Braata Productions Celebrates Historic Year of Achievement in 2017

"You've come a long way, baby" was one of the most iconic advertising campaign slogans of the 1970's.

And now, Braata Productions, the nonprofit Caribbean Cultural entity founded by Jamaican Andrew Clarke some eight years ago, is giving new life to that timeless tag line.

Because in 2017, the company set a historic record of achievement, producing an array of events that brought the theater, music and cultural traditions of the Caribbean to an unprecedented number of patrons both in New York and elsewhere.

Spearheaded by Clarke- the company's Executive Director- all three divisions of Braata Productions- Braata Theater Workshop, Braata Education and Outreach and the Braata Folks Singers- made their own unique contributions to a year of unqualified success for the company.

Under the umbrella of The Braata Theater Workshop, the company started the year by producing The Caribbean Playreading series as part of Black History month in February, bringing the plays of rising and established Caribbean playwrights Dahlia Harris, Aston Cooke, Amba Chevannes and Kesha Isaac Adams to the attention of New York audiences.

In March, the theater workshop brought Guyanese playwright and actress Ingrid Griffith's one woman show Demerara Gold to Manhattan's New Perspective Theater to great acclaim, before then embarking on its biggest production to date- the world premiere of the new Caribbean Musical Welcome To America, which bowed at the York College Performing Arts Center in Queens in April.

The production, with book by K.R. Williams, music by Williams, Andrew Clarke and Joel Edwards and lyrics by Williams and Clarke, was an immediate critical and commercial success, resulting in a held over run due to overwhelming demand and a subsequent revival for a special one night only Gala performance in Baltimore in October.

For their part, The Braata Education and Outreach division produced a revival of the acclaimed AIDS 'edutainment' production Positive - written by the late Jamaican playwright Trevor Rhone- in May at the St Paul's Theater in Brooklyn. This was followed by a collaboration with the SU CASA Workshop Initiative to produce a series of craft and performance workshops for senior citizens in Jamaica Queens during the summer.

Braata Education and Outreach also enjoyed their biggest successes to date with their annual festivals- the Bankra Caribbean Folk Festival in the summer and the Old Time Grand Market Christmas Celebration in December. The Bankra Caribbean Folk Festival, held each year in Jamaica Queens, achieved a historic first when its success in early June lead to the entire festival being transferred and remounted in Queensbridge Park, Long Island City in late June and then again at Innwood Hill Park in upper Manhattan in September. The huge attendance at the triumvirate of locations meant that the festival reached more than four times the number of people in 2017 than in any year to date.

Not to be outdone, The Braata Folk Singers continued their hectic round of local and regional performances as the tri state areas most renowned ambassadors of Caribbean Culture, and offered acclaimed performances at the Bankra Caribbean Folk Festival, the Grand Market Christmas Celebration and numerous other events during the year.

In reflecting on the past year, an exhausted but happy Clarke looks back on 2017 as the year in which Braata Productions really came of age.

"There were times when we looked at the calendar before us and then at each other and thought we must be crazy. It was the kind of dream year we had always envisaged- with one event just rolling into another- but we didn't know if we could pull it off. But we did. And it proved that our dream -to be a cultural arts organization that our community could rely on to be honest and dignified custodians of our culture, has become a reality. So bring it on, 2018... The best is yet to come."

See, also- www.braataproductions.org

PHOTO CAPTION - Cast of Braata Productions' Welcome To America- A Caribbean Musical