“IT’S A CRYING SHAME”…PLAYWRIGHT DAVID HERON DEMOANS THE ABSENCE OF THEATER FOOTAGE!

BY HOWARD CAMPBELL—
Observer senior writer—

David Heron—

Actor/playwright David Heron says it is “a crying shame” there is little, if any, footage of theatre stalwarts like actress Lois Kelly Miller who died in St Andrew on April 8.

Kelly Miller, who was 102 years old, was a giant of the pantomime and contemporary of legendary actress/folklorist Louise “Miss Lou” Bennett-Coverley.

“I was familiar with Lois’s long history of wonderful work with the national pantomime, but regrettably that familiarity was through anecdotes and memories of others who had worked with her. I didn’t attend many pantomimes as a child and by the time my own career began she had stepped back a bit,” Heron told the Jamaica Observer. “I think it’s a crying shame that so little archival material of her work and the work of others in those wonderful shows is not accessible today.”

Kelly Miller appeared in 13 pantomimes including Pirate Princess, Queenie’s Daughter, and The Witch. The absence of a Jamaican theatre archive, Heron stressed, has denied a generation of Jamaicans the opportunity to appreciate the achievements of her and other theatre luminaries such as Ranny Williams, Leonie Forbes and Charles Hyatt.

Heron worked with Kelly Miller for Ecstasy, his debut play, which opened at The Barn Theatre in 1997. She was the voice of Mrs Foster, an older ‘uptown’ mother whose son is in a relationship with a woman from a working class background.

The New York-based Heron’s introduction to Kelly Miller came in the late 1970s through a Jamaican interpretation of a classic work that aired during Easter on the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation television.

“My most vivid recollection of her as a youngster is her performance as Queen Herodias in Oscar Wilde’s Salome, opposite Bobby Ghisays as Herod and Denise Heffes as Salome. Lois was just electrifying,” Heron recalled. “I hope that production is archived somewhere.

Kelly Miller earned new fans when she appeared in the 1998 movie, Meet Joe Black, which started Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins.