For something a little different to do over this Easter weekend, you might tune in Saturday and hear an original radio play by two V.I. residents entitled "Mosquito Fly," set on the island of St. Croix.
"With all the shooting and violence you hear about in the media, we wanted to show people we can have some fun too," said Abdul Ali, who wrote the play along with Alric Battiste. "It represents another side of life in the Virgin Islands."
The play is a comedy about a thoroughbred horse named Mosquito Fly, brought to St. Croix from Nevis, which keeps winning races at the Randall "Doc" James Racetrack on St. Croix.
"The local horsemen get jealous of an outside horse winning all the moneys and get a donkey to spit on him," Ali said. "Mosquito Fly develops all sorts of esteem and mental problems from this and starts to run backwards."
This is a reprise of sorts for the play, which first aired back in 1993. Battiste and Ali have rewritten it to work in topical issues like Diageo and the problems collecting property taxes, Ali said.
The cast features members of the community group Generation Now, including Semaj Johnson, Karl Knight, Kevin Williams Sr. and Fernando Webster, to name just a few. It is a repeat performance for Johnson, who played a part in the original production back in ’93, when he was a 16-year old student at Country Day School.
Ali works at WSTX, and he and Baptiste want to use the play as a template to use in area schools.
"We are hoping we can go into the schools and get students involved in putting together their own radio plays," Ali said. He envisions getting groups of students to put together dialogue, creating new plays or even changing and updating "Mosquito Fly," then recording and hopefully broadcasting their productions.
WSTX AM 970 is airing "Mosquito Fly" Saturday at 2:30 p.m.
