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

T&T’s first original soca musical, Stick-ey Desires, will be performed this April by students of the Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA), UWI St. Augustine. Head of Department and Director Louis McWilliams said the play centers around Peter, a mas-man who plays in a steel band, his decision to move to New York and how it affects the women in his life.

McWilliams said the script was written by himself and six students, Rayshawn Pierre, Kerri McNeil, Daniella Katwaroo, Joshua Moodoo, Tricia Kellawon and Marissa Ramnine.

“I knew I wanted to do something local because that’s where my strength is. I spent Semester One just feeding them with soca and forcing them to listen to the lyrics and not just hook lines, so the emphasis in class was really on listening to some of the older soca songs and pulling out the key things inside of them.”
The name Stick-ey Desires was picked from a number of student submissions which included lines from some of the songs. He said it was the one that seemed least clichéd and also would cause people to think about the play when they heard it. “Sticky doesn’t always have to mean gluey. There are the pan sticks, one gets stuck in New York, that whole notion of stick is inside of there, and the key players inside there all have desires, so at the end of the day, that’s the one that stood up.”
McWilliams commended the writing team, musical director Khion de Las and the members of the live band who provide the majority of the music for the play. He said it was a plus to be able to pull the music, dance, technical theatre and theatre students of the campus together for one production.
This play is the latest in the series of student productions put on by the DCFA, beginning in 1987. Previous productions have included the Japanese play Rashomon, Earl Lovelace’s Salt, Ti Jean and His Brothers, Echo in the Bone, Bitter Cassava, Same Khaki Pants, Shango: Tales of the Orishas, African and Indian plays and calypso and Broadway musicals, among others. The production is an exam for the participating students, who are drawn from the Production Two class, with support from the Production 1B and Technical Theatre classes. “We’ve had processes where we’ve built productions and we’ve had processes where we worked directly from the script and so we always give the bunch of students a new experience. I think they would have benefited from this process of building something from scratch and they should be proud, knowing that we started from nothing and now have a full-fledged musical using over 30 songs,” McWilliams said.
He said he enjoys local musicals and hopes that this one in particular will inspire people to think about taking soca out of the party and making it educational. “Artistes have sung some really good lyrics but people generally only hear the chorus and don’t listen to the message inside the song. Given the fact that one of our students is the two-time Soca Monarch, probably it just felt natural to go that way. I didn’t think of it before, but it just fit in with what we’re doing.”
McWilliams said he wants the audience to join in and sing along when they come to see the production. “I’m looking for the level of interaction that soca has, as a lot of the songs are familiar. People might pause a bit because the lyrics are in the context of the play sometimes and slightly away from the original lyrics, but I want to encourage a sing-along. I actually thought this year I’d try to do something that isn’t heavy, something that is fun that people will enjoy, so a soca musical just fitted into what was happening. I have no problem with people getting up and dancing in the aisles during the show and participating. I hope they go away with a sense of nostalgia and thinking that soca music has potential. Soca has meaning and I think introducing this young cast to some of the older soca and seeing how comfortable they are with it now was a joy.”
The play runs March 31 to April 2 and April 7 to 9 at The Learning Resource Centre, UWI St. Augustine. Show times are 8pm and 6pm on Sundays. General admission tickets are currently available for $100. Tertiary students with student ID pay $75, and secondary students pay $50. For further information and tickets contact the DCFA at 663-2222/ 645-1955 or email dcfa@sta.uwi.edu