Prout's labour of love - Multi-award winning production took two years to make

Marcia Rowe, Sunday Gleaner Writer

For two consecutive years Douglas Prout has walked away with not only the award for Best Director but the Best Production too, at the ITI Jamaica Centre Actor Boy Awards.

His first award came in 2009 with Basil Dawkins' For Better or For Worst, and the second for the 2010 Jane Crichton-penned White Witch.

It is an execution and achievement that could be best summed up in the gem "the heights that great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight but, they, while their companions slept were toiling upward through the night"

Speaking highly of their home base, the 35-year-old Fairfield Theatre, located in Montego Bay, Prout explained what could very well be the formula to his success.

"There is no magic to it; I am not a magician. I believe in hard work and perseverance. We have been working on it [White Witch] for two years. It did not take six months to do," expressed the humble, but elated director at the recently held Actor Boy Award Ceremony in St Andrew.

In September of 2008, Prout received the script from his former high school English teacher, Crichton. After dramaturgy, he began casting in 2009, and he selected his actors with great pain. Ultimately, the process, including rehearsals and workshops, took over a year, because the majority of the cast, who are as young as nine years old, were new to the theatre experience.

"It was a labour of love" was how the Cornwall College old boy described the procedure. But while admitting that it could not be considered formal training, he said the preparation process entailed workshops in voice and diction.

The young thespians were also helped with movement onstage, as well as taken through exercises in concentration and trust. Another strategy used by the director was "we went out to eat as a family. We almost lived at the theatre" Prout said.

Eventually, he also got to know the parents and got them involved by extension.

Challenges

The large cast and crew of 33 was not Prout's only logistic nightmare, the set, too, presented challenges.

It was so lavish that when the production was brought into Kingston for a five-day run it was not able to fit into the Theatre Place.

For a better understanding of the magnitude of the set, Prout explained that the Little Theatre and the Ward Theatre were the only two spaces that could comfortable accommodate it.

Fortunately for Prout, judging of the multi-award winning production took place in Montego Bay instead of during the Kingston run. There were five judges tasked with criticising different elements of the play.

One of the judges, who viewed the production in its natural habitat, the Fairfield Theatre and in Kingston was Tony Patel.

"It was a good production and it deserves to win [Best Production]," Patel explained.

But even Patel was surprised at some of the successes White Witch now boasts.

"Best Actor could have been Alwyn Scott in Tartuffe or Peter Haley in Pygmalion ... but those plays were up against a giant this year. Over all it was such a solid production," said Patel.

So with two back-to-back Actor Boy Awards for the same categories which of the two means the most to the obviously talented director?

"Wow, we live in the present," was his first response to the question.

He explained further, saying that while For Better or For Worst had a special place in his heart, the innocence and inexperience of the cast of White Witch made the award more gratifying.

"What they bring is innocence and enthusiasm, perhaps excessive, but as long as we control it, it speaks well for the future," he concluded.