Reflections of Sugar Pain Blues

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Posted November 21, 2007

Greenville, MS, USA/Bridgetown, Barbados, W.I.–Earlier this month, BB King Museum & Delta Interpretive Center’s newly appointed Director of Education and Community Outreach, Professor C.Sade Turnipseed, traveled to Barbados, West Indies, as a writer-in residence, at the University of West Indies, Cave Hill campus. During her residency, she conducted a two-week writing workshop and unique Blues research experiment. The goal was to produce a one-act play (poetrical) that hinged on the Caribbean interpretation of the Blues. Participants were professors, technicians and undergraduate students from the University’s recently opened Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination. The outcome was a riveting multi-media theatrical production entitled "Sugar Pain Blues."

"This was the inaugural workshop for the Errol Barroll Centre for Creative Imagination," stated Dr. Gladstone Yearwood, Director. "I want the success of our students to not only be anchored in their technical fortitude, but to also be empowered with a sense of cultural awareness. One of my objectives for the Centre for Creative Imagination is to bring in visiting lecturers and artists, who can effectively communicate the concept that the most powerful means of storytelling is telling what you know. Whether, writing for theatre, film or literary arts it is important to me that our students understand how trusting their personal story to have relevance is the critical substance needed for creating great art. And, Professor Turnipseed is the perfect complement to my lecturing staff, to facilitate such a feat," Yearwood continued.

The workshop had nearly fifty participants, who ranged in ages eighteen to mid-sixties. They were citizens of several Caribbean nations and the United States. All personally selected by Director Yearwood to enroll and study at the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination.

"I see the Caribbean as a natural component of my strategic plan for community outreach. Therefore, it was our intention to go to Barbados and assist in the creation of a performance script that could be brought back to Indianola, Mississippi, and showcased, in September 2008, during the grand opening season of the BB King Museum & Delta Interpretive Center. My hope was to demonstrate, within the script, ways in which the Mississippi Delta Blues heritage had impacted other cultures throughout the world. What I found was students, who were deeply connected to the Blues spiritually, through their own source of pain…the sugar cane plantations; and, immensely talented in so many art forms that my lectures became conduits of healing, as reflected in their creative interpretations. What I discovered, about my workshop was that it is a powerfully effective agent in enabling the academic process, to become innate to and reflective of the history and culture of its participants."

Great examples of this were in the original creative works delivered by scriptwriter Shawn "Black" Greene and Geneal St. Clair; multi-media diva Ahleana Greenridge; songster Karlos Cobham; choreographer/poet Alicia Payne; and, music director/lecturer Stefan Walcott. These renderings became actualized almost instantly, hence the spiritual connection. Other participants, such as: Matthew Murrell, Hazel Charles, brought some of their previous work to the table that meld perfectly into the flow and context of the script written by Greene and choreographed by Payne, Jerilee Evanson-Kellman and the Center’s dance lecturer John Hunte. Outstanding theatrical performances by, Rashida Harding, Akil Ifill, Gina Mayers, Chrystal Cummings-Beckles, Kareen Arthur, Tihirah Hinds, Shari Pollard, Cretia Louis, Nichola Macdonald, Julie Griffin, Catherine Griffith, Janelle Mitchell, Sharday Brooks, Janelle Mitchell, Zaneta Edey, Kellisa Belgrave, Sonju Patterson and others only further demonstrated the preparedness of these students to the soul-searching challenges I placed on them. Hence, the name "Sugar Pain Blues," reflects Turnipseed.

"The fifty-plus students and technicians involved in the process of staging "Sugar Pain Blues" are only a sampling of the immense artistic wealth that can be tapped in the Caribbean generally, Barbados specifically. Frankly, I think we have the makings of a classic on our hands," stated Wentworth Bowen, lecturer at the Centre, regarding the Sugar Pain Blues project. "I was absolutely overjoyed by the talent that I was presented with. And how everyone stepped up to the challenge, in every possible way that we were successful in researching, scripting, rehearsing and performing such a phenomenal production, in only two weeks. . . I am honored to have been asked to facilitate the first in a series of such a remarkable undertaking as this, at the Centre; as well as, having the confidence of BB King Museum’s Executive Director Connie Gibbons to bring this experiment in original programming to the Mississippi Delta," reports Turnipseed.

Though Turnipseed's objective for the workshop was to present theatrically the correlation between cotton plantations in the Mississippi Delta, the home of the Blues, and sugar cane plantations in the Caribbean, the home of Calypso, Soca, Spouge, Ska and Reggae; the outcome was much more than a correlation. She found the same parallel universes exist in the world, where struggle for hope, freedom and dignity were in any way impacted by the African slave trade. It is the same story, but different characters. Turnipseed witnessed first-hand the magic of participants, who responded with clear definitions of the workshop’s premise, "What the Blues means to me..."

The plan remains, even more intensely, to bring this exhilarating production to the public, in Barbados early next year and to the BB King Museum & Delta Interpretive Center, next September 2008.