On Broadway and the Bahamian Orange Economy: a response
On September 30, 2022, ZNS reported that the Minister of Tourism and Deputy Prime Minister sat down with a pair of Broadway producers in New York City and talked about bringing a theatre festival to The Bahamas. Because the government is investing in the Bahamian Orange Economy.
Come all the way again?
Shakespeare in Paradise, The Bahamas’ very own international theatre festival, is now in its FOURTEENTH season. What’s more, it is going on RIGHT NOW. It opened on September 19 and runs through October 8. And it’s pretty popular, too. Some shows have sold out already.
This leads me to two conclusions.
Either the Minister of Tourism does not know about Shakespeare in Paradise, or the Minister of Tourism thinks that what Shakespeare in Paradise has been doing for the last fourteen years is not good enough for his purposes.
We Bahamians should all take deep offence.
Shakespeare in Paradise is a Bahamian theatre festival. Since 2009, it has presented more than 70 shows to 50,000 people involving 900 performers in 20 venues. 90% of our performers are local. In that time, we have spent more than $1.2 million, most of it going into the Bahamian economy, on food, drink, costumes, transportation, accommodation, t-shirts, set materials, programmes, customs duties, freight, VAT, chair rentals, tents, stipends, fees and other things.
But the Minister of Tourism and the New York producers are talking about bringing in a theatre festival here. And these New York producers who the Minister of Tourism says will start building the Bahamian Orange Economy are talking about internships and writing shows with Bahamian content and I’m sitting here going:
How is this building our economy though? What are we talking about here?
Because, let’s face it. Broadway producers really have no interest in investing in some other country’s Orange Economy. Broadway producers are businesspeople who are looking to benefit their investors.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2010. Photo by Jason McDowall, BahamasLocal
Here’s what the Orange Economy is, or should be.
The Orange Economy is the economic sector where creative artists are able to make their living from their creative activity. It’s one of the most resilient and elastic economic sectors out there because the resource it produces is infinite and original. It comes from the minds and hearts of creative people. The only raw materials required are people, talent, and training.
Here in The Bahamas, we have plenty of the first two, very little of the third. We’ve spent billions and billions of dollars advertising our name worldwide and only pennies on developing our people and our talents at home.
For the Orange Economy to exist, let alone succeed, creative people need to be exposed to the wealth of activity within the orange economy, and creative people have to be able to be paid for what they do.
This is not what Broadway producers are set up to do.
Local theatre festivals, on the other hand, are ideally placed to get the job done. Shakespeare in Paradise was founded expressly to develop the Bahamian theatre industry, to increase Bahamian pride, and to encourage tourists to come to Nassau for theatre. These were our goals all the way back in 2009 and we have been working incrementally and steadily towards them since then.
Here’s how we’re doing so far: We have mounted 33 Bahamian productions, from small one-person performances to full-scale musicals, reviving Bahamian classics and presenting new shows. We’ve established an incubator for new Bahamian plays, directors, and performers which has produced 39 new plays by 25 separate authors, and has trained 20 new directors. Shakespeare in Paradise has singlehandedly for the past 14 years provided Bahamians who are interested in theatre with the exposure, training, discipline and opportunity to engage in their craft at a world-class level.
Love’s Labour’s Lost 2021. Photo by Hartman Brown.
We do what we do well enough to have been invited to join the international Shakespeare Theatre Association. We care enough about our country’s tourism product to host the Shakespeare Theatre Association’s annual conference at Atlantis in 2023. We do what we do well enough that I will be taking over as President of the Shakespeare Theatre Association in January 2023.
And we’ve done all this without any serious investment from any Bahamian government. Since 2009, Shakespeare in Paradise has put over $1.2 million into our economy; of that, the Ministry of Tourism has provided us with perhaps $50,000. Maybe a 4% investment in what we are doing is commendable—you tell me. But it isn’t building our economy.
I do not recall ever being approached by the Ministry of Tourism to be advertised by them in their multi-million-dollar campaigns. I have never seen any photograph from any Shakespeare in Paradise show make it into Ministry of Tourism ads. I have never seen the Ministry of Tourism tell any tourist that there is such a thing as Bahamian theatre.
But the Minister of Tourism is talking to Broadway producers about bringing a theatre festival here.
Richard III, 2022. Photo by Tammy Ali-Burrows
The only difference between what we do and what appears on Broadway and the West End—and I know this, because I have watched more Broadway and West End shows in my career than Shakespeare in Paradise has put on—is the difference money can buy: fancy theatres with fly towers and machinery and the ability to construct a stage specifically for a production; full-time professional costumers and set and prop builders; the ability to pay musicians to write and score original music; the luxury of being able to do theatre all day every day because it is your job and it is what pays your bills.
In Shakespeare in Paradise, we do not have that luxury. We do world-class theatre and we do it while we hold down jobs because WE CANNOT PAY THE PEOPLE IN IT. We are not part of any industry, because the governments of The Bahamas have never ever ever invested anything real, or substantial, or sustainable, into Bahamian theatre. (We calculated. The combined government grants we have received over the years—from Culture, Tourism and Education—average $9,000 a year.)
We do this on our own.
We pay people what we can. We pay them with transfers of knowledge. We pay them with a safe place to be. We pay them with a challenge. We pay them with tickets and t-shirts and books. We pay them by exposing them to international and professional performers they would otherwise not get to meet. We pay them with opportunities. We pay them with food. Sometimes, we can give them a little money. But fourteen years after we founded Shakespeare in Paradise, we are still not working in any creative INDUSTRY. We are not Broadway producers who are seeking to turn a profit from what we do. We are happy when we break even and don’t have to take any losses—a rare occurrence for us, because we are still doing all of this in our spare time.
And the Minster of Tourism is talking with two New York producers about internships. About brain drain. About tiefing Bahamian stories to put on their stages to feed the Broadway economy.
The Legend of Sammie Swain, 2013. Photo by Dominic Duncombe.
I did not hear the Minister of Tourism talk about the theatre buildings his country already has, both of which are in dire need of injections of capital to repair the damage done by Hurricane Dorian (the Regency in Freeport) and COVID-19 (the Dundas in Nassau).
I did not hear the Minister of Tourism mention The Legend of Sammie Swain or You Can Lead a Horse to Water or Der Real Ting Musical for the Broadway producers to invest in. I didn’t hear any talk about how to get Broadway dollars into the bank accounts of Bahamian theatre practitioners.
I did not hear the Minister of Tourism make mention of the upcoming YEAR OF BAHAMIAN THEATRE in which Shakespeare in Paradise will celebrate our fiftieth anniversary of independence by producing one play each month by a different Bahamian playwright: thirteen plays by thirteen playwrights from across the fifty years of independent Bahamian theatre, for which we have not yet got one dollar of investment beyond what the Dundas, Shakespeare in Paradise, and Ringplay Productions are contributing themselves.
The insult is complete.
See here and know this:
We do not need the Minister of Tourism to be bringing any theatre festival here. We need the Minister of Tourism to take our festival to the world.
The end.