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Students and faculty will have many opportunities to interact with acclaimed Jamaican screenwriter Trevor Rhone during a campus residency that starts Sunday and concludes Saturday, March 6.
Rhone will join classes, meet with English students pursuing honors theses, and give a keynote speech for a student conference on Africa, as well as give talks open to the public. In addition, his residency will include discussions at other schools in the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges.
At Lafayette, Rhone will enhance classes in English, theater, art, government & law, and Africana Studies.
He also will lead a discussion of the critically acclaimed film The Harder They Come, for which he wrote the screenplay, after its showing 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 25, in the Farinon Center Limburg Theater.
He will give a lecture titled “Conversations” 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 2, in the Kirby Hall of Civil Rights auditorium. A reception will follow. The talk is an extension of Rhone’s autobiographical play, Bellas Gate Boy. “His story builds a bridge within the African Diaspora between his ‘circle of self’ and the ‘circle of others,’ be it other cultures, values, the anxieties of and about Americanism and post-colonialism, and/or the different social constructions of race,” states the talk description. “In his exploration of self, Trevor Rhone discovers lessons about the nature of these circles, the tensions within their areas of overlap, and how the creative arts can be useful for processing and negotiating these tensions in order to move forward.”
Free and open to the public, both events are sponsored by the Presidential Speaker Series on Diversity.
Another movie with a screenplay written by Rhone, Milk and Honey, will be shown 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 1, at Gagnon Lecture Hall of Hugel Science Center. He will follow up with a discussion of gender roles in the movie noon Friday, March 5, in Interfaith Chapel, Hogg Hall. Free and open to the public, the events are sponsored by Nia, a student women’s organization that celebrates ethnicity, gender, and sisterhood.
Rhone will speak on “Connectedness in Diaspora” 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 27, at Keefe Hall Commons. The free event is sponsored by Brothers of Lafayette.
He will give a talk hosted by the McKelvy House Scholars at their residence, 200 High Street, 6 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 29. Dinner will be provided at the free event.
Rhone will give the keynote speech at “Africa: Turning our Impediments into Stepping Stones,” a student-organized conference involving Lafayette students and about 20 others representing other colleges and universities, 8 p.m. Friday, March 5, at Oechsle Hall room 224. The conference is sponsored by Africans Creating African Consciousness and Interest Abroad, Lafayette African and Caribbean Students Association, and the Africana studies department.
He will give a reading and participate in a discussion with the Boys and Girls Club of Easton, as well as interact with students and faculty during scheduled events at Lehigh University, Muhlenberg College, and Moravian College.
Rhone’s writings provide cinematic and theatrical windows into the complex sociology of “blackness” in African Diaspora life in North America and the Caribbean. Much of his work entails explorations of the role of gender in the changing economic, social, and relationship landscape of Black Diaspora life.
Rhone says he seeks “to mirror the lives of the ordinary man, and to reaffirm his strengths in such a way that he learns to diminish his weaknesses and to believe that he can make a positive difference in his society.”
Los Angeles Times calls Rhone’s The Harder They Come “timeless and universalnothing short of amazing.” The 1973 film stars music legend Jimmy Cliff and features reggae music as both soundtrack and plot element. A poor Jamaican youth looks for success in the recording industry, but finds corruption everywhere he turns. The movie has become a cult classic and was an important factor in bringing reggae music to the attention of an international audience. It is rated R and lasts one hour, 38 minutes.
Milk and Honey was honored with the Genie Award for Best Original Screenplay at the Toronto Film Festival. Rhone’s screenplay credits also include the recently completed One Love, which received high praise at Cannes last year and the Toronto Film Festival this part June. His book Old Story Time (Longman Press, 1981) is in its 23rd printing and his most recent play, Bellas Gate Boy, had a highly praised reading at Harvard University last spring and will be published this year by MacMillan Press. He is completing a new play, Sweet Potato Pie, which looks at black life in New Orleans.
Rhone also engages in acting, directing, and producing in the dramatic arts. He has authored more than 15 works for the stage. He served as director of the 1974 film Smile Orange and had a supporting acting role in the 1992-93 ABC television series “Going to Extremes” and the 2001 horror film Revelation.
He was a guest lecturer last year at Harvard University and has served in that role since 1996 at University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. He is founder and resident playwright at Jamaica Barn Theatrein Kingston, the country’s first theater of 150 seats for the production of locally written theatrical works.
Rhone has received the Jamaican government’s Commander of the Order of Distinction and many other honors, including the 1988 Ward Theatre Season of Excellence Award, for making a significant contribution to Jamaica throughtheatre; the 1988 Musgrave Gold Medal Award, for distinguished eminence in the field of drama; the 1989 Cross Cultural Communicationthrough the Theatre Arts Award, given by the International Association of Black Professionals; the 1996 Living Legend Award, presented by the National Black Theatre (U.S.); and the 1996 Norman Washington Manley Award, a national honor bestowed once every four years in recognition of distinguished and sustained eminence in the field of dramatic arts.