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

The fourth Annual New Play Festival (NPF) features three new plays which have never been staged. This year, the featured plays are The Serpent’s Mouth, a radio play by Randy Ablack, Ring Game by Arnetia Thomas and Dey Dey Gets a House by Judith Theodore. The event takes place from November 8 to 10 and 15 to 17 at the NDATT Studios at 97 Southern Main Road, Curepe
The NPF 2019 is presented by Playwrights Workshop Trinbago (PWT) and the National Drama Association of T&T (NDATT).  Each play will run four times over the two weekends.
The three plays explore serious issues which are common in T&T. Thomas took inspiration from the children’s ring game Brown Girl in the Ring to tell the story of Susanna, a brown girl in the ring of a never-ending game. “Trapped and controlled by her sister Lisa, and Lisa’s friend Alice, she tries to find love, comfort and freedom in a place where they don’t seem to exist. Will she find what she’s looking for? Will the game ever end? Or will she always be trapped in a ring game?” Thomas is a 22-year-old playwright whose foray into playwrighting is her latest exploration of creative expression.
Ablack’s The Serpent’s Mouth is set in the sleepy village of Carenage. Three police officers investigate the disappearance of a young boy, and the search threatens to disrupt the accepted levels of corruption to which villagers have become immune. The play speaks directly to the disconnect we have between our communal responsibility and our social ills. Ablack is a founding member of the PWT, a poet and short story writer.  He possesses a degree in Literature and Communications from COSTAATT, and is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts at the UWI St. Augustine.
Theodore is a veteran playwright, actress and dancer who has starred in a number of film and stage productions. She was a participant in the Cropper Foundation Residential Writing Workshop in 2005, the Trinity-in-Trinidad Playwright Workshop taught by Tony Hall, and the UTT Craft of Fiction Creative Workshop conducted by Elizabeth Nunez. She has short stories in three anthologies and has published her own anthology of stories in ‘Told by the River’. In Dey Dey Gets A House, villagers come together to put up a shelter for a homeless man, but there is opposition from one neighbour who objects to the location of the shack. She finds a way to get the homeless man away from the shack and so out of her environment, but her plan crashes.
The Festival is the culmination of a process begun in PWT’s Monthly Readers Theatre Series, where playwrights are able to bring their plays to be read by actors, directors, producers and theatre-going people, and to receive feedback. From this body of scripts, each year three are chosen for further workshopping and inclusion in the NPF. The playwrights go through a two-month script development process, where they work with an experienced playwright, functioning as a dramaturge, to develop the script. A draft of the script is then used to cast the play, following which the playwright works with a director and actors for another two months, wherein further rewriting may be done. At the end of this two-month play-building period, the plays are performed multiple times over two weekends. In 2019, an additional step was added to the process in the form of Dramatic Readings, which took place in August during CARIFESTA XIV.
Tickets cost $50 per performance. For more information, scheduling and tickets, go to www.iamndatt.wordpress.com/npf-2019, find @iamndatt on all social media platforms and call or message 351-6293/687-0083.

Photos courtesy Playwrights Workshop Trinbago