Sto­ry and pic­tures

In­nis Fran­cis

Samuel Selvon’s 71-year-old nov­el, A Brighter Sun, was de­pict­ed by the Iere The­atre Pro­duc­tion Lim­it­ed dur­ing a four-day event to recog­nise what would have been his 100th birth­day.

It was held at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) re­cent­ly.

The sto­ry was tak­en from the 1940s of the bat­tle of the At­lantic. It was penned in 1952.

The nar­ra­tive was set in Port-of- Spain and ex­plored the en­coun­ters of two cou­ples’ so­cio-eco­nom­ic dif­fer­ences in the World War II pe­ri­od jux­ta­posed with to­day’s so­ci­etal gov­ern­ment.

Po­et and play­wright Ein­tou Pearl Springer pro­duced the script, which saw most nights, a sold-out au­di­ence.

Di­rec­tor Vic­tor Ed­wards said each time the pro­duc­tion is staged, there seems to be room to em­pha­sise the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of mod­ern-day is­sues.

In this pro­duc­tion, the mes­sage takes the au­di­ence away from the present-day hus­tle and re­flects on the foun­da­tion of liv­ing a hum­ble lifestyle to at­tain men­tal and sus­tain­able goals.

In­cor­po­rat­ing songs like Brown Skin Girl, Naked Yuh Come, Naked Yuh Go, and Rum and Co­ca-Co­la al­so shared the mu­sic era at the time the nov­el was writ­ten.

Selvon was an au­thor of nov­els and short sto­ries. He was born to a Trinida­di­an fa­ther and an In­di­an-Scot­tish moth­er in 1923.

A na­tive of San Fer­nan­do, he at­tend­ed Na­pari­ma Col­lege in the 30s. He al­so worked as a fic­tion ed­i­tor of the Trinidad Guardian lit­er­ary mag­a­zine be­fore he mi­grat­ed to Britain in the 50s for where most of his work was fea­tured in jour­nals and news­pa­pers, in­clud­ing the Lon­don Mag­a­zine, New States­man, and the Na­tion.

Selvon was al­so the re­cip­i­ent of the Hum­ming Bird Medal for Lit­er­a­ture in 1969 and posthu­mous­ly award­ed the Cha­co­nia Medal Gold for Lit­er­a­ture in 1994.

It al­so jogged the minds of those in the au­di­ence of their func­tion to hold a gov­ern­ment ac­count­able to be the ser­vants of the peo­ple they swore to serve with sub­tle in­to­na­tions that sug­gest growth and the abil­i­ty to read and rep­re­sent a com­mu­ni­ty and the es­teem rev­er­ence for the Red House.

The pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny’s scroll dates back to 2010, with the emer­gence of the mu­si­cal Er­ic, writ­ten by Zeno Con­stance which re­flect­ed the life sto­ry of T&T’s first prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams.