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

The Trinidad Theatre Workshop (TTW) announces its next big event, Pastelle, Pork, and Parang, on December 13 at #6 Newbold Street, St. Clair. The event is geared towards continued diverse use of the space and expansion of the TTW brand as it celebrates 60 years and begins to re-establish itself as a creative hub for young artists.

Pastelle, Pork, and Parang is an outdoor after work parang lime which will feature Voces de Promesa, Amantes de Parranda, Los Dinamicos, RemBunction, Crazy and Marcia Miranda. All proceeds will also go towards funding the TTW School for the Arts Program.

This effort is being spearheaded by producer, choreographer and creative Abeo Jackson, who has just taken up the mantle of Artistic Director in Residence at TTW under the guidance of Albert Laveau. She is also supported by an all-woman in-house team, composed of Business Manager Loren Hernandez, Creative/Marketing Manager Marcia Seales-Rodney, and Theatre in Education Team Leader Afi-Ford Hopson, all powerhouses in their own right. In her short stint at TTW thus far and her bold bid to lead the entity into an era of sustainability, Jackson and team seek to completely revitalize the TTW brand,  maximizing and monetizing the potential of the still relatively new Newbold Street space.

Jackson said since the glory days of TTW, following its founding by Derek Walcott, the local theatre fraternity has gone through many different eras and iterations. “Each time it is forced to ask itself not just how should it attract audiences, but also, how do we become self sustaining? Furthermore how does it accomplish that task without initial sizeable investment from the State as well as private corporate entities? We continue to make claims of having a creative industry without making real efforts to ensure that it is in fact a viable one for actual creatives to earn a living a comfortably subsist.”

Jackson said that TTW also bears the responsibility of operating as a Non-Profit Organization, “as opposed to the commercial “town theatre” model that most local theatre goers recognize. As an NPO, TTW makes the effort to continue to run its long-standing School for The Arts Program geared toward the training and mentorship of children in the multiple disciplines of stage and performance. This new iteration of TTW continues to be hard pressed to find ways to support itself and staff at a time when government subventions for organizations such as themselves range in the $30,000 per year ballpark, a mere drop in the bucket of financial commitment required to keep an entity of this nature afloat; a time where the only creative entities that seem to attract permanent sponsors and patrons seem to be popular pan sides as T&T does not yet have a corporate culture that fully embraces the importance of the arts and particularly the theatre.”

As such Jackson and team are making the effort to create a space that is fully welcoming and open to artists from across disciplines, thus opening up for performance and event space usage, as well as a brand in house new relationship with television/video production company OMG Magazine. There are also plans to reintroduce a full performance core, the foundation on which TTW was originally built,  for which the team hopes to have auditions next year. Since Jackson took on artistic directorship, TTW has seen both of its now operational 50 seater performance studios busy with new work by new producers, first time directors and actors of varying levels of experience, each weekend for the month of November. There was Tyker Phillips’ original piece ManSplain, the ‘Mentees of Raymond Choo Kong’, directed by Wendell Manwarren, supported by Jackson, with the original “Laugh and Cry Duz Live in the Same House”, and first time producer Cindy F Daniel brought the month to a close with “Circle Mirror Transformation”, with her cast being directed by first time directors Kearn Samuel and Rachel Bascombe, mentored by Helen Camps.

There has also been the opening of an In-House Consignment Boutique, Afrocessories Home, which is a collaborative space of local artisans like Madame Moringa, Sarafina Fashions, Sanian Lewis’ Sananitos, Art by Halcian Pierre, and Bees Accessories, to name a few, curated by Seales-Rodney, creator of the Afrocessories brand which she has now aligned to TTW.  Twenty-five percent of all sales from the In House Consignment Boutique goes back into TTW coffers and directly toward funding the School for the Arts program.

For tickets for Pastelle, Pork, and Parang, and for information on TTW and its new initiatives, call 622-4125 or 329-4619.