Richardo Keens-Douglas

Background

Richardo Keens-Douglas was born on May 17, 1953, on the West Indian island of Grenada. He is a son of Templeman Keens-Douglas, an engineer, and Muriel Keens-Douglas. He is the youngest of seven brothers and sisters, one of whom Paul Keens-Douglas, is a popular Trinidadian writer.

Education

Richardo Keens-Douglas spent the important part of his childhood in Grenada.

Keens-Douglas attended Presentation Brothers College, a Roman Catholic secondary boys school in St. George's, the capital of Grenada. This period, it was a British colony, that’s why British history was taught at schools instead of Grenadian. In his free time, Richardo read Charles Dickens, English comic books, and the Hardy Boys series.

He left his home country for the first time as a teenager and came to Canada to enter Dawson College in Montreal. Passionate about performing, he acted in College’s School of Theatre. He also performed at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Ontario for a while.

Career

Richardo Keens-Douglas taught at Children’s Theatre from 1974 to 1977. His searches for good acting jobs after college was ineffective because of skin color discrimination and he decide to create good roles in his own writing plays.

One of his first works became ‘The Obeah Man’ performed for the first time in Toronto in 1985. It was well met by audience and critics and received Dora Mavor Moore Award. Another success, ‘Once Upon an Island’, was staged in Edmonton six years later.

Thereafter, during his career, Keens-Douglas has worked as a performer in various capacities – as an actor, a radio personality, and as a storyteller. His stage credits with roles in ‘Souvenirs’, ‘Two Brothers’, ‘Ain't Misbehaving’, ‘Pinocchio’ (title role), ‘Threepenny Opera’, ‘Dames at Sea’, ‘Twelfth Night’, ‘The Unseen Hand’ were completed by the appearances in such movies as ‘Zero Patience’, ‘Adderly’, and ‘Fields of Endless Days’.

Richardo Keens-Douglas has hosted the CBC national radio show ‘Cloud 9’ and a CBC-TV’s Sunday Arts Entertainment program.

Keens-Douglas’s books for children reflect the foundation of his approach to storytelling: self-acceptance and learning to feel pride in being who you are. His 1992 book ‘The Nutmeg Princess’ grew out of an experience he recalls with a young black student, who asked the storyteller if he knew any stories about a black princess.

The award-winning ‘La Diablesse and the Baby’ is drawn from the storytelling tradition of the author’s native West Indies, while Freedom Child of the Sea addresses the topic of slavery from a child’s perspective.

ln addition to being an author and performer, Keens-Douglas has also conducted a seminar titled “Creative Thinking through Storytelling and Self-Esteem” at workshops in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean. He has served as an inspirational speaker to the audiences that include the Ohio Department of Education, the Texas State Reading Association Conference, 1998’s International Reading Association Conference, and schools across North America.

Richardo Keens-Douglas has also authored several short fiction stories published in anthologies, including ‘Take Five’, ‘Blizzard Press’, and ‘Fiery Spirits’ by Harpercollins. His plays ‘Once upon an Island’ and ‘Tell a Tale’ were broadcasted on CBC-Radio.

One of the latest works by Richardo Keens-Douglas is a play ‘UNCLE’ dedicated to the life and times of Grenada’s first Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy.

Achievements

• Richardo Keens-Douglas’s popularity with audiences of both children and adults has made him well known, not only in Canada, where he now resides but in other parts of the world as well. His unique techniques, which combine teaching with telling stories, continue to keep Keens-Douglas in demand by teachers and students alike.
  
  As an author, he has been a recipient of such awards as the Dora Mavor Moore Award and Storytelling World Honor Award. His ‘Diablesse and the Baby’ was a finalist of Silver Birch Award, and his play ‘Once Upon an Island’ was nominated for Sterling Award for the best touring production. Several of Keens-Douglas’s books for children have been translated into French, Spanish, and Japanese.
  
  Keens-Douglas has also been nominated for Gemini Award as the best host in an arts program, for Sunday Arts Entertainment. His hosting role on the Canada wide broadcast of ‘Cloud 9’ made Keens-Douglas the first black person to ever serve in that capacity before a national audience. His writings have contributed to the visibility of people of color in literature and the arts.

Works

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  • La Diablesse and the Baby

    (This is the eerie and colorful tale of the legendary crea...)

    1994
  • The Trial of the Stone: A Folk Tale

    (It is a humorous folk tale in which a stone is accused of...)

    2000
  • Anancy and the Haunted House

    (Anancy stories originated in the oral tradition of the As...)

    2002
  • Freedom Child of the Sea

    (A young man, swimming off the shore of a Caribbean island...)

    1995
  • Mama God, Papa God: A Caribbean Tale

    (This West Indian tale revisits the creation story from a ...)

    1999
  • Ay Ya Yai Ivan: A musical play about Hurricane Ivan

    (A two-act play with 15 songs based on hurricane Ivan, whi...)

    2014
  • The Miss Meow Pageant

    (The book is vintage Keens-Douglas: bursting with his uniq...)

    1998
  • The Nutmeg Princess

    (A powerful modern fable about friendship, faith, and the ...)

    1992
  • Grandpa's Visit 1996
  • Tales from the Isle of Spice 2004

Views

Through his tales of life in the Caribbean and Canada, Richardo Keens-Douglas teaches children about their cultural heritage, encourages creative thinking, broadens young imaginations, and promotes his audience’s self-esteem.

Quotations: "If I had sat and believed what people thought of me, or waited for someone to give me work, I would still be doing just that – waiting. That's why I tell artists don't sit by the phone waiting for it to ring, get up and write, create your own work."

"They [parents] taught me to believe in myself and be who I want to be. It is because of the strength I got as a child that I can express myself in so many ways."

"Work on your craft. It's not so much what you do when you get the job, it's what you do between jobs. You always have to be prepared. You must be ready when opportunity knocks. You can't wait for when you get an acting job, to run out and start working on your voice, or diction and things like that. You have to be ready for that break, because you never know when it will come."

"In my stories the outsider always has something magical to give or teach us. I’m trying to say, ‘don’t block opportunities.’ Someone might come to you and you might push them away, but they’re the one that could change you or the world."

Membership

Richardo Keens-Douglas is a member of Canadian Actors' Equity Association, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television, and Radio Artists.

Personality

Richardo Keens-Douglas is a positive person full of energy. He is characterized by people who contacted him as one who appreciates a good balance in life.

Quotes from others about the person

• "As a first-class storyteller, the author knows exactly how to produce a written text that mimics the oral tradition." Val Nielsen, reviewer

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  fitness

Connections

Father:

Templeman Keens-Douglas

Mother:

Muriel Keens-Douglas

Brother:

Paul Keens-Douglas

Sister:

Vilma Steele