New play opens on Wednesday
With a new state of the art performing arts centre due to open early in the new year, there were concerns that Belize might not be able to generate enough entertainment for the high quality venue. Not to worry; as News 5’s Patrick Jones discovered, reports of the death of theatre in Belize have been greatly exaggerated.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
Beth Henley’s “Crimes of the Heart” may have been an American play set in the southern U.S.A., but give the script to a group of Belizean actors under the directorship of Michael Coye and life in the old south mirrors current events right here in Belize.
Michael Coye, Director, “Crimes of the Heart”
“This play is about family, it’s about family relationships. It focuses on the lives of three sisters, the Gibson sisters. One of them shoots her husband and then the other two come together to help her out to see her through it. But it’s a comedy, it deals with some serious themes, like it deals with depression, and abandonment, and suicide but it does so in a very different way, a twisted way, that it makes you find humour in it. There is humour and there is poignancy at the same time, like they spring from the same fount.”
And that wellspring of talent is vested in five new members, plus one returning veteran of the Belize Theatre Company. For Jamillia Belisle, the role of Babe Gibson Jenkins, the abused wife who took matters into her own hands, took some getting used to.
Jamillia Belisle, Actress
“When I first began to read the play and stuff like that, I thought it was just like this person… I didn’t thought that this person was insane until I really went down into it, right, so it took about like a month to two months to get into.”
While it took months to get into character, Belisle says it will take the audience a much shorter period to recognise the themes on stage, especially domestic violence.
Jamillia Belisle
“Well yes, because most of the time women are fed up with what their husbands are doing to them. So I believe that at one point they get so frustrated that they really want to kill their husband or something like that because in the play I got abused by my husband, I got abused by my husband and I got fed up of him coming over, coming home and beat me up, and he wants this and he wants that and I got fed up. So its something, it portrays women on today’s Belize society.”
While the crazy antics and individual neurosis in dealing with crisis are bound to evoke laughter from the crowd, Coye, who is making his Directorial debut, says people in the audience will easily recognize themselves on the stage.
Michael Coye
“A lot of the things are probably going to be very real for a lot of people who come to see it. But it is done like I said in comedic manner, so even though you’re dealing with something serious you are able to laugh at yourself or laugh at the characters.”
Jamillia Belisle
“Most of my answers, it was just replying back to the characters. But that long scene when I talk about what went on with my husband when I shoot him; that took a very long time to remember. There was a lot of mistakes at first, but I get into it and it’s great.”
And even when they make mistakes, the actors are able to recover quickly without missing a beat. Back stage, the rapport keeps everyone loose and focussed on their story lines.
Michael Coye
“It’s much harder than I thought. It’s a lot more work than I imagined, but it has been fun. A great learning experience.”
“Initially we had placed ads in the newspapers for auditions and out of those ads we only got one of our actors. The others were through word of mouth, I’d meet people at different meetings that seem to have the same interest and ask them and they would recommend other people, so a lot of it is just word of mouth.”
And don’t tell anybody I said so, but word is that Babe will not go to jail for shooting her husband. I wonder what happened to poor Mr. Jenkins.
Jamillia Belisle
“He call me up, he call me up and he told me what was wrong with him and stuff like that, but he didn’t die, I wanted him to die though.”
Patrick Jones
“Will you take your husband back?”
Jamillia Belisle
“No. I’m thinking of Juanito now.”
Patrick Jones
“Even though Juanito is very young?”
Jamillia Belisle
“Yeah I’m still thinking about him. I’m thinking about him or the lawyer.”
Patrick Jones
“But you prefer Juanito?”
Jamillia Belisle
“I prefer Juanito, yap.
Will she get Juanito? The lawyer? Or go back to her husband? Last I heard was that Juanito got sent up the river through some manoeuvrings of the lawyer. But stranger things have been know to happen with it comes to crimes of the heart. Patrick Jones, for News 5.
The show opens on Wednesday night with encore presentations on Thursday and Friday nights eight o’clock. Venue will be the Belize Elementary School’s Auditorium and tickets, at fifteen dollars, are on sale at Venus Photo and Records and the Institute of Creative Arts on Regent Street. Coye says while the play is not R-Rated, because of the themes portrayed, he believes that a mature audience would better appreciate the performance. Members of the cast are Petronilla Lizama, Leni Ysaguirre, Jason Garnett, Stephanie Young, Melton Morrison and Jamillia Belisle.
