Re-issue of two classics of Caribbean theatre; part of Peepal Tree's
popular Caribbean Modern Classics series.
Couvade, first performed in Guyana in 1972 and published by Cape in
1974, references the Amerindian ritual where the man takes to his bed
and 'suffers' some equivalent to the pains of childbirth while his
partner is in labour. And while Pat is giving birth, her artist husband
Lionel has become obsessed with the Amerindian-style painting he is
working on... Couvade is a powerful dream-play of ritual, shamanism
and the overwhelming forces of the past.
A Pleasant Career is based on the biography of the pioneering Guyanese
novelist, Edgar Mittelholzer. The play explores Mittelholzer's early
experiences of the racial and class hierarchies of British Guiana, of
being the 'swarthy' boy in a predominantly white family, and of his
resolute determination to beat down the doors of the London publishing
world. It also gazes into some of the demons within, held in creative
balance in his earlier years, but ending later in a fiery suicide.
Despite its unassuming title, A Pleasant Career is a richly rewarding
play of dramatic incident and psychological speculation.
Michael Gilkes was born in Guyana in 1935. He is a distinguished
Caribbean critic and dramatist, and more recently a film-maker. A
Pleasant Career won the prestigious Guyana Prize for Drama in 1992. He
won the Guyana Prize again in 2006 for his play The Last of the
Redmen. He now lives in Bermuda.
