The ‘Eight by Ten’ theatre festival, the brainchild of Dr Brian Heap, Head of the Philip Sherlock Centre at The UWI Mona, returns on September 26, 27 and 28 with sponsorship from the CHASE Fund.
 
The Fund has given small production grants for each of this year’s 24 participating directors, as well as funding for promotional materials. “The list of directors reads like a Who’s Who in Jamaican theatre -Trevor Nairne, Patrick Brown, Pierre Lemaire, Fabian Thomas, Michael Holgate, Michael Daley, Jean-Paul Menou and the list goes on,” Heap observes, “and I am very pleased that eleven of the directors are women, headed by Dahlia Harris, Jean Small, Fae Ellington, Barbara Gloudon, Nadean Rawlins and so on. It’s great to see so many women moving into directing for the stage. This year we will stage a completely different programme each night, eight different directors and eight different plays for each night of the festival.”
 
Many of Jamaica’s best known actors are slated to be onstage including Sakina Deer, Hilary Nicholson, Jean-Paul Menou, Barbara McCalla, Maylyn Lowe, Andrew Brodber, Shanique Brown and Carl Samuels.
 
This unique event is for one weekend only September 26, 27 and 28 and show time is at 8pm on Friday and Saturday and 6pm on Sunday. Tickets for individual evenings as well as ‘season tickets’ will be available at the Philip Sherlock Centre, UWI, Tel: 977-9770.
 
The eight By Ten theatre Festival began life as an evening of short theatre pieces staged for the Kingston on the Edge summer festival about five or six years ago. Thereafter it began to take on a life of its own, when Heap invited seven other directors to join him in staging a ten-minute play, all of which would be staged on one evening. ‘Eight by Ten’ as it was dubbed became an instant hit with audiences and theatre practitioners alike.
 
As Heap says, “Theatre nowadays has to be commercially viable, so theatre directors in Jamaica don’t often have the opportunity to do the experimental, classical or alternative theatre they might like to do. ‘Eight by Ten’ gives them the chance to hone their skills in these areas, as well as providing writers with the chance to produce new original work and actors to challenge themselves with material outside their usual comfort zone.”
 
Last September the concept of an evening of ‘Eight by Ten’ was expanded into a three night mini theatre festival. Several new plays were produced as well as some which had been staged at previous ‘Eight by Ten’ shows. “The response was extraordinary,” says Heap, “About eighty six theatre persons were involved, including nineteen directors, as well as actors and technical personnel, staging eight plays each night. The audiences loved the variety of what was on show.”