The Play

BAYANO is a play by Afro-Panamanian-American playwright Darrel Alejandro Holnes. The play tells the story of Bayano, an African who fought a war with the Colonial Spanish in Panama for twenty years in the 16th century and is said to have freed over 1,500 Africans from slavery. We meet our hero as he searches for love, family, and as he searches to understand the true costs of the freedom that he’s fighting to give his people.

Told through a multi-story structure, the play starts with Bayano in the Land of the Ancestors at the bottom of the Atlantic and follows him as he is guided by the African deity, Yemaya, through several stories that reflect his youth in Yorubaland (West Africa) with Femi, a Yoruba queen, and his adulthood in Spanish Colonial Panama with Sindara, a cimarron warrior. Yemaya then shows Bayano how the slave trade continues to plague and haunt Femi and Sindara, the two great loves of Bayano's life. Bayano must then choose between coming back to life Africa or coming back to life in the Americas in order to help more Blacks find freedom.

The Structure

This play tells the story of Bayano using a multistory structure of classical epics like Homer’s The Odyssey and One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) or The Mahabharata. This structure is used to make a case that stories from Black History should be as widely studied and performed as epics from the Classical age.

The Form

The play is presented as a Panamanian Congo dance drama which is a form of African masquerade developed by cimarrons from the same community that Bayano freed from Spanish colonial slavery, the Panamanian Congos. This form of dance theater always tells stories of Black liberation and, through satire, criticizes slavery and those who supported the institution during Spanish colonial times.

The Music

True to the form of Panamanian Congo dance drama and west African masquerade, this play has plenty of music! The play’s music is a mix of Panamanian folkloric songs and original songs composed by the playwright.

Music in the play would ideally be presented by a live band of three musicians and a small chorus of at least two women vocalists. The chorus would be lead by the orisha, Yemaya, a deity or goddess, who guides other characters in the play.

Click the links below to listen to three songs from the play. The first two are original compositions by Darrel Alejandro Holnes with additional music by composers David Engelhard, Charlie Romano, and Jesse J. Sanchez, the latter who remotely produced the tracks. The third song is a folkloric song from Panama.

The Dance

The Congo dance of Panama is the most unique and colorful manifestation of folklore in the province of Colón. The dance has its roots in Africa and came to Panama by way of escaped former slaves known as “Cimarrons.”  The dance has been passed on from generation to generation and can be seen today in the province of Colon, in coastal towns such as Portobello where the Afro-Panamanian legacy remains very much alive. The Congo is not just a dance, it is also a form of Cimarron self expression and inspiration.

The Congo dance is done barefoot because of the relationship between black skin and earth. The dance is a mixture of movements, percussion and loud sounds, colors, dresses and masks, myths, magic, and songs. The dance style is mostly improvised, although certain steps and poses characterize the choreography. However, there is no fixed sequence. Intuitively, dancers respond to one another, composing while dancing, resulting in perfectly synchronized movements but also many unplanned gestures. The interaction occurs with amazing speed and coordination. The dance is open, frank, erotic and linked with a spirit of play and melodrama.

Bayano uses Congo-based dance as a healing system from the psychosocial consequences of racial discrimination, violence, and trauma. Afro Caribbean dance in this piece is a source of individual and communal pride and knowledge. Dance in this tradition is used to strengthen, empower, and repair. By using dance as a tool to understand and learn about the traumas of our past such as the truamas of slavery, the play encourages audiences to not fall back into re-enacting the traumas but to move past them.

In this tradition, transformative symbolic imagery is embodied through movement, helping the self to deconstruct imposed narratives and reconstruct a self-created one, a liberated one. This allows dance to advocate (through movement language) in the play for a culture of visibility, inclusion, and equality. Consequently, dance here is a tool for decolonizing self.  

The Costumes

This form uses colorful masks and costumes made from mostly found materials. The women wear a long skirt made ​​up of a patchwork of very bright colors fabric, a blouse with a colorful frill necklaces, flower in her hair, and bare feet. The men wear a fringed shirt and pants (made of strips of colored cloth), masks, and bare feet. For this play, the costumes would resemble these traditional costumes to honor the tradition.

The History

Excerpt From “Black Rebels: The Cimarrons of Sixteenth Century Panamá” by Ruth Pike

“During these same years a new leader emerged who succeeded in bringing together all the cimarrons of the Atlantic coast. Bayano, as he was called, is described in the sources as being a strong good-looking man, very hispanicized, that is, spoke understandable Spanish and probably held a position of authority in his native land. His followers served and treated him like a king, and he governed them in like manner, making them obey and fear him and comply with his orders. Even the Spaniards always referred to him as “el rey negro Bayano.” He soon had a following of some 1,200 men and women and with them carried out a long series of campaigns against the Spaniards.

The palenque of Bayano was established on the top of a high and steep hill in an area of dense jungle and mountains that protected it on the Atlantic side. On both sides of the hill two narrow roads had been carved out that led to entrances fortified with strong palisades. The dwellings of the cimarrons were on the top of the hill. In the empty spaces between the buildings they had dug deep silos where they stored their food. King Bayano and his warriors lived in this impenetrable fortress and it was from this place that they went out to attack the Spaniards on the roads and waterways and the out- skirts of Nombre de Dios and Panama. They also had another hideout in the jungle where they kept their women, children and old people.

The Governor of Panamá Alvaro de Sosa (1553-1556) sent out three military expeditions beginning in 1553 against Bayano and all failed. One of them commanded by Gil Sanchez actually arrived in the area dominated by the cimarrons where they encountered Bayano who defeated them and killed their commander. Only four soldiers escaped alive. The struggle against the cimarrons could only be successful when fought by an armed force of experienced soldiers financed with funds from the royal treasury that were designated for that purpose. In 1556 the Marquis de Cafiete passed through the Isthmus on his way to his new post as Viceroy of Peru (1556-1561). When he was informed of the dangerous situation in the region, he freed 30,000 pesos from the royal treasury, one half for the war against the cimarrons and the other half to build a fortress for the protection of the Atlantic coast.

He named Captain Pedro de Ursúa as general of an expeditionary force against the cimarrons. The recruitment of men for the enterprise began immediately, but Ursúa because of the dangers and hardships involved soon found that he could not obtain anyone for any price who was willing to join. All believed that participation meant certain death.”

And so begins our story…

Ruth Pike, "Black Rebels: The Cimarrons of Sixteenth Century Panama," The Americas 64/2 (2007): 245-46

The Playwright

Darrel Alejandro Holnes is an Afro-Panamanian American writer, director, and producer. Holnes is the author of Stepmotherland, winner of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize and the International Latino Book Award in Poetry, and Migrant Psalms, winner of the Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize. Holnes has received numerous accolades, including a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing (Poetry) and the C. P. Cavafy Poetry Prize from Poetry International for his poem "Praise Song for My Mutilated World." His work was recently nominated for Best of the Net and his poem “Transcendental Love Song” was the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day. He has received scholarships and fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Cave Canem, and CantoMundo. He has also received fellowships to MacDowell, UCross, Saltonstall, VCCA, and BAU at the Camargo Foundation, among other residencies.

Holnes is also a playwright and screenwriter. His short film Marimacha premiered at the New York Latino Film Festival, screened at over a dozen festivals, and won several awards. His plays include Franklin Ave, Bayano, and Black Feminist Video Game, and have been produced at National Black Theater, Center Theater Group, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 59E59 Theaters, and elsewhere.