After 16 years as a pioneer teacher in the dramatic arts at the John Gray High School, Mrs. Nasaria Chollette has joined the Cayman Islands National Museum as Education officer.
Mrs. Chollette |
Mrs. Chollette is developing scripts for Museum vignettes (brief historical and cultural scenes on Caymanian life), which will be filmed for showing in the Museum.
In conjunction with the Museum’s own Debra Barnes-Tabora, Mrs. Chollette will oversee the entire process, from writing the scripts, selecting actors, to producing the scenes for filming.
The US-based Wilderness Graphics, a company that specializes in museum exhibit design, will be editing the footage.
Another responsibility will be a public interface role, engaging target groups such as schoolchildren to build connections with the Museum; developing dramatic products as a means of tapping local funding; and raising general public awareness of the Museum and its role.
‘And I am loving every minute of it,’ says Mrs. Chollette. Her overall aims, she says, are to strengthen local cultural awareness and knowledge, and to raise the perception in the population of ‘ownership’ of the Museum. ‘There is so much about who we are as a people that we don’t know,’ she says.
Among the vignettes she is working on for filming later this month are the well-known Wreck of the Ten Sails; the story of Long Celia, an African slave who was found guilty of insurrection by spreading the word that slavery had been abolished before it had been officially announced; and some dramatic events back in 1905 when the Cayman Government negotiated with Nicaragua in a dispute between fishermen on both sides, states a press release.
Mrs. Chollette’s new responsibilities are very reminiscent of her role as a teacher, and she emphasizes that teaching remains her first love. ‘I am still teaching – just under different circumstances,’ she says, adding that notwithstanding her impressive qualifications in fine arts, her intention had always been to teach, as opposed to working on the dramatic stage.
‘People have come to know me for my work in raising awareness of local culture…and all of that has brought me to this point – I am still educating but specifically now in the arts, culture, and history.
Her qualifications include a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from Howard University, and she credits her experience at Howard with imbuing her with a sense of identity, and valuing and being proud of it.
That experience, she says, ‘created the hunger’ among that institution’s graduates to learn more about their own and other cultures.
From there she earned a Master’s in Fine Arts from New York University.
Her focus as the young returning graduate teacher qualified in the dramatic arts was to build among students a base of cultural knowledge, which was translated into many entertaining stage pieces. Their repertoire included dramatic productions, poetry, skits, storey telling.
‘This was exciting for those students,’ she says, reflecting on the animation of one student among those taken to a Broadway play on one of the many student excursions to New York. After one particular operatic performance, as she exited the theatre the student threw up her arms and declared, ‘This is what I was made for!’
While this student did not rise to such heights, she reflects. ‘It made a difference to her life – it added richness to her life,’ and a sense that she deserved such excitement and reward from exposure to such heights and breadths of culture offerings.
Another reward of her teaching years is the sense of achievement when she sees many of her students, counting off a half dozen or so, parlaying their drama skills into careers other than banking or other traditional occupational fields.
Over the years she also held responsibility for holders of a post created during her tenure for young teacher’s aides.
A number of her prize students returned after graduation as teacher’s aides and a few have ultimately trained and returned as qualified professionals in the field of education. ‘That has been particularly rewarding,’ she says.
In another interface of that rewarding period with her current role, Mrs. Chollette is drawing on fledgling dramatists from her teaching years to fill the bill for actors in her Museum productions. She will also be tapping into local drama companies’ repertoire of actors, and other people in the community who are interested in breaking into the field of acting.
And her enthusiasm in all of these exciting but challenging roles has never waned: ‘This is the only place I am from and I have to make it the best,’ she says.
She credits much of her steadiness to her husband, full-time artist Randy Chollette. ‘A part of what helps me to do what I do is his spirituality,’ she says. ‘His gentleness is what helps me to balance my life.’
Mrs. Chollette
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