THE Theatre Guild playhouse in Kingston yesterday opened its doors for the first performance for the tenth Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts (CARIFESTA X) with the play ‘Gravity’.

The play, an Urban Inc production, highlights the journey of a young Chinese woman who migrated from her hometown into the West Indies, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, losing her identity somewhere along the line.

The story, according to its writer and performer, Tricia Collins, is a tribute to “the girl from China and her fore-daughters who strove across time and distance to survive as great women despite their bindings of race, class and love.”

Collins said her purpose for staging the play is not to save the world or right the wrongs of history, but to unite the personal and global.

“Through individual experience perhaps we will be driven to defy gravity and push ripples outward that may affect the history of our children,” Collins said.

Prime Minister Samuel Hinds and his wife Yvonne were among those who attended the play, which is directed by Diane Roberts who considers herself an Afri-Caribbean Canadian director.

Over 16 plays from around the Caribbean will be staged during CARIFESTA X. Included among these are ‘Legend of the Silk Cotton tree’, from Guyana; ‘River Bottom’, from Jamaica; ‘One White, One Black’, from the Cayman Islands; and ‘Odale’s Choice’ and ‘Going for Love,’ out of Barbados.

The Theatre Guild Playhouse, which is now a renewed venue in Guyana, is one of several venues that will be hosting theatrical performances during CARIFESTA X. Among the other venues are St Rose’s High School, Bishops High School, and the Linden Concert Hall and School, better known as LICHAS Hall. (GINA)