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By Latrishka Thomas
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Antigua and Barbuda’s creative community has a new home for its work following the opening of the National Performing Arts Centre, a development playwright and director Zahra Airall says will give local artists more opportunities to tell their own stories.
“It’s another option and space for us to share our own stories,” said Airall, the founder of HoneyBee Theatre and the Sugar Apple Theatre Ensemble.
Airall attended Friday’s opening of the centre, housed in the former Deluxe Cinema on High Street. She described the space as “beautiful” and its potential as “exciting” and “hopeful”.
She said the turnout of creatives stood out as much as the performances. “What was electric was not just the performances in this space this morning, including the use of our own dialect, but the people, the creatives, the practitioners that were in attendance, from our pioneers to our contemporaries,” she said.
“That alone shows the support and just the gratitude of having another space that allows us the opportunity to tell our own stories.”
Airall has been selected as artistic director for the cultural presentation at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), scheduled to take place at the centre on Tuesday, 3 November.
“I am super excited and I am honored to have been selected,” she said. “I’m going to do my best, well, have done my best to just try and capture a snapshot of what is Antigua and Barbuda for us to share with the rest of the world. So the possibilities are endless.”
Director of Culture Khan Cordice, also an arranger with the Hells Gate Steel Orchestra, said he had watched the building take shape over the past year.
“It was just a shell,” Cordice said of an early walkthrough with the project team. “Coming back a month later, to see the amount of work that they would have done, and coming back a couple months later, and then coming here every week and just seeing the place transform literally right in front of your eyes. We’re here now and it’s October 23rd and we have a brand new building for the performing arts and creatives here in Antigua and Barbuda.”
Cordice said the centre was designed with performers in mind. “It makes no sense to build a building that nobody’s able to use,” he said. “We have here a centre with just over 850 seats, purpose-built for the creative industries.”
He said the centre could bring new life to the capital after dark. “We know what town looks like in the night now, it’s a ghost town,” he said. “With more activities year-round, why not open your shops?”
Foreign Affairs, Trade and Immigration Minister Chet Greene, who heads the CHOGM planning task force, said the centre was only the beginning.
“What we see here today is not just a simple opening. It is more the creation of space, which before we never had,” Greene said.
He said the government planned to develop smaller facilities in communities across Antigua to support the cultural industries.
He also called for people to look after it saying, “This is an investment in our people. This is a government investing in our people. Those who are charged with maintaining it must do so with care, with integrity. Those who are using it must treat it like their own homes.”
Tourism Minister Charles Fernandez said the centre could revitalise the capital and provide another attraction for visitors.
“It uplifts St. John’s…You will find now folks that come off the ship will be told about the building and will come up even just to look at it without even doing a tour,” he stated.
He said visitors could also book to see shows by cultural dancers and steel pan players. “People now travel for the experience and this is going to add to it,” he said. “This is going to highlight our culture. This is going to make us able to export our culture throughout the world.”
Fernandez also recalled the site’s history, saying the earlier cinema burned around 1969 or 1970 before being rebuilt. He said performers including Ben E King and Ray Charles had appeared there, along with calypso competitions.
Sports and Creative Industries Minister Dwayne George, whose ministry will oversee the centre, said the building was valued at more than $25 million and had come close to demolition.
In his address at the ceremony, George said: “Today we are not simply opening a building. Today we reclaim a space that once held our collective imagination and repurpose it for a future worthy of our talent.”
George defended the decision to purchase the former cinema. “Those opposed to progress and development criticized the decision. We defended the investment and here we are today,” he said. He added that the project demonstrated that “culture is not a luxury but an essential pillar of our national development”.
George had a message for the people who will run the centre. “I mandate you to operate with unwavering responsibility and integrity,” he said. “You are the guardians of a public trust.” He told the wider community to protect it.