The Nine Night ritual and ceremony has been a long standing tradition to honour the dead in Jamaica and the Caribbean. Natasha Gordon, an English writer of Jamaican heritage, has held a deep fascination for the ritual, which she explores in her debut play – Nine Night.
The play is being staged at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, School of Drama. It explores grief, healing, family relationships, and redemption among other themes. Nine Night opens on October 12, and runs until October 14, 2018. It will also run the following weekend from October 19 -21, 2018.
Nine Night is directed by Mrs. Elizabeth Montoya-Stemann, Head of Department for Theatre Arts at Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, School of Drama. The production is the first for academic year for the School of Drama.
The play is set during the “Windrush era” and highlights some of the struggles that Jamaicans who migrated during 1940s to the early 1970s experienced.
“The play caught my attention for its social and cultural content. I wanted our students to embark on a play talking about our Jamaican citizens who ventured to have a life in the ‘motherland’ and succeeded. Conversely, the theme of the Windrush has become important in the media, and I wanted our students to get immersed in the family stories that this topic engulfs,” Mrs. Montoya-Stemann shares.
She hopes that the play will prompt even more conversation among viewers, and tap into the social, emotional and historical threads that the play unearths through the characters, and it’s riveting content.
For more information, please contact the box office at 876-968-0028.
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