‘Zingay’ all the way

Trinidad and Tobago Television — TTT was the only television station in the country. All shows were in black and white. Television broadcasting started at 6 pm and ended at midnight. Most programmes were foreign canned products and local shows were very few and far between. They were done live and there were no video recorders.

After the play, Nigel Waithe, the guy who played “Man-Man” the obeah man, was spitting blood outside the studio. During the chase round the room between “Paul” (Peter O’Neil) and Man-Man, they clashed accidentally and Nigel got the worst of it but the play could not be stopped. Nowadays, plays are videotaped in the studio before hand. We would hear the director say, “Cut!” Shooting would come to an end, the actor would be attended to, and then taping would continue.

By the way, other actors in that historic performance were Joan Telemaque as “Doris,” Cynthia Cambridge as the Barbadian ‘Millie’ and Wayne Richards as “Sonny” — the boy supposedly bitten by a soucouyant. I had been playing “Man-Man” — all over the country since 1961 and expected to enact it for TV but the main man Farouk Muhammad the director who called the shots to the two camera men and the boom man with the overhead microphone, wanted me next to him in master control.

Actually, Zingay is the first play I wrote way back in 1959 but it was not staged until 1961 by the Strolling Players for patients at the St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital, along with two other plays Refund by Fritz Karinthy (adapted to local conditions) and another of my plays Mamaguy. The same production was presented publicly at the Princes Town Community Centre, thanks to a young pastor at the time, now Canon Knolly Clarke for making arrangements. Of all my plays Zingay is the one most staged by other drama groups. James Lee Wah with his San Fernando Drama Guild presented the play with Sullivan Walker as ‘Paul’. Sullivan made his mark by performing with Bill Cosby and sci-fi movies in Hollywood. Sadly, this year he returned to the Creator.

Andrew Worrel won the Prime Minister’s Best Village competition with Zingay as his drama presentation. When the play was staged in Siparia, he told me that Dr Eric Williams laughed until he cried so much that he had to take off his glasses to wipe his eyes.

On this side of Zingay has been staged all over Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Grenada, St Vincent, St Lucia, Antigua, Anguilla, Jamaica, New York, Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg. On the other side of the ocean, Horace James was instrumental in having Zingay tour several University Halls in the UK.

Dexter Lyndersay in his article entitled “ Zingay — the spirit abroad” published in the Strolling Players 35th Anniversary 1992, wrote in his first two paragraphs, “This is a brief personal memoir of my theatrical adventure with Freddie Kissoon’s one-act play, ‘Zingay’ in Ibadan and Calabar in Nigeria, and in a little town called Laren in the Netherlands (Holland).

“To preserve the focus, the tale will skip the Trinidad background where Freddie more than I, grew up in theatre life and where we decided on our careers in the field. The background information, therefore, begins abroad.”

In the magazine, there is a picture with the five-member cast of ‘Zingay’ and Dexter with his wife Dani at the Pit’s Guest Theatre, Brink, Laren, Holland on March 19th, 1988. In Trinidad, Dr Dani produced and directed the play several times in Yard Presentations using a woman as the ‘obeah expert.’

Edgar Wallace said, “The story of the creation was told in two hundred words. Look it up if you don’t believe me.”