ty which they can­no­tyet es­cape, where­as the rit­u­als are the fan­tasies through which they hope to cre­ate a new re­al­i­ty, a new Caribbean woman and hence a new Caribbean so­ci­ety."

Con­stance taught at Fyz­abad Sec­ondary School for 36 years be­fore he re­tired last Sep­tem­ber. He was the founder of the school's dra­ma group and in­stru­men­tal in the found­ing of the dra­ma fes­ti­val, which will cel­e­brate its 50th year in 2014. The Rit­u­al has been per­formed 19 times at the Sec­ondary Schools Dra­ma Fes­ti­val and count­less pro­duc­tions have been put on by the­atre com­pa­nies re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly–most with­out Con­stance's knowl­edge.Last year, a group in Lon­don wrote a mu­si­cal based on the play and Con­stance found out by a chance Google search. The play is now al­so part of the cur­ricu­lum for first year the­atre stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies as well as CXC stu­dents study­ing the­atre arts.The as­so­ci­a­tion pre­sent­ed the orig­i­nal cast–Isido­ra John­son, Lev­erne Whar­ton, Mad­lyn St Cyr, Denise Thomp­son-Bris­tow and An­drea Cato-Robin­son–with life­time achieve­ment awards. All women at­tend­ed the event ex­cept John­son, who now lives in the US. Not­ed on the tro­phies pre­sent­ed to the orig­i­nal cast was a poignant quote from the play: "You and you and you. All a' we. All woman who ever love be­fore or get love, or skip school or storm taxi or cuss teacher or screw af­ter par­ty, all is Omega. And all a' we who car­ry the guilt of a girl who get preg­nant but didn't want to get preg­nant."

The tri­als faced by the char­ac­ters in the play can be par­al­leled to those faced by Con­stance and the ac­tress­es in per­form­ing the play. Con­stance said that he and the cast re­hearsed in se­cret for two months be­fore the play was per­formed at the 1978 fes­ti­val. There were two rea­sons for the se­cre­cy: Con­stance want­ed to sur­prise au­di­ences with the tech­nique used in the pro­duc­tion and he was al­so un­sup­port­ed by the school's ad­min­is­tra­tion in his work with dra­ma.When The Rit­u­al be­came a fi­nal­ist in the fes­ti­val, how­ev­er, it was video­taped for the now de­funct T&T Tele­vi­sion (TTT) and aired in 1979. An ex­cerpt from the taped ver­sion was played at the start of Fri­day's pro­gramme. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the en­tire play was nev­er shown on­screen.Con­stance said view­ers called in com­plain­ing about the use of lan­guage like "a--" and the adult con­tent of the play, which was im­me­di­ate­ly cut by TTT with­out any ex­pla­na­tion and nev­er aired again. Dur­ing prepa­ra­tion for the fes­ti­val, Con­stance had to pay out of his own pock­et for cos­tumes, trans­porta­tion and oth­er ne­ces­si­ties for the cast.

Still, he and oth­ers laud­ed the play's longevi­ty."The Rit­u­al has sur­vived and it will con­tin­ue to sur­vive as long as chil­dren are still get­ting preg­nant at 16," Con­stance lament­ed. He al­so said there con­tin­ues to be a lack of sup­port and in­ter­est in dra­ma, par­tic­u­lar­ly the dra­ma fes­ti­val, from school ad­min­is­tra­tors and prin­ci­pals.How­ev­er, the cast mem­bers agreed that there were many life lessons to be learned from the­atre. Thomp­son-Bris­tow said work­ing with Con­stance af­ford­ed her the first op­por­tu­ni­ty to trav­el out­side of T&T. "He stood up for us and we used dra­ma to move on and get ahead in life," said Thomp­son-Bris­tow.Whar­ton said they learned about much more than the­atre. "It wasn't just dra­ma. He made sure we went to class, made sure we be­haved at school and at home. Zeno was the type of teacher who would buy lunch for stu­dents who came to school hun­gry. When we were do­ing this play we didn't have any sup­port from school. Zeno did it on his own. It took tenac­i­ty on our part and Zeno's."