Title: Bellas Gate Boy
Author: Trevor Rhone
Publisher: Macmillan Caribbean
Reviewer: Barbara Nelson

Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, USA, spoke of Trevor Rhone as Jamaica's "pre-eminent screenwriter and playwright" on its website when he visited them on his campus residency in early 2004.

The site also mentioned that "His most recent play, Bellas Gate Boy, had a highly praised reading at Harvard University last spring."

Judy Stone, senior editor, Macmillan Caribbean Writers, says Bellas Gate Boy "is the most recent and one of the most successful" of Rhone's works. "It explores the influences that eventually led him to the creation of a genuinely West Indian form of drama, earning him the title 'Father of Jamaican theatre'."

This autobiographical play takes the form of a monologue. Beautiful and isolated Bellas Gate - a small village in deep rural Jamaica, on the border between St Catherine and Clarendon - is Rhone's birthplace.

Twenty-third child

He was the 23rd child of Hezekiah Nathaniel Rhone - Mass Heze, "an enormous brown man" - and the third child of Rosamond Wilhelmina, his wife - Miss Mac, a short, rather plump black woman.

Yvonne Brewster, with whom Rhone co-established the Barn Theatre for professional West Indian productions, says in the introduction, the play "explores the first 30 years of the playwright's life. It is written to be performed in two halves. However, the monologue consists of three distinct 'movements'."

The first movement, she says, addresses Rhone's life in Jamaica from birth to age 21. The second looks at the three years, 1961-1964, that he spends studying in England at Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, and the third looks at his re-entry into Jamaican society and the eventual writing of "his first autobiographical work, Old Story Time, in 1979".

Rhone talks about his childhood - growing up in a big old ramshackle house - afraid of the black-heart man who preyed on little children - aware of sex at an early age - "The animals were doing it. My brothers were doing it in the bushes. I, too, at an early age wanted to do it. At six."

He has fond memories of tea meetings and remembers the first time he saw live theatre. That was when he knew exactly how he would spend his days - "singing an' dancing an' reciting an' making music".

From Bartons Primary School he went on to Beckford & Smith's High School in Spanish Town on a scholarship. He got into the drama club and recalls that: "The day I stepped into the Ward Theatre for the first time I entered an amazing and wonderful new world."

The story unfolds

Following a meeting with the Trinidadian actor Edric Connor, Rhone makes plans to go to Rose Bruford College in the UK. That is when he meets "a Miss Yvonne Clarke, a Jamaican and recent graduate of the college" for an audition. "She lived on a huge property that now houses the Barn Theatre."

The story unfolds gently and beautifully. Rhone with his "brown felt hat" travels by boat for 21 days to England to a college where he was "one of three blacks in a student body of 200".

It was three years of struggle and hardship but in every difficulty he learned that "God is good and angels abound."

Trevor could not sing nor dance and (in Act two) when he is to perform in the College's major production, 'Green Pastures' in London, he gets "totally sick". But he prays through the Psalms, recovers wonderfully and gave a stunning performance that got rave reviews for the show.

He returns to Jamaica "with one Willie penny" in his pocket. "I was a mimic man - British accent, tweed jacket and an umbrella. Of course, I felt superior," he recalls. "Plenty people at the time thought I was a bit of a poppyshow."

He taught at Kingston College for three days a week and then got another two days at another school in "a very depressed part of town".

After many months of struggle the Barn Theatre came into being, but Trevor was "running between two schools, two radio stations and the theatre". His life was "on a treadmill and the stress was eating away at" him. So he resigned his teaching job at Kingston College, resigned the radio jobs and started to write.

It was then that "all the fervour and passion and repression in my soul poured out like an endless stream of lava and love", he says. The first draft of what became Old Story Time was born.

Hit film

Trevor Rhone was the Barn Theatre's resident playwright for 12 years. His first record-breaking production was the 1971 Smile Orange, which he turned into a hit film. Among his many awards is Jamaica's 2003 Prime Minister's Award for Lifetime Achievement and the USA NBT 2003 Living Legend Award (Film).

In a first for both Rhone and the Macmillan Caribbean Writers series, the publication includes a CD that features Rhone's performance of the monologue.