THE DRAGON CAN’T DANCE
The musical production of The Dragon Can’t Dance was first performed at Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1990, presented by Talawa Theatre Company and directed by Yvonne Brewste, with the following cast: Laura Beckford, Cyril Niri (who was nominated for Best Actor London Fringe award in 1991), Oscar James, Jacqui Chan and Anni Domingo.
The Dragon Can’t Dance by Trinidadian author Earl Lovelace was written as a novel before being adapted for the stage. Lovelace uses the story to make bold statements about the political and social state of Trinidad focusing on the censorship of the people, the African-Indian racial divide and the social conditioning of a post-colonial generation.
The Dragon Can’t Dance takes place a few days before Trinidad Carnival. The play centres on the life of Aldrick Prospect, a man who lives to recreate the dragon carnival costume each year. Like the other members of the Calvary Hill community who participate in the carnival year after year, Aldrick, dressed as the dragon, is able to experience a momentary feeling of power, freedom and authority; a world away from the harsh reality of an impoverished mundane life in the hill. In his costume Aldrick is able to approach Sylvia, the woman he secretly loves. After a year of preparing his costume, when carnival day finally comes, Sylvia rejects his offer to dance as she has already accepted the owner of the hill, Mr Guy’s bid to purchase her carnival costume; Mr Guy won Sylvia’s undivided attention on carnival day. What’s more, the Calypsonian Philo, renowned for his rebellious songs, succumbs to producing a more profitable commercial song. Disheartened by the lack of change on carnival day, Aldrick begins to question the meaning of carnival and his unmasked identity. He decides to abandon his role as the yearly roaring dragon, becoming an accomplice to Fisheye’s short-sighted idea to take on the government (police) unmasked.
About the playwright
Earl Lovelace was born in Toco, Trinidad in 1935. Earl studied at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where he graduated with a MA in English in 1974. Earl began his career mainly interested in writing novels. In 1962 he won the Trinidad and Tobago Independence Literary competition, which helped to kickstart his career. His first novel While Gods Are Falling, was published in 1965, and was followed by Schoolmaster (1968) and The Dragon Can’t Dance (1979) to name but a few. In 1962 Lovelace activated his playwriting career with his debut The New Boss. He has had several plays produced in Trinidad and England.
Other published plays by Earl Lovelace include Jestina’s Calypso and The New Hardware Store.
Summary
Mulatto widow CLEOPHILDA, owner of the parlour store on the hill, annually plays the ‘Queen of the Band’. She is unreserved about her beauty and superiority over the other members of the Calvary Hill community and is renowned for befriending the ‘darker skinned’ community only during carnival time. Cleophilda’s younger model is seventeen-year-old Sylvia, whose beauty and virginity do not go unnoticed by the men on the Hill, in particular, the owner of the Calvary yard Mr Guy and Aldrick Prospect. Both men fight to win the affections of the young beauty in the lead-up to carnival; although Mr Guy’s efforts to buy Sylvia’s attention appear successful, the love between Aldrick and Sylvia is incontestable.
Aldrick returns to the yard after serving a six-year prison sentence for hijacking a police car and taking two policemen hostage. He is keen to try his luck with Sylvia for the last time. But mother-figure Cleophilda has other plans for her protégé.
No. I will stay too long. Let me go and put down these things…well…shake my hand. Is a long time. You looking well. Jail agree with you…and, you know, last night…yes, it was last night…I dream you. I didn’t tell you, Sylvia? I dream how you come here with a rope in your hands and was pulling down the shop, my shop; but you didn’t have to pull it down. It gone to the dogs already. I find it so funny that you should want to pull down my shop. But you don’t have to pull it down, Aldrick, it pull down already. Sylvia ain’t tell you the Indian boy, Pariag, buy the shop at the corner…well, he buy it. I ain’t vex with him. I ain’t vex at all. I ain’t jealous. He young, and is a free country, so if he come to this town, to this hill, and put up a shop for people to buy from him, I is the last one to say anything ill. The only reason I mention it at all is because last night I dream how you come with this long, long rope and tie the shop and try to pull it down, and I want you to know that it pull down already and I tired. I really tired, you know. I find things ain’t have no value these days, and the little value they have they losing faster than babies borning on this hill. This place going to the dogs. Long ago when you and Philo was living here, it had decent people on this hill – poor, but decent. Now is the last crumbs and dust of people here, doing anything for a dollar. They racketeering, they robbing, they shooting. No! They ain’t using knife again. Is like since Fisheye pick up that gun and stick up the police and kidnap their jeep, guns sprouting all over town. Prayer is all remain. Prayer. I don’t know what woulda been my condition if I didn’t used to pray. Battoo’s Funeral Home woulda long carried me away. And, with Sylvia going away from here in a month or two, I can’t imagine what I would do…she ain’t tell you? You ain’t tell him, Sylvia? I don’t want to tell him your business, you know, though when you give out the invitations everybody will know. You shame? You shouldn’t be shame, you know. Guy is a City Councillor now. He is a man treat you good from the beginning: TV, radio, fridge, stereo, dress, show. He old, is true. Everybody have to get old…people say I old too…you don’t have to love him now. Love will come, and if it never come, at least you will be comfortable; for one thing you know about him is he will take care of you which is more than you could say for these young fellas buzzing around behind you. The boy, Raymond, good looking but where he going to put you? Now and again he make a pair of sandals for one of his friends. He ain’t working nowhere. How you going to live so? You will him ’bout Raymond? You know ‘bout Raymond? You ain’t tell him ’bout Raymond?
…
Well, I better shut my big mouth and go. I will see you later. But the reason I saying all this is so he will know he can’t come here just so, breeze in here after five years in prison and tantalize your brain. What you could do for her, Aldrick? I talking plain. Tell me what you could give her.