While Tony Patel mentioned Stages Productions in the improvement of roots plays, Paul O. Beale of Stages, which does the Bashment Granny series, tells The Sunday Gleaner "for me, I have never written a roots play in my life".

Beale says the term 'roots play' was ill-conceived. "It was the baffling of the mind and a careless fling of words that created it in the first place," he said. "It was not born out of an intellectual thrust, so it is in my mind not a category at all."

Beale said: "I started writing in 1984 and what I have been writing from then till now are Jamaican comedies." Among his earlier scripts are A Me Rule, Unda Mi Nose, Maama Man and Granny Rule.

He said that when he started writing plays, the term 'roots theatre' did not even exist or, if it did, it was dormant. "It was not until Ralph Holness started his proliferation that the term really kicked off … Ralph then started to use the term 'roots play' in his promotional material," said Beale.

Beale referred to Holness as the godfather of Jamaican comedy and the pioneer of mass marketing Jamaican plays in and outside Jamaica.

Little use for Actor Boy

And Beale coined a term for what he does. "I came up with Jamaican popular theatre," he said.

He does not have much use for the Actor Boy Awards, which he considers "the biggest comedy in Jamaica", and has never attended one, even though he received an award ("I don't know who has it …") for his play Unda Mi Nose 2.

And he also pointed out that "there are so many plays they have missed, it is appalling".

Actor Garfield Reid, known for his 'Bad Boy Trevor' play persona, does not have much regard for the Actor Boy Awards (which he considers "far-fetched" and also said "there are many weird things about them") either. Nor does he recognise a roots theatre category in the first place, pointing out that "Jamaica is our roots. Whatever we portray is our culture and our roots". The 'roots' categorisation, he said, carried over into music with Marley (who in fact sang about "roots, rock, reggae").

Reid said a Trinidadian play speaks to its roots and "what we do in Jamaica, whether it is uptown or downtown, it is Jamaican roots … From the days of Bim and Bam, Ralph Holness coming up, it is roots theatre".

"Oliver Samuels is roots, ain't it?" Reid asked rhetorically. "Louise Bennett was the same thing."

Come a far way

Reid said that while there are some productions that do not have as much money as they need to build a set, "we have come a far way from going onstage and cursing bad words and all that". And, Reid told The Sunday Gleaner, "A 'damn' and a 'backside' onstage is the least to Jamaican people.

"We gone past man in frock onstage and saying anything to get a laugh.

"Actor Boy is neither here nor there. We are playing to the mass of the people. None of the plays (in the 2008 Actor Boy Awards) have been to the 14 parishes and overseas," Reid said, referring to Passa Passa and Bashment Granny while crediting Jambiz Productions with the mass marketing of Jamaican theatre.

"To me roots theatre is mainstream theatre now, whether they want to put it in a different language, comedy and all that," Reid added. "Roots drama, roots melodrama, whatever you want to call it."

- Mel Cooke