From Trickster to Joker: Trinidadian Theater and Derek Walcott February 25

Calypso Music: The Mighty Sparrow, Party Classics

Caribbean Islands

Cultural Syncretism 16th and 17th centuries: Spanish missions were established in Trinidad. 1789 (French Revolution): French colonizers, their slaves, and Free People of Color (gens de couleur libres) arrived from the French colonies (Grenada, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint-Domingue [Haiti]). 1797: Trinidad and Tobago fell under British control. 1838: Slavery finally was abolished in Trinidad and Tobago. 1962: Trinidad and Tobago achieved full independence from British rule. 1974: The Joker of Seville was first performed by the Trinidad Theatre Workshop.

Derek Walcott (b. 1930) 1953: Immigrated to Trinidad. 1959: Established the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in Port-of-Spain. 1992: Won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Trinidad Theatre Workshop (est. 1959)

“A Caribbean Don Juan” (1984), John Thieme Thieme cites an interview with Walcott, “ ‘when I came to adapt the play I did not want to produce a play purely for the Shakespeare company or English actors and audiences. I wanted to write a play that could also be produced in the West Indies. So what I have done is put Don Juan, or the Joker of Seville, in a West Indian setting and, indeed one of the runs in the story is: Don Juan was a stickman.’”

Homework Reminders For blog post #5 (due by 5pm on Wednesday, March 2), please select one of the songs in The Joker of Seville and reflect on the function you think it plays within its specific context. Read Errol Hill’s brief chapters on calypso and canboulay (available under Studio Resources). *Remember that I hold office hours from 10-12 on Thursdays (451 College St, room 212).

Marinetti on love In his defense of the Variety Theater, Futurist Marinetti states, “The Variety Theater systematically disparages ideal love and its romantic obsession that repeats the nostalgic langours of passion to satiety, with the robot-like monotony of a daily profession. It whimsically mechanizes sentiment, disparages and healthily tramples down the compulsion towards carnal possession, lowers lust to the natural function of coitus, deprives it of every mystery, every crippling anxiety, every unhealthy idealism” (Gerould 423).

A Futurist Don Juan? Does the Don Juan that Walcott creates also disparage ideal love, or does he celebrate it? What would a Futurist production of Don Juan look and sound like? (Think of the production components as well as the acting.) Aleksandra Ekster: costume design for Don Juan