West Indian Federation brought to life in cultural production

From 1958 to 1962, the period during which ten islands were governed under the West Indian Federation was brought to life in a two-hour production by UWI student, Keon Francis.

Francis, a PhD candidate in cultural studies at the UWI, wrote and directed the production called the Great Western Island Festival, staged at the Naparima Bowl auditorium on June 29.

Francis’ interpretation consisted of characters who portrayed the Federation through a Carnival-like festival and made up names that represented the ten islands; Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, the then St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and Trinidad and Tobago.

Francis said the emphasis was placed on "the silent voices" of some of the island’s leaders during the period. He said culture and the arts was the one binding element that served as a glue to the island.

Draped in a country’s national colours, each character took on imaginary roles using mas as the metaphor. The story was partly narrated by an Anansi character portrayed by Sydney Darius.

Francis said throughout his doctoral programme, the years of the Federation played a pivotal role in Caribbean history, but it seem that people have forgotten about it.

“It (the project) started based on a study looking at how we treat historical occurrences in the Caribbean, and recognising that the way we treat it is coloured by the fact that we often have a lot of missing information. So that spurred me to want to do a re-enactment of the Federation, because I feel that it is a very important occurrence that a lot of people don’t know about.

"For such a pivotal point in our history it's a sad thing that a lot more people are not aware of it, so I wanted to address that, and the fact that when I try to do a re-enactment I realise there is a lot of gaps in our knowledge. So in term of the history of the smaller islands, what they thought; everyone knows what (TT's first prime minister Dr Eric) Williams thought…but the smaller islands, their voices really were silent."

He said a large part of this is for those "silent countries" to share their perspective, as well as to bring a nuanced perspective of the Federation from a creative point.

With a first degree in theatre arts and Carnival studies, he said he was instrumental in developing the production into a stage play from research done for the four-year period.

Francis said he modified the production for the stage; rather than use "federation" he used "festival" with the characters' names and costuming as part of the masquerade of their native country.

He said, “Each island has some sort of masquerade festival/carnival, and they all have similar elements. So when you see the tapestry on stage, you see some of the same types of elements for the different islands. And I said that was the metaphor I wanted to use…the characters' names were part of the masquerades in the different countries. In using the metaphor of mas, I looked at the different characters and found those characters immerse the stories into their festivals."

Francis said he intends to take the production around the country and to schools, but funding has been a major setback.