EDITORIAL - The Ward's disrepair as metaphor for Jamaica

Last Sunday's cake-cutting and performances to mark the 100th anniversary of the Ward Theatre took place outside the edifice. The Ward's ornate entryway provided an imposing backdrop for a very pleasant affair.

That the celebration took place outdoors, rather than inside the 830-seat theatre, was not an attempt, in the event that someone tried to make that case, to be inclusive. The truth is that the Ward is in disrepair and in no condition to host performances. It has been in bad shape for several years, but fully closed for three.

Indeed, a signal event over the previous 40 years, the annual Pantomime, which opens every Boxing Day, has not been held there for the past decade.

This newspaper is deeply saddened by the state of the Ward, for what it reveals about our sense of history, the coarsening of national sensibilities, and our seeming inability to get the little things done, or done right. It suggests, too, a national proclivity for ramshackle destiny.

The Ward Theatre was built in 1912 by Colonel Charles Ward, the then custos of Kingston, and handed over to the city. It compared with the finest theatres of the world. Over its life, as Barbara Gloudon, the journalist and playwright, noted on Sunday, it provided a stage on which many persons who helped to advance the country's culture could express themselves.

But over the years, the Ward, like Kingston generally, and especially the gritty downtown section of the city where it is situated, has not escaped rampaging urban blight.

The Ward Theatre Foundation, which manages the theatre under a lease from the city, has not been able to raise the capital required for its renewal and upkeep. The local government, the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation, is too busy doing an incompetent job of running the city to do anything better for the Ward. The national government occasionally parrots scripted messages about the importance of centres like the Ward in support of the performing talents and creative imagination of Jamaicans, but fails to follow through.

SYMBOLIC OF LARGER MALAISE

Maintaining the Ward, and things like that, demands concentrated effort when the aim is to translate instant gratification into tomorrow's vote. Corralling constituents behind rusty zinc fences is easier.

In this regard, the state of the Ward is merely symbolic of a larger malaise, as exemplified by the mountains of garbage that often build up on the verges around National Heroes Circle and near the entrance to the park where we supposedly celebrate this country's declared heroes and other outstanding Jamaicans. It shows, too, in our failure, at the cost of minimum wage, to keep those verges well manicured and the fact that the adjacent enclosure of Simon Bolivar's statue continually seems like an uncleared, post-fête site.

Similarly, it is an approach to government and governance and national life that allows scuffing on a major highway to grow into a wide and deep pothole before it is noticed; that it seems to matter little if drains are uncleaned and verges untrimmed. This attitude has less to do with cost, but our values. The truth is that little things matter.

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