Thousands turn out to ‘make a difference’

By Ryan Haas
Reporter-SKNVibes.com

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts-THE Warner Park Cricket Stadium was filled to capacity Monday night (Sept. 15) as thousands turned out to witness the dynamic, Independence-themed musical theater piece “I’ll Make a Difference”.

Under the auspices of the Governor General, His Excellency Sir Cuthbert Sebastian, hundreds of students from the Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College and secondary and primary schools around the island performed a variety of dance and theater pieces that highlighted both past struggles and future opportunities for St. Kitts-Nevis.

The program opened with a flurry of winged dancers dipping and swaying across the open field in red, green, yellow and black dresses to the drums of Okolo Tegramante before forming a human national flag that was met with joyous cheers from the crowd.

Following the opening scene, entitled ‘Celebration’, the students quickly moved into the somber second scene called ‘The Journey’.

During ‘The Journey’, the Okolo Tegramante Dance Movement and the Vivian Dance Company used their impressionistic dance to recount the shackles of slavery and colonialism which the forefathers of St. Kitts-Nevis had to overcome before having the opportunity to found a free nation.

Just as the dance and music reached the climactic peak of the long, hard journey one narrator cried out that the people of Federation were “free at last”, and dancers dressed completely in white flooded the stage with jubilant movement and running.

The night was not limited to dancing and music, however. During the third scene of the show, entitled ‘The People’, narrators called out the names of men and women, past and present, who helped shape the Federation over its 25 years of Independence.

Amongst those called in the category of civil, social and human rights were Sir Robert L. Bradshaw, the Right Honourable Dr. Kennedy Simmonds, Joseph N. France, Edgar Challenger, Sir Probyn Inniss and Sir Dennis Byron. 

~~Adz:Left~~ Also celebrated were sports heroes like Dawn Pennyfeather, Luther Kelly, Keith Kayamba Gumbs and Kim Collins, and cultural stalwarts like Creighton Pencheon, Winston ‘Zack’ Nisbett and the recently re-crowned Calypso monarch, King Konris.

Perhaps the most poignant portion of the two hour program was a theatrical presentation of the specter of death chasing down the nation’s young people caught up in violence, drugs and the sex trade.

One young actor proclaimed that it was “time for us to take advantage of educational opportunities and step up as the leaders of tomorrow instead of letting so many of us being led to an early grave”.

The program closed with a choir’s rendition of its theme song, “I’ll Make a Difference”, which was originally written by spiritual composer Moses Hogan for the American Cancer Society’s ‘Celebration on the Hill’.

SKNVibes spoke to the Honorable Minister Cedric Liburd following the event, who stated that he was “really proud and very impressed” with the quality of the production and the “talent of the Federation’s youth”.