Paula Lindo – Our histories, stories, present, future.

As society explores ways to enable young people to express their problems, more and more theatre companies are going into schools to interact with students. One such company is the Drama Making A Difference (DMAD) Company, who will be putting on a play in June to fund their efforts in the schools.

The group is comprised of young actors who want to make a difference in T&T.

The play, titled “Shadows: What is in the darkness must come to light,” is a hilarious battle of the sexes set in a hairdressing salon. While the female hairdressers question their relationships and wonder if there are any good men out there, the male barbers wonder if women really know what they want in a man. Marketing Manager Kyle Cox said “the play is called Shadows because most of the time we forget our shadows are there and we take them for granted, so the play is about taking your partner for granted, and is there an ideal partner?”
The play was written by a member of the company, who said she has encountered similar situations in her everyday life. She also did interviews to get people’s stories and their opinions on what she was writing, so there are many stories incorporated into the play. Cox said “you might see yourself or a friend or somebody that you know on stage, because she wrote it from different people’s perspectives. The company loved the play and decided to put it on, because this is a space for young people to be enriched.”
Part of the proceeds of the play will go towards putting on a playback theatre program in several schools. Playback theatre is a type of improvisational theatre where actors are given scenarios by the audience and have to improvise a scene immediately on stage. Cox said funding is always a problem for these ventures, even when school principals ask the group to come and perform. The group is willing to do the productions for free, but putting them on still incurs a cost, so the company has decided to raise the funds themselves.
Cox said the company has seen an impact in schools where they have run the program, and have been asked to return by teachers who have seen positive results, which they count as a measure of success. “During the workshops we don’t give answers, we show the students themselves, and it’s up to them to decide if they want to change or improve or stay the same. The students would see themselves on stage and we tell them the back line is a mirror, because when you’re looking in a mirror, you don’t ask someone else to fix the problems in the mirror, you fix them yourself. So it functions as a self-empowerment tool.”
The last schools the company went to were Point Fortin East and West Secondary Schools, as part of an initiative by Atlantic LNG, and the theme was “Pioneering Your Passion.” The group discussed with the students that pioneering your passion is all about having the confidence in yourself to go after it and knowing what this will involve, such as time management and studying. Cox said the students already knew what they needed to do “so it’s more a sense of giving them encouragement and showing them that there are people out there who are supporting them, who are coming into the schools to help shape them.”
He said there are always students asking to join the company after they perform at schools, while other students will come and talk to the members about what they want to do and they encourage them to go out and do it. “It’s active, it’s theatre, and we’re not coming to teach them, they work out what they need to do. The school system is designed so much so that the teachers are always teaching the students and not listening to the students, so we’re giving the students an opportunity to say what they have to say, to speak their minds and reason out things. While teaching is necessary, empowering students to think for themselves is also important.”
Cox said hopefully the play will encourage more people to support the group in their work with youth in T&T. “We’re big about youth development and change, and our mission is to provoke thought and stimulate change.”
“Shadows” will be held at the UWI LRC Auditorium on June 4 at 7 pm and June 5 at 6 pm. Tickets are $100. For more information, call 487-0486 or 764-2317.