As President Donald Trump put forth a budget that would strip federal funding for arts programs, among other things, a theatrical performance based on a woman’s life in Trinidad and Tobago during and after World War II recently premiered in D.C.
The D.C Commission on Arts and Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts, with support from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Special Presenters Initiative in Baltimore, funded the tragic-comedy play “Jean and Dinah” during Caribbean American Heritage month from June 8-18 at the Undercroft Theatre at the United Methodist Church in northwest D.C. The Essential Theatre in southeast D.C. brought the play to the area to close out its “Women’s Works” Program.
The cast and creative for Jean and Dinah: (LtoR) Modupe Onilu (rhythm man); Penelope Spencer (Jean); Rhoma Spencer (Dinah); Ken Joseph, stage manager; and Tony Hall, director. (Courtesy Photo)
“So many politicians only see the arts as some kind of lever they can use for their own political livelihoods. The practice of the arts is important in the community,” Tony Hall, director of the theatrical production told the AFRO on June 9. “The way one reflects on one’s life is through one’s creativity. The arts give you space. One artist said, ‘the arts give you oxygen.’ You need oxygen to live.”
The play was inspired by Mighty Sparrow’s 1956 song “Jean and Dinah (When the Yankees Gone)”. The 81-year-old Sparrow is known as the “King of the Calypso World”.
The song tells the story of local men seeking revenge on women – marginalizing the woman, said Hall, who is also an actor. He said he always wondered, even as a child, what the woman’s response was in the song. He was eight years old when Sparrow’s song first debuted.
The story of “Jean and Dinah” is set in 1990’s Port Au Spain, the capitol city of Trinidad and Tobago, where two “warrior women” — whom Penelope Spencer (who portrays Jean in the play) noted were sex workers — reflect on their past masquerades, while also revealing intimate moments of their lives, such as periods of abuse and misfortune.
According to Penelope, the play envisions a woman’s struggle for money, recognition, and in taking care of her children.
The “Jean and Dinah” play has been showing for 22 years, first premiering in the Caribbean in 1994. It has also been featured in New York, Connecticut and Canada. “The play has lived on, this incarnation of the play – the original cast, have lived on beyond expectations,” Hall said. He said he does not know what will come next for the production after its stint in D.C.
The only member who was not part of the cast in 1994 is Modupe Onilu, the rhythm man, who subbed in for the original rhythm man. “It has been mind blowing. I’ve learned so much, not only about the Jean and Dinah story, but about Trinidad’s culture,” he said.
Rhoma Spencer, the play’s co-creator who also plays Dinah, said she met Hall at The University of the West Indies – St. Augustine Campus when he was her professor.
According to Rhoma, the production was formed through research and improvisation. She said that she met a lot of women on the streets and listened to their stories. “It’s as if they lived to tell their stories and then they died,” Rhoma told the AFRO on June 9. She said she incorporated a part of each of the women’s stories into her character.
Jean, Penelope’s character, was actually a real person whom she met and studied. Penelope, who danced before she began acting, at the age of 9, said that she honed her skills through a government funded competition in Trinidad and Tobago. She currently owns an arts school in the Caribbean country called Necessary Arts.
