'WAH SWEET NANNY GOAT’ set for release
IT’S AN annual delight for scores of highschoolers across the island and this year Barracks Entertainment will do it again with Wah Sweet Nanny Goat, its 2017 production. With a theme of teenage pregnancy, writer, director and producer Fabian Barracks told Youthlink, “It’s not the typical story; it’s a story of redemption, of motivation, of empowerment. It’s not just saying, ‘Oh because this happened your life is ending’. It’s almost life after teen pregnancy; you actually see the struggles of the pregnant teen, her regular studying and her life going on after the event.” For Barracks, the name of the production is something he believes will ring home with a lot of the students. “The youth need to understand that they’re sometimes having a lot of careless fun and it may be sweet to you right now but, in the end, it might run yuh belly, so we just leave the title as Wah Sweet Nanny Goat and you finish it with what you want” he said, chuckling.
A PASSION FOR THEATRE
The Wolmer’s Boys’ alumnus says his passion for theatre developed quite early, staying with him as a student at the all-boys institution and later as a student at the University of the West Indies (UWI).
He recalled, “My first year at UWI, I saw this ad in the paper for Barbara Gloudon’s pantomime to submit a script, so I came up with this thing called Family Remedy. Pantomine was one of my dreams; I wanted to be in it, I wanted to do it.”
He continued, “When I submitted that script outline to them, I got a long letter from her about it being too laborious and they could not produce it. I was very disappointed, but my best friend at the time told me to just produce it on my own. I remember I tried to scrape money from all areas; using a part of my tuition for that period (and) failing courses. What I didn’t want was to go small even though it was my first production, so I went to the Theatre Place in New Kingston.”
FROM NOTHING TO SOMETHING
According to Barracks, he was not rubbed by beginner’s luck in that first affair with the big stage. “There were a lot of issues, but I felt good that it happened. I remember there was a Gleaner writer, Marcia Rowe, who gave me a terrible write-up; it was a twopage spread in the Sunday Gleaner. I wasn’t really upset at the fact that I got a bad writeup, I was very happy that I got two pages in The Gleaner – two full pages of me, a little young man. It’s strange that a couple years later, the same Marcia Rowe is in the audience of my plays and giving me very good reviews, so God has been very good to me.”
“It’s a story of redemption, of motivation, of empowerment. It’s not just saying, ‘Oh, because this happened your life is ending.’”
Picking up the pieces and moving on from that first experience, Barracks discovered the idea of staging shows for groups of students. “I wrote a new play called Ting-a-Ling-a-Ling. What worked for me in Family Remedy was I asked Wolmer’s Boys to take a group of students and they brought like 200 students. When I saw how engaged they were, I said this is where I need to be – I need to be doing something that’s targeting the high-school niche that I want to create; so now, seven years later, here I am doing my high-school run.”
BY YOUTH FOR YOUTH
“I always use youth (for the productions), so I host auditions; I go to different schools that are strong in drama, especially the JCDC Festival. A lot of those students are very good at what they’re doing, so I’ll go look at them and see if they connect to the story and if they really impress me, or I see some sort of potential, then I’ll utilise them. It’s always a plus for youth to be playing and engaging (in the material)”, he said.
About selecting the issues each year, he said, “They normally show up themselves a lot in the media. This time I realise teenage pregnancy is showing up so much, I think the rate now is 18 per cent in Jamaica. I try to write reality, so I have to speak to a lot of people who have gone through it. This one in particular, I had to speak with Dr Donna Hope, who is now a lecturer of cultural studies and she got pregnant at 15. When the world had given up on her, she and her mother hadn’t given up on her, so her story is a story of redemption and this is what I want to put forth in this production, Wah Sweet Nanny Goat.”
The play officially starts on May 9 and will run for two weeks. Wah Sweet Nanny Goat is proudly sponsored by Youthlink, TVJ, Clean and Clear, Confidence and more.
“The youth need to understand that they’re sometimes having a lot of careless fun and it may be sweet to you right now but, in the end, it might run yuh belly.”