Biography

A professor, poet, and playwright of English, Dutch, and African descent, Derek Walcott was a 1981 MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant recipient who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. Born on January 23, 1930 to Warwick, a civil servant, and Alix Maarlin Walcott, an elementary school teacher, Derek Alton Walcott, his twin brother Roderick, and sister Pamela were raised in Castries, Saint Lucia, in the West Indies by their mother. He received a scholarship to study at the University College of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, where he majored in French, Latin, and Spanish. At college, he began writing plays. His first, about the revolutionary Haitian leader Henri Christophe, was produced in St. Lucia in 1950. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1953. During his expansive career, Walcott shifted between poetry, playwriting, and directing. His most well-known play is Dream on Monkey Mountain, which debuted off-Broadway in 1971 and for which he won an Obie Award. He wrote the book and collaborated with the singer and songwriter Paul Simon on the lyrics for The Capeman in 1998. The musical ran for only 68 performances and became one of the most expensive flops in Broadway history. A Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Lucia, the recipient of numerous awards such as a Royal Society of Literature Award, Sir Derek Walcott died after a long illness on March 17, 2017. He was 87. (Full Bio)

Plays

Ti-Jean and His Brothers (1958)

The author retells the story of three brothers who are challenged by the devil who is striving to grow human so he can enjoy the evil he's wrought firsthand. Ti-Jean, the swift and elegant hero who is but a boy accepts the challenge. It is an Aeschylus-like adventure turned into a charming, poetic, and romantic fable with a deep undertone. Ti-Jean, like all heroes, is a fool. He passes through the tangled opinions of life, loosening knowledge and bearing it on his shoulders half-Ulysses, half-Pentheus, with a final judgment belonging to the frogs and fireflies. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 12 (1f, 5m, 6any)

Characters: Cricket, Frog, Firefly, Bird, Gros Jean, Mi-Jena, Ti-Jean, Mother, Bolom, Old Man or Papa Bois, Planter, Devil

Publication Info: Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1970. (Link)

Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967)

An old black man who sells charcoal and lives apart in the forest because of his ugliness is put in jail, where his aberrant mind presents him with a dream: a white woman who walks in the silver beauty of the moon beckons and becomes his mistress. With the jailor and felons taking parts in the nightmare, he sets out on a pilgrimage to Africa where he imagines he has many wives and does great and glorious deeds. But the truth must be faced: the white mistress is really the suppressed desires of the black people for white culture, and until she is killed the black man is seduced into slavery. Thus the old man beheads the goddess of his desires. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 9+ (2f, 7m)

Characters: Tigre, Souris, Corporal Lestrade, Makak, Apparition, Moustique, Basil, Market Inspector Pamphilion, A Dancer, Little Bearers, Sister of the Revelation, Market Women, Wives of Makak

Publication Info: Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1970. (Link)

Remembrance (1977)

Remembrance consists of the reminiscences of Albert Perez Jordan, a Trinidadian schoolmaster who lost his elder son in the 1970 Black Power uprising. Whereas he is initially only aware of a sense of failure consistent with a lifetime of colonial subjugation, he gradually comes to recognise the inner strength that has enabled him to remain firm in his convictions throughout a period of nationalistic and racist fervour. Inspired by Thomas Gray's “An Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard” (1751), the play is a testament to the value of the individual, however seemingly humble, insignificant and provincial. (Source)*

Cast Requirement: 7 (2f, 5m)

Characters: Albert Perez Jordan, Mabel Jordan, Frederick Jordan, Mr. Barrley, Esther Hope, Anna Herschel, Mr. Pilgrim, An Interviewer, A Schoolboy, A Waiter

Publication Info: Remembrance & Pantomime: Two Plays. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980. (Link)

Pantomime (1978)

In the comedic Pantomime Walcott again revives the Crusoe story, this time as a play-within-a-play, in which roles are recast so that Harry Trewe, English Manager of a small hotel in Tobago, plays Friday, and his black servant, Jackson, plays Crusoe. The reversal highlights the fraught colonial relationship, yet leads to detailed discussion of their individual and cultural differences and ultimately greater understanding between the two men. Although criticised by some reviewers for long passages of exposition, the play was staged at least nine times between 1978 and 1981 in the Caribbean, England and the US. (Source)*

Cast Requirement: 2 (2m)

Characters: Harry Trewe, Jackson Phillip

Publication Info: Remembrance & Pantomime: Two Plays. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980. (Link)

The Odyssey: A Stage Version (1992)

With its inspired counterpointing of Homeric and Caribbean themes, Derek Walcott's play, commissioned by Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company, springs from the same imaginative sources as his epic poem Omeros.

Episodes of the story of Odysseus' protracted wanderings from fallen Troy to his island home of Ithaca are interspersed with a commentary by the blind singer Billy Blue. Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, the giant Cyclops, Circe and her revellers, ghosts, and mermaids are among the cast. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 16+ (6f, 10m)

Characters: “Blind” Billy Blue, Odysseus, Athena, Penelope, Telemachus, Eurycleia, Antinous, Eurymachus, Amphinomus, Ctesippus, Leodes, Polybus, Melantho, Eumaeus, Arnaeus, Nestor, Menelaus, Helen, Proteus, Eurylochus, Elpenor, Stratis, Costa, Stavros, Tasso, Nausicaa, Alcinous, Anemone, Chloe, Cyclops, A Philosopher, Two Patrolmen, Ram, Circe, Revelers, Celebrants, Anticlea, Tiresias, Agamemnon, Achilles, Thersites, Ajax, Suitors, Attendants, Maids, Sailors, Mermaids, Courtiers, Athletes

Publication Info: The Odyssey: A Stage Version. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993. First Edition. (Link)