Corie Sheppard Podcast
Corie Sheppard Podcast
Episode 239 | Tyler Giselle Phillip
In this week’s episode, playwright and cultural force Tyker Phillip brings real Jamette energy and opens up about the making of her acclaimed play Poison, a gripping drama born from the haunting lyrics of Dexter Dapp’s “Breaking News.” She breaks down her creative process, the casting of Nikolai Salcedo and Tafar Chia, and why she chose intimate spaces to make the audience sit in discomfort.
We dive into her Belmont roots, her work with Belmont Freetown, and how mentors like Raymond Choo Kong, Tony Hall and Sprangalang shaped her path. From Mansplain to her iconic flag woman performance, Tyker speaks on what it means to create art that is culturally grounded, politically charged, and spiritually necessary.
Click the link in my bio for the full episode
#coriesheppardpodcast #tyker #belmontfreetown #poisonplay
tiger. How are you, ma'am? I'm good this pre-conversation.
Speaker 2:We have a lot in common. I have to say that usually I have notes to start off. You're the first guest that come with notes too. I'm very nervous. Tiger has, and she turns to the blank page just before we start to her. So I'm very, very nervous. But, tiger, we had an opportunity when we first spoke to come to your production yeah and I kind of want to start there okay, no problem, poison yeah let me let me, before I talk about my experience there.
Speaker 2:What was the genesis of it, how you came up with the idea, what. What started?
Speaker 1:what started poison. So last year, 2024, I did a writing workshop with award-winning playwright eric barry. I've known eric for a very long time and I feel like, oh, there's the opportunity for Eric to kind of show off himself. And so my friend Rena Christian and I pressure him to do a writing workshop. Eric, you have to do a workshop, and he did, and it was five of us and we went through eight sessions with him over a period of like three or four months, and one of the homework exercises initially was to write a piece of prose, a page and a half, write a story. It took me I wrote it the day before, the day before it was due, because I'm a horrible student I submitted it, that's the best student.
Speaker 2:More time is off than the day before it due.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it's crunch now, so your heart is getting tired, Of course.
Speaker 2:Of course that's when he juices his flow.
Speaker 1:I hate that about myself. And so I presented it in class and he was like, okay, great, we presented his other classmates, da, da, da, okay. And at the end of the session he said, okay, home, hopefully, look for the next day, write a script based on your story. And I said, oh god, eric. So I did, I went away and I I wrote this piece, which was actually based on a piece of music that I featured in the, in the prose, which is um, dexter dapps breaking news, because I absolutely Dexter Dapp's Breaking News, because I absolutely love that song, so great. But I envision that this young lady was in a vehicle and she heard the chorus, the chorus of that song which goes Stop fight with him, make him fight for you like.
Speaker 1:Tyson, you're too nice for him. The boil of him belly just poison him. That's the lyric, and in the back the girls who sing the chorus go poison him yeah. So sweet, huh, so sweet, and I love it, I love it.
Speaker 2:But the truth Wait. Let me be clear you like the poisoning part or do you like the harmonizing? I like the song.
Speaker 1:I like the lyrics. I like the theme that we're going with yes, let's go but I also really like that they took this, this, really this song.
Speaker 2:It's so violent and made it so sweet I'll tell you I didn't know what the song was about till I came by you. Yeah, you know it's kind of singing along with it and breaking news. I'm barely paying attention to it the news.
Speaker 1:the reporters are there because he gone. So I nailed the piece poison based on that piece of music, um. But then it evolved into this the poisonous relationship between the two characters, akia and d, the poisonous environment that they've been a part of, of this society that is chernobyl and tobago, and so to explore that through these characters was where I was at so character-led. But it's also specifically about this event of wanting to kill this man who has harmed Akia. What does that look like? What is justice for her? What does it look like for Dee, who is a creature of the underworld, as I described him initially? Why would we take this step to do this thing? And in sitting with these characters and working it through, I'm being like, oh gosh, just think during the next two weeks for Eric. I'm like what are my experiences with situations like this, with men like this, with my own self and my own stories? And what would I have liked to have happened when I was in a situation where I felt like, nah, just, I need some justice here, I need some, some vindication for having experienced abuse. And so poison was born.
Speaker 1:And then we read it after um, after the course was finished, eric gave beautiful notes. He gave great feedback and so it's very different from what it was initially. Gotcha Presented it. I had Taffa read for Akia and I had one of our students because she and I have taught for over 10 years together. One of our students read the rule of D.
Speaker 2:So when you're presenting it. So you had to do a story, then you had to make it into a script. Yes. In the presentation just for that workshop. You have to act it out or do the actual reading.
Speaker 1:So, yes, oh, I see Eric's thing was we need to hear the work.
Speaker 2:I see.
Speaker 1:So, as writers, it's not just you write a script, okay, cool, it's done. No, now we need to hear our work. So, between myself and eric and reena, we gathered up some actors who we know from in this way, something like right, come and read our work. And so there were four scripts and they were read, I see, and out of it, um, I was like, okay, well, I heard it yeah I'm like okay I'm looking to go and put it back on the shelf and the bully that is my friend, reena kushan.
Speaker 1:I mean we take turns bullying each other. Um, she's like so when you do it, boys, because it read to her like a film right so she was like so we have to make this in our movie.
Speaker 3:I was like really take a deep breath, sends in our movie.
Speaker 1:Let's get from this, let's do this. I was like read it, take a deep breath, send it to my friend Gabby in New York. She sent me some nice, beautiful notes. I sent it to my friend Shaq. He was like me. Know, if I want to read this, you just send me thing and then don't do it because I am a chronic of my work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so for me to have written poison last year and then premiere poison this year, is a big deal for me yes, yes because most of my stuff is on shelves, or external hard drives or any people on them well, that tells me we have plenty more to see, so that's good yes, and have thing to see, thing to read and engage with um, so yes, so she was like right, and then I have the opportunity now with my cultural group to go to montreal. How I get any money way. And she was like, well, you have a place.
Speaker 1:So that's his friend what we gonna do, use that as a fundraiser. And so I was like, all right, okaygrudgingly, I'll share my work with you all. And so, yeah, I decided, all right, cool, and Taffa had told me she said, when you're doing this play, I have to be in it.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:All right, I was like all right cool. The person who read for Dee initially was too young. Based on his storytelling, I was like well, man, going to get a much tougher Right. There must be an equal yoke in happening. Mm-hmm. Who's the best male actor in Trinidad, oh my God. And so Nikolai Salcido enters the chat Right, and I reach out to him before Carnival, because he's a masked man as well. I say hi, nicolai, this is tyke phillip, real nervous, uh. Um, I reach out to him.
Speaker 2:he was like, yeah, sure, no problem so you had a relationship before you just reach out?
Speaker 1:no no, I know the class since I'm 13 okay, got it I know taffa since I'm 16. Okay, um, taffa and I are best friends um nicolai and I, so I know Nikolai's 11 years my senior Um, but I, so we. We would have met when I was 13 and then worked together in my early twenties, but this would be my first time as his director and producer, so it's a whole different dynamic, I understand.
Speaker 1:So now I have to come. Nikolai, do you am I worthy, you know, message him. And he was like yeah, I was like afterolai, do you Am I worthy, you know, message him. And he was like yeah, I was like after Carnival, let's meet. And about two weeks after Carnival I gave him the script and he was like well, yeah, and that's the thing we were talking about earlier, because it's you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you're getting plenty of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do get a lot of that and I don't know why.
Speaker 2:It speaks volumes.
Speaker 1:I guess, so I guess it speaks volumes of me, my personality, my work ethic. He was like, yeah, when you want to do it? And I was like I'm thinking about maybe May, and he was like, okay, cool, he asked me all the details where we were using da-da-da-da-da-da and he was from jump, was like I'm on right I'm coming. He's like right. So who playing opposite me? And I was like taffa chia and he was like oh, I've never worked a taffa before, let's do it right so poison was born and yeah, and now it's a new world the response was good.
Speaker 2:How you felt about the response to it? Um well, first I met about the response in terms of it sold out all the three nights the friday night was a little tricky, but I realized not just me.
Speaker 1:for other producers in the space who produced work in June of this year, friday was a weird day for us all and I'm wondering if it is. People don't want to go to the theater on a Friday.
Speaker 2:People tired from work? Maybe, I suppose. Maybe, yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1:And they just want to really fully enjoy going going to the theater, of course. Um. So friday was kind of weirdy, um, but saturday people were standing up.
Speaker 1:Sunday people were standing up, yeah, um, which I was like okay, I don't know if it's me or if it's a combo of me taff on sound, or if it's just them and people just want to see them together for the first time, or but I think it was a combo. People's responses were really nice. A colleague said to me this week it was refreshing. Somebody also said to me I haven't seen this kind of theater in a long time, or I've never witnessed this type of theater. My work is very well. I consider it micro theater Because I have no intention of going to a 400 seat theater. No.
Speaker 1:Like, Queen's Hall is not the space for my world, serious it really isn't I like to be in your face, intimate.
Speaker 2:Listen Dong in your throat. Maybe a good time to talk about my experience. Yes, please, let me start by talking about Taika and time, right Starting with today. I got walking here today, close to time. It's like how good has Conrad been? And I'm like, hi, it's like you're here on time. Well, on time, and a reputation for that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I saw your post a few days before that. You have a production manager where eight o'clock is eight o'clock. You should want to start at eight. So when I walk in the place, it's you know I went to the wrong place. Ah okay, my brain is working funny ways, you know. So I pull up at a place on Murray Street what was the name? There's a production space at the bottom of Murray Street, just before Arapeeta Avenue. I think it's somewhere that Ray Cannell does some stuff.
Speaker 1:Black Box.
Speaker 2:Completely. Let me tell you about my my theatre illiteracy. Right, I hear play it's black and black. I just come to it immediately.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that for Wendell and Roger.
Speaker 2:I love it I sit them outside killing time. I say, nice, I'll take a go. Not killing time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. About five minutes before I go running bam, and I find like nobody in opening gate. I said, but how are you locked up tight? So yeah, and then I realized I had the wrong spot. So when I see my coming there's hustle and outcoming from there.
Speaker 1:And then they have to find a park.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, because it's.
Speaker 1:Super Yanni Boulevard and it's Saturday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the park quite up there on Saturday nights, yeah, saturday night, yeah, but again, I don't even know what is a dramatic reading. So I come up in this space and now the space tight, I was like all right, I can't really hide here, and you know, when you come later and he's leave all his seat right in front, yeah, so I sit down. And when you say intimate and up, close and personal, yeah, I think it's something that people need to experience themselves, because that the theme of the play, of course, because it's domestic violence or well, it's rooted in domestic violence, but then, as you say, some kind of justice, revenge, whatever you want to put it as is already an intense topic and this nuance, this is tricky and the fact that you say no in the middle of this is moving. I found it to be very, very intense. Like I cast it uncomfortable. I was like what is going on here? At one point, nikolai signed up right next to me and I was like this is a lot, so that's deliberate for you.
Speaker 1:That is deliberate.
Speaker 2:That's what you want.
Speaker 1:I want that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I want my audiences to feel like they are in the living room with these characters. They feel uncomfortable to be witnessing this thing. Am I supposed to be here right now to be witnessing the thing? Am I supposed to be here right now? I feel like whoa, I need to leave, but I can't because my legs not gonna cooperate or also because I'm afraid to breathe and the audience member told me I wasn't sure if to exhale because I felt like we were so close yeah that's the type of work I love to produce, because it's we are very separate from theater in that we go to a show to be entertained, we go to escape.
Speaker 1:There's no escape when it delimits me. You're coming to the theater to be moved to make some changes in your life to something, must. It must evoke something in you, because there's there's all different types of theatre. There's gospel theatre, there's lovely people doing Shakespeare for youth, for adults. There's I use theatre, dong Sol Tu did Sundari same weekend as me, so that's musical theatre of. You know Roland Camboula doing Sparrow, tent and One. So there's work with that. There's Richard and Penny and Cecilia and I'm doing, you know, comedy. There's space for that. There's also space for my work. My audience is my audience. I don't want a 500 seat theater because you're going to lose the nuance, as you said, of the storytelling, you're going to miss something because you're so far removed from it. You are an observer in the work, um, and your role and responsibility here as an audience member is to see it, engage with it. All right, okay, cool, now what? Where do I go from here? Now, what? What is?
Speaker 1:my responsibility now all right, okay, so when I did my work, mansplain in 2019, it's just a play about all men and men's experiences. As you know, experiencing manhood in trinidad right it was as intimate as this. People call me out and say gail. I talked to my father for three hours the day after your show because I just wanted to know if my dad had experienced any of these things Does does. I do not want Does what you want.
Speaker 1:Does and I, I think, because my work is also very spiritual and very ancestrally based, like I, I don't need to make all the love.
Speaker 2:Right, make all your love if you want to laugh you could go somewhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course and experience that and engage with those, those types of work. But then you come and you're sitting and show like poison. It's like I want you to, as an honest woman, grapple with your own morality when you leave from here and you sit down like where's what? I would have killed him, boy, I wonder. Would I have been on her side or his side, like who? Yeah, I wanted to think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that. I like that Because it left me that way. I like the way you described the discomfort. I was never comfortable in the seat, never, at no point in the place, because, for those who haven't seen it right, we're talking about it now in hindsight, but it's a reveal. Yes.
Speaker 2:Right and the reveal at the end. That was intense too. That was intense because at first, when it started, I wasn't even sure that I was looking at a brother and sister. I feel like I'm looking at a couple, the way they were talking at first yeah.
Speaker 2:It started to show itself. You, and there was one point I feel like the gun pointed at me. I was like what's going on here? What is this? Taika Mirjana, execution, you know? So I think. But I think that discomfort I'm starting to understand it now in terms of what you're, what you're going for, because it is the topic itself, as I said, is one that we need to discuss more as a country, maybe oh, yes, definitely, and I was having this conversation when Newsday interviewed me of like, we only experience these people for a paragraph and a half.
Speaker 1:We don't know their lives before and we sure don't check in with them after that paragraph and a half, of course, if they even get that much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and for them to get a paragraph and a half is going to be tragic. Yeah, some people get a sentence. It's going to be tragic. Yeah, you understand it's going to be bad.
Speaker 1:And then so we don't engage with the people who live in these neighborhoods. And I'm saying the people who live in these neighborhoods. I live in these neighborhoods, sure. So, beyond the headlines, who are these characters? These people have families, they have lives, they went to school, they have a certain level of education. But they're also moments of joy the little baby born. They have a christening home. You know a birthday party, or you know the joy that comes with grieving a lost one at a wake. Those are those intimate, intricate moments that we don't have access to because we are separate from these people. We don't know them and we don't care to know them.
Speaker 1:But based on my life as being a creative person, since I'm hiring this thing my whole life, I always ask why I have a seeking spirit. I want an. All right, let me get on to the, to the meat. So now I'm you know that incident happened with a young lady who went to um, this bar in in um what do you call it? In baritaria here after work, and then young man called outside and she went in the car. I want to know why did he make that choice? Why did she make that choice? I want to get to the crux of the thing, which is why, when they put the headline producer stages play about psychology or criminals, I was like, oh my gosh, what is this?
Speaker 1:But, you know it really is, that it really is because I want to know, I'm so curious always about about the why and about the circumstances that lead up to a choice. Sure sure. But we as a society deal with things in isolation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's something I talk about all the time, you know. Uh, I I feel like sometimes our definition of victim is very, very narrow oh yeah in these situations, you know, because I, like you, I try to understand and I'm not. I try not understand to justify, maybe even forgive. I just don't understand. I just want to know what. I don't think people are one thing, so the paragraph brings it down to one thing.
Speaker 2:It's like a criminal did X, y, z, or a victim was blah, blah, blah, but it's like the lead up to it and it's a part of the issue that I feel we have in our society. If we don't discuss certain things, it will just stay in the dark and it will continue, perpetuate long after me and you go on.
Speaker 1:And it's a cycle, as you say it after me and you're gone. And it's a cycle as you say, you know it. Just it's going to keep going, and keep going, and keep going, and then we're just going to be like, well, it's not my family, it's not my responsibility, it'll be very hands off.
Speaker 1:So now you have no choice but to sit and shift left and right and hold your breath, Of course because you're, but now you are, you are sitting in Akia, in this living room, and you are witnessing the relationship that they have with each other, the relationship they have with the community, with the space that they find themselves being born into. You have to watch. I mean, you can leave.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying I can't stand up kind of by the door, you can't leave. You can't leave because then what is this? If I come out, my thing will look good.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, you have your full autonomy. You could get up, you could go there, but it was so interesting to me to nobody went to the holiday show. No. Everybody went.
Speaker 2:You can't stop.
Speaker 1:I was like what is happening? And I was telling my friend yesterday because she wasn't here to come to the show. I said there was a night when I think it was either the Saturday or the Sunday and there's a moment in the show where Sal where Taff's character Akia she gives Sal the weapon back. She says hey, look.
Speaker 1:And he says move from my view with that and his voice filled up the space and he's a tall guy and he has move from my being with that and his voice filled up the space and he's a tall guy and he has a presence and an aura. Love that man. And I just the whole audience just went. Everybody leaned up On all sides, everybody just went. I tell him move from me with that and everybody just went and I was there and I'm looking, I'm like everybody leave back so you're there observing me while you, I'm watching you, I'm watching you, I'm looking at you, all engaged with my work.
Speaker 1:Because this is, you know, this is new for me, you know, and to be as close to this Because when I had my work in 19, I did not want to see it. No. I don't want to watch. I had worked so hard, it was a lot. It was stressful. I stayed backstage.
Speaker 2:This is your one for mansplaining.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was not having any backstage and then the last night they come backstage looking for me. They want to give me flowers and pull me out. I'm like the work is not about me guys no it's about you, yeah, I just. I don't know the words, but this rose, I was like no, I want to see yeah, you see all of it. I want to see, I want to know what, what, what you guys in the moment experienced it there was a lady on a Friday night.
Speaker 2:I can imagine.
Speaker 1:I can imagine she was like what and then there was a another, a young lady, sitting down on the end on a Sunday night and I saw she there's a monologue that tough and then she go yeah, she pick her side and then later on she lean fall she in it. Yeah, yeah, say right okay you have them. Pillow you have them. Yes, that is the type of work I like to do. Right, it's the type of work that I feel like I've been called to do sure.
Speaker 2:So Poison for you is a complete story, or you have intention of fleshing it out more.
Speaker 1:I mean I would like to leave it as is, but characters always talk to me. You know, I always hear Tony Hall telling me in my head, like when the characters talk, I just listen to them and when they hush you tune. Okay, when they start to talk, start to write yeah start to write, start to go, so people are like so where do you rest?
Speaker 2:yeah, so other people?
Speaker 1:asking this, right yeah, because I feel like okay I want to see she go in the car. I want to see she take the man out I want to see what happened I'm like I want to go backwards too. I want to go back to the time where you know when the incident I'm like do I wanna do that, or do I wanna just give you all work?
Speaker 2:yeah, as the audience like you all could decide whatever I suppose you, yeah, I guess you know muhammad was here and he said something about his performances and he said it's all one thing I was asking him about their audience interaction and stuff and I guess that is for you too is all is all one thing.
Speaker 1:The audience is part of the thing to some extent, yes, um, because the actors have done their job. As a writer and director, I've done mine, um, and then you're gonna take from it what you will gotcha, um, because you come in with your own perception your own experiences, your own perspectives. And so you're going to receive it different to how someone else will.
Speaker 2:And that's a point of art, that's an interpretation of the action.
Speaker 1:So now you have some work to do, whether it's sitting down here talking about it or at home, yeah, and I have nothing to do with me. That's, you've now experienced it and you are going to turn it into whatever you must I would too yeah, so to some extent, yes, the audience is important and I don't ever underestimate my audience, ever, ever ever I mean the things I write that I find funny but nobody laughed, and things that I find like really people you know do a little chuckle and so again, it's also.
Speaker 1:You know, it's all how you receive it gotcha yeah my work done I yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, your work starts when you think was done before I go back. When you say Tony Hall, you're really wrong. You're here today when you talk about Tony Hall, but when you came out at the end to kind of talk to everybody, well first. The first thing I noticed was how it broke the tension almost immediately, because I mean, I guess, when you're watching a show or a play, when you forget the person you're watching.
Speaker 2:That's when I know the person really have you. You know, I went to school with Nikolai. I never knew he was in the arts. Really, he's so quiet in school. I never hear him talk. He's a menace.
Speaker 1:I never he's really and I love that about him so much. Like he's, I feel so connected to him in that way of like being silly but also a lot of our going through the process of poison, realizing we have so much in common. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like belief system wise and I was like okay. And he said to me one night we left for USA, we went for a couple of drinks and he was like you know, the more I'm around you, the more I realize you're just like me. Yeah, what, oh my God? Because every day I'm in rehearsal. I have to be professional. I can't. Fangirl I can't fangirl.
Speaker 2:No, you can't do it.
Speaker 1:So you're saying that you didn't know he was in the art? It's like, oh yeah, he would keep that away from everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was in the art. He's a very private guy. Quiet, quiet, as ever.
Speaker 1:Very quiet and very, but very meditative and very reflective and very introspective guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of depth, A lot of depth.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, he's a pananiotron yeah.
Speaker 2:I'll get him to come and talk about it here, hopefully one day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's multifaceted, he's a musician.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's continuously impressive. The more I see him, his voice is always impressive. But I remember when you came on and you started talking, that was the first time I realized I was watching Nikolai.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:You know, I was like shit. This Nikolai is a real person, you know.
Speaker 2:you get so caught up in the role of a gangster.
Speaker 1:He emotions, yeah, I mean, when you're working with best, yeah, the best, indeed the best of the best. I am so privileged to have worked with them. I did not take any rehearsal for granted.
Speaker 1:There's so much that I learned about my own process in working with them in the songs and realizing oh my gosh, I've gotten better as a director look at you, oh my gosh, people are understanding me and I'm giving clarity and but from the from jump, they just dived in and and embodied these two characters, yeah, in such a beautiful way that even two days before the show, nikolai and Toph were still finding things about the characters and then on the second night he was like I don't. Even two days before the show, nikolai and Toph were still finding things about the characters and then on the second night he was like I don't even feel like I mean, I know it's the second day, but I feel like I'm not finding all the things about Dee.
Speaker 1:I don't want to go next weekend. Yeah. And I found that to be like. That blew my mind because I was like I'm not a writer pops.
Speaker 2:So the next weekend come in. What will we get?
Speaker 1:I would like to, I think in future. Yes, I definitely want to. I think now that the film idea is kind of chuck in, chuck in, chuck in. I'm like right, okay, cool.
Speaker 1:Maybe there's a reaction, so I need to make a film, but I mean, there's no bounds. It will evolve and become what it must. Um, I've I have thought about adding things to the script, as is um, but I have also like in my mind I'm like, if I extend it for theater, what does that look like? What is this story that you're trying to tell? Are you just adding for adding sake, yeah, or should you add the thing for the screenplay, mm-hmm, you know.
Speaker 2:Understood, understood. So going back into the day now, because I always used to talk about stand-up comedians and I feel like they have a role. When you watch Chappelle, for instance, he talks about very, very uncomfortable issues, particularly political for him. Yes.
Speaker 2:And whether he end up on your right side of the issue or wrong. I don't know if that exists, but at least it provokes some thought. Like you said, leave you thinking about it, and it seems as though you see yourself in the space, in the, to do the same thing yes you know, I I guess maybe because the most commercial part of our theater world here, or the most advertised part, is the comedy thing yeah it's horn.
Speaker 2:You know I mean, once you put horn on a flag or sell in trinidad, people come in to see the selfie. But um uh, where would that start have started for you to? To take such deep issues to make into into theater, to provoke thought?
Speaker 1:deliberately, I think. From my childhood I kind of been in the space of art, but also activism. Right. But in terms of creating my own work as that, I would say 2015, 2016. Where you grow. I grew up in Belmont, belmont. I was a Belmont girl, about four streets from where Kwame Ture was born. Yeah, I see. So you know I'm a revolutionary at heart. Belmont soil is very rich in that, and also the family background that I have. Everybody on my mother's side is an artist.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Everybody I see. So I kind of, you know, didn't have a choice. I had to be here struggling with all this, trying to make all this see, all this help every day. We be here, um. So, yeah, growing up in belmont was and I mean because I'm still there, I'm still living belmont um is a character in my life, um, and so that would have fueled the work and be like I alone see in this nonsense, or oh me, okay, right, let Right, let's write something, let's do that. So that was in the poetry that I wrote. That was in the things I did with my, my, my kiddie students when I started teaching kids. And, um, what is the? What is we trying to get across to audiences in terms of, you know, seeing yourself for being a mirror to society?
Speaker 1:I went to a play won't say what it is and it's, um, one of the. The storyline really is that this woman husband was holding she talking about hot Gross and she sent out Obeah for the man and Obeah spin back and she went crazy and I sat in here and I said so, man, don't get hot. Now what is the story about? The player? About the man getting hold? What's going on? That was in 2016. I said yeah, boy, I fed up See this woman hold story thing, I ain't well. Oh.
Speaker 1:God, I'm tired. I go down to a player about man getting hold. I go in to think I'm going to do a play about banging horns. I'm going and that's where the first inception of the idea for Mansplain came about Didn't have a name yet I was like, right, I'm going to do a man play, right. I started to think about all these things and then the pieces just wouldn't align and it just wouldn't happen. And from 16 into 19, when I did it so that was three years men would just find me Corey, I'd sit down on the bus. That old man come and sit down. I'd sit there the whole life Standing up in that line in the bank man come, stand next to you, start to talk to you, and these men just started to find me in different pockets. Fellas come, sound like, say I'm trying to talk, and these men just start to find me in different pockets. Fellas, who I had known for a long time. All of a sudden they start to share intimate details and I'm like whoa, where's this? And.
Speaker 1:I'll say, hmm, alright, I'm listening, I'm listening, you're selling it for my only time. I'm tuning in. I'm tuning in, and at the point in time as well, to 16, 17,. I was involved in a romantic relationship with a gentleman whose child mother was not allowing him access to their child, and she was living abroad, and so there was need for communication, and I saw how the lack of access to his child affected him and, by extension, affected our relationship. Gosh again in the middle of his arms. Oh, come on, Jeez, he can't have that.
Speaker 1:Oh, come on, Come on, I need to put this in a play.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to do something about it.
Speaker 1:I need to write about this. That relationship ended up fizzling out, but the work remained potent, beautiful. And then that relationship ended up fizzling out, but the work remained potent. And then I had some focus groups with fathers, which was chef's kiss so good.
Speaker 1:And then around the same time, I got the opportunity to go into the prisons with an ngo that I'm a part of called fire circle. Right and getting stories inside of there was the other that I was like, oh gosh, I need to do this show. Then I go to, then my mentor at the time, one of my mentors at the time, raymond Chicong, is murdered. I go to Grenada to cleanse, to da-da-da-da, and I'm assaulted on the beach. I said, nah, I need to do something about this. One man in the thing, we need to. If one man could get the information about how what they feel affects everybody, yeah, and I left the beach and I went to my son and I sent a message.
Speaker 1:All the men who I think I want to be in this right, this one, this one right, when I come home I want to meet, say alright, cool, before he passed he had he had told me, raymond, that is, you're still gonna do that man show that he's talking about, because in the last four years of his life we had a very close relationship and he was doing mentoring by the masters and one of his students was doing a monologue and he said I want you to come and make a call.
Speaker 1:I said all right, cool, no problem. And I stand up in the back of the thing and I watch him and the person who did the monologue he was talking about his friend who was murdered. I know the friend. The friend taught me maths, lived two doors away from me, like right on the road. I heard when he was killed oh man. So it was an amalgamation of the stories from the men, the incidents with me, the relationship I was having, the da-da-da-da-da Raymond pushing da-da women's debt, then going to Green Island and experiencing this thing, and I said, nah.
Speaker 1:And I just kept this is the work we have to do. This is the work. So I got an interview with one of the prisoners in maximum security. So thankful to the then commissioner and assistant commissioner and lead of programs for that, like to this day, so thankful. So we got that. A student of mine was going to school in New York. He sent a video I was doing interactive theater before it was a.
Speaker 2:Thing.
Speaker 1:So we had screens, we had a big screen and journey play. We had that Um uh, now very close colleague of mine, deidre. She was working with young people in Aruka, you know have filming those, those children, to get them involved in the piece, and every single one of the men who was in the show live. We all realized through the process that this was destined In that every single cast member, my stage manager and me none of us grew up with our father in the house. That's Obia and I like that. That is my kind of. It was also a very cathartic time for me because on a professional standpoint, I was going through real shit, it was stressful.
Speaker 1:it was crazy, it was fight dong, it was all kind of madness. And on a day when I was just like I don't think I want to be here anymore, I go down and walk in front of a truck. I was like, wait, no, I can't do that today. How are you so serious this?
Speaker 2:is impressive.
Speaker 1:I tell you yeah, boy, I can't Nah, can't disappoint my boys.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I went to you, sir, and I sat point my boys, yeah, and I went to you, sir, and I sat down and I listened to them run and I listened to them and they ran the opening piece over and over, which was a piece about fatherhood, and they finished and I went and I sat down in your room and I told them about what my day was and I'm in tears and I felt free to be vulnerable with them because they had been vulnerable with me throughout the process.
Speaker 1:So, all of that, to say that the reason why I do the type of work that I do is because I know the impact it has on me as a person and I know the impact it has on the people I work with and then, by extension, my audience, and then, when you go and you talk about it, by extension, another group of people Trinidad and Tobago. If we tore it, it, it's going to affect people in grenada differently, jamaica, barbados. It's going to affect, it's going to have a ripple effect. Drop this full bucket. And and because I know how deep-rooted my work is, I I understand that this is proper work.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:In that you ain't going to make no certain money from this you know what I'm saying. Don't put that out there. No, Well, it's been the history of Trinidad and Tobago that when you're doing work that is not seen as commercially viable, people don't want to put no money in that because they don't want to get views and likes and all this kind of garbage.
Speaker 1:But that is my lane, that's my space. I feel called for, that's destined, that's that's also what inspires me to write more, because I'm like, nah boy, be able to tell this story, this one here, this is the one, yeah, this is what we had to tell this one. And in telling those stories and sparking something in somebody else, it's like, oh well, then I, I do the work that I sent them for. I did the thing. My goal is not to be a part of the popular vibes. My goal is not to be a part of the cool kids table.
Speaker 1:I revel in my anonymity. I am so glad that people have no clue. I am I'm your least known guest scory and I love it. I love it. I'm niche, I'm very niche. Um, it's just, it's yeah and I do. It's yeah, and I don't take for granted the lessons that I've gained throughout my over 20-year career. Right, one of my. So Tony used to do. Tony Hall used to do playwrights' theater, readers' theater, where you would write a play and you would come and you would have people read it. It's very similar to what we did with Eric and one of the people who was head of this a play.
Speaker 1:I called van verne garen wouldn't know past verna was a retired fireman but he used to write. He was one of the first people to read my work and he said to me tykes, you write trinidad beautifully. There is something about the texture of your writing that is unlike anybody's that I've ever seen. When I read, I hear Trinidad. Whoa.
Speaker 1:I was 20 when he told me that I was 20 and I'll never forget it. Tony used to always tell me the characters thing, yes, but always. Like you are a professional Mako and your work is to look at people and to take those stories and to share it, which is what he told David Rudder.
Speaker 2:I see, and David.
Speaker 1:Rudder was doing things like writing, things like Madman Rant and these kind of things, Of course, of course of course. So, if Tony could tell David and he told me it's like oof.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I find it's such a parallel to me, like when I talk to writers understanding first what moves you to write is interesting because most people who had the experience or experiences that you had yourself, or with others that you had yourself or with others. They will tell the story. But they could tell the story in a barbershop, on the block or home or whatsoever it is. But your formal training in theatre, that's where you went into. Where did it start for you that telling your story in this way?
Speaker 1:so telling stories in general for me started as a child, so my okay family rundown yeah my great-grandfather, Clifford Archibald Roach, is the first West Indian cricketer to score 100 and 200 against England in a test match. That's my stock.
Speaker 1:That's what I come from. My great-grandmother. His wife, did not want her children to be Roaches, so she said to her husband they will carry my name, which is winter hyphen, roach, right, german woman. There we go, good stuff. So this and as we're starting I'm even going from before them because of acting this is my maternal family, right. My grandmother was a copywriter. She worked at tcc radio trinidad. Mccann Erickson. My grandfather was a poet. He was part of the Whitehall Players. He was good friends with Derek Walcott. We would have spent a lot of time at Trinidad Theatre Workshop. That's my grandparents. I spent a lot of time with them in my formative years. Their children, the eldest, colin Lucas, talked about my uncle when he was here. Sebastian Herbert I see he's an excellent musician Taught the world, was in Europe for many, many years. Tortured artist.
Speaker 1:My aunt used to read the news on TV6 at 6 am in the morning. If you saw her, you know you were going to be late for school. Worked at Radio Trinidad. Worked at Trinidad Guardian. My mother worked at the bar. My mom worked at the Guardian. My mom worked at TTT, worked with Sharp Productions. That's my stock. I got you. That's where I come from, maternally, paternally.
Speaker 1:It's all about support and we love you and we pray for you, which I appreciate and I love so much and that's good stock and I love my, my good small island genes that I get nice little warish spirit right, so yeah, which island um several. So you have grenadiers and vincent, as well as a great great grandparents who came straight from india as a merchant. So it's how all kind of thing eyes are trinity and I mix up Trini, yeah it can't be that.
Speaker 1:Taino and all that. So there's that. So as a child I was introduced to and around a lot of creative spaces. The first person to ever encourage me to write stories was a man called Roy Watts, who was my grandfather's friend, who was a general manager of TTT.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was always ending up here.
Speaker 1:There we go Right. Second person Theodora Gittins-Ullering, auntie Tia the mystic storyteller Right, right, right. I grew up in the bush. Okay, I grew up around Islamic people Hindus, catholics, baptist lady up the road I've been in. This week is Hosea I've been in this week is Jose. I've been Jose. I've been Jose in a long time, Me too, you know.
Speaker 2:I say I go in Right.
Speaker 1:You have Pagwa. When people get married, people die. It's a big celebration. It's come for food and a man named Jago used to feed us. He used to feed himself. He was a big, massive man Roti with a big, massive man roti, tall like me.
Speaker 1:yeah, you know, this is how I grew up, got you, so I was involved in in so many things, culturally as well as creatively and all this was belmont too this was belmont, this was tamana, this was um diggo martin pity valley, this was trackweed road where my grandfather lived, and then around the savannah and then seeing dance, and my grandfather always had people trips and in and out of the house always had some pan man or some person who need a lodging and they always had stories. It was always a vibe and I was always encouraged to ask questions it wasn't make people talk and go from here, it was, I was just dealing really yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Most people in trinidad didn't go tell you that, so they couldn't be in the adult I did.
Speaker 1:I like salt and rice, you understand, but I also had a healthy relationship with my maternal family, in that my love for food comes from my grandfather. Nobody can tell me that I'm not avocado on toast. I was getting avocado on toast Breads inside small. You can't come there. It's quite pervy. You can't have bread.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 60 cents for a slice too. You can't really say avocado toast is heavy money, avocado on toast, let's go. Yeah, the real McCoy, Right with some salt butter.
Speaker 1:That's where I come from. My grandfather also lived opposite face, so at one point in time I used to run away, sneak and go by the dog street and eat. When I come back I'm all tired Eating young dogs. So and then your grandmother said, because she lived in Tamina, don't go and thief, nobody fruit. Okay, well, I wish her all the best.
Speaker 1:All the pomerak and all the five fingers and your leg busts up and I have scars on my leg from being a child and running around and having these experiences and because she was who she was my grandmother. There were people who loved her a lot, who would be around. So that's how I met Clyde Bradley. You see, that's how I met you know, bill Trotman was my grandfather's friend.
Speaker 2:It's like when you were born. You call some names here, like Ninety-one.
Speaker 1:I was a baby. You know, I young, I young. But these are the people I was around, really. Really. I lived in the library. When the library.
Speaker 1:I read the entire children's library and teen library before they closed it to open the new library. Every book, fiction and non-fiction. And then at one point they said let's have a read-a-ton. I read a non-fiction. I went reading competition. I went fan-eating competition I fell in love with At a clan in the duke street library. When he comes to talk about dinosaur dumpling pulling to springer, these are the people I was around. Yeah, this is the information I I gained from being in spaces with these people as a youth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I understand that'll be really young too. Yeah, so you don't have the normal experience. Well, I guess, not normal, but the trend. I am so privileged Corey.
Speaker 1:I'm so, and I recognize it more and more that I'm getting older. I'm like, oh wait, everybody didn't grow up like this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you're calling names here, I go out and put footnotes and I was like some people are listening here.
Speaker 1:I don't know who these people are. Yeah, that's my life, right, that's my life, and it was encouraged so to come from that and to then end up in a space where you're working. I didn't go to UWE to get a degree. I was performing since I was small. I was performing in the opening of Anime Kariba at Normandy. I meet Robert Tongs and they're photographic proof Right, I was in Radical Design's first show at Queen's Hall in my little Save the World t-shirt.
Speaker 2:If I talk to plenty of people born in 91, they might not even remember who's Radical Design. Do you remember that?
Speaker 1:This is the old Queen's Hall before Colin Laird did his beautiful design of it. And because I love history, I love dates. My affirmation to people is to call your name Right, whether you're here or you're no longer with us. I have to call your name Because you added value to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that, I love that so now my job is.
Speaker 1:I will speak your name.
Speaker 2:Yeah, carry it forward.
Speaker 1:I have to, I must. It is my duty. Yeah, it makes sense my duty, so that's where my, my foundation, that's the, that's the base, yeah, so when you're coming from of that, when you have that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're bound to be. Yeah, and and it's so new for me to even talk about myself because I don't like to do it right um, because I'm like, of course I don't want to be 10, I'm a grandma, very, of course, you know, and's very. You don't talk about yourself too much, you just put your head down. You get your work done, nope.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that changed.
Speaker 1:I have had to yeah, because I have had to recognize that I am standing on the shoulders of people who did great things, and I am not an old just come and I've been doing this for a very long time, which is why, when I open my mouth and I say certain things or I have certain stances, I know that there is a backing. And it comes from some place and then just yeah, I'm going to get out my big toe this morning, like no.
Speaker 2:Like we were talking about Angie Martinez before we started. Her book was about finding her voice. You know, a powerful book to me in terms of what she's been able to accomplish as you were saying but even before that I want to talk about Belmont a little bit, because Belmont, for me, I grew up in St James, right, but I have a lot of family, some of the closest family.
Speaker 1:Second place I would live if I was talking from Belmont.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but everybody, everybody in Tr spot because that's what I was saying who say too? I was saying that, yeah, but um, belmont is a oh, at least when I was growing up a cultural hub. You know, a lot happens coming out of belmont. A lot of things that happen in other places get stamped and passed through belmont before they come in town. You know, and it hurts me a lot when I look at belmont. Now I was looking at a documentary. Well, you saw this, fellow christmas, let's come trin.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm not a fan, so he's walking through several different areas, right, and Belmont was one. That was, I guess, because I know Belmont.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that whole idea from the circular road to Bella Road, I can't walk this side to that side what we come to, because we used to walk, we used to just walk everywhere.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know who I walk in, I don't care. Yeah. I shouldn't say I don't care, I walk with purpose. You use discernment, sure. But there's also a sense of I'm from here, these streets know me. I know these streets. I went to school in Belmont. I went to Belmont. Girls Right On Clifford Street. Do you know Ms Rousseau, belmont Gills, great On Clifford Street? Do you know Miss Russo? Miss Russo was my teacher before she went Newtown Serious.
Speaker 2:There's mine too, eh.
Speaker 1:And so therefore, I know your next auntie, who's the crocheted Eastside people. This is the people I grew up with, I understand. So I went to Belmont, gills, passed for St Franco and then worked in Belmont for a long time, right on Jenningham Avenue. I know all the crackheads. I know all the homeless people. I know all the people living in the houses old people, who's sick, old people who getting better, all the children, da, da, da da. I know which cherry tree to go on and which one not to go by because I have a big dog and I have a big dog and I tempt that man there.
Speaker 1:He don't like children, so I know all those things, of course. So it's all about walking and purpose for me. Yeah, so I'm going to go and I, up to last night I was having this conversation with a person and saying, you know, I'm coming out of the taxi at Park and Frederick, because he wanted to take me down into Portisbury I said no, no, no, I'm not going there. It's easier for me to get out of the park and Frederick to walk in as opposed to walking from the bottom of Charlotte Street at this hour my next to me said well, you have to not walk around at this hour of the night, Skrgs.
Speaker 1:If I go Germany, 2 am in the morning, I'm walking up and down New York and the subway 4 am You're on the A going back to Brooklyn from Manhattan. I must come home and go in before the news starts.
Speaker 1:Only outer place. And it's not about being arrogant. It really is saying hey, I am not going to let a few people hold me hostage in my community. But I think the reason why they have the mindset and this is these young men and women who live the lives that we've featured in Poison. They don't know themselves. They also don't know what Belmont has gifted the world because it's not been taught to them.
Speaker 1:It's a very deliberate and systemic thing to keep you away from yourself. Those of us who have the privilege to access spaces outside of our community understand it all too well. But when you want to hustle because you left school at 15, because of whatever circumstance whether it is, you didn't have your parent, or your grandmother was your sole caretaker, or you were taking care of your grandparent and your smaller siblings, and school is a bit too much, because that rigid columns and rows thing is not where your brain is at. You're more fix it person and the school is not designed to assist multiple types of learners. So it's it's all of these different things. So when you trying to eat, you don't have time to study, of course kwame ture from belmont shadow leaves.
Speaker 1:a big one was living in belmont, brother Mudada from behind the bridge. You don't have time to study, yeah.
Speaker 2:And this is what I mean fully when you say systemic, you know, and this way going back to the characters in Poison, yeah. I appreciate the fact that somebody willing to, because I feel like it's a risk sometimes to tell these stories that make us uncomfortable or make me cast it on my chair.
Speaker 1:I'm willing to tell those stories, Corey. I think it is my responsibility to tell those stories. I appreciate it yeah, I can't do airy-fairy, people will be like oh gosh, chaka, you're so funny, why do you write a comedy? I can't, yeah, it just doesn't come to me. Really it just, I don't.
Speaker 2:Well, it just I don't Well.
Speaker 1:when you came on in Poison, the whole thing turned into a comedy immediately. I'm good off the cuff. Don't ask me to write no script for a comedy. It will be the most boring comedy you'll ever find in your life. But you see drama. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I love that. I feel most challenged with writing drama, because how do you make these people, how do you make an audience fall in love with a villain or side with a villain? That's my favorite kind of movies don't watch, yeah, yeah, yeah I. The only villain I didn't like was jeffrey baratia. Yeah, the world is gary lamb, but I find myself like most times. I love a villain. The joker is my favorite villain.
Speaker 2:Jack nicholson's joker, oh my yeah, I remember like denzel and training day, like and then he, good looking, so warm.
Speaker 1:You know I mean, yeah, so I. But I know for a fact that in telling these stories, um, or giving I have a given voice. You, um, telling these stories is important because they won't get told, because most people, like you say, are afraid to, because it is risky. And how you go?
Speaker 2:yeah, of course, of course, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, the duality of it. You know, sometimes you're kind of on the character side, sometimes you're not. You know, because it's within. They say as a community, own your own past and so on. Yeah, but you also teach, yes, yes, your teaching is in theater as well yes, I've been through.
Speaker 1:I left school and started teaching. So I started teaching at 17. Yeah, yeah, I teach from little people all the way up to adults.
Speaker 2:But how you do it. Is it workshops or is it a school? Is it an institution? Workshops.
Speaker 1:So I started teaching theater workshops for children right out of school, actually, right out of school. I taught teenagers and I did a carnival theater workshop alongside some um carnival, um artisans, people who are midnight robbers and baby dolls and like. Get teens involved in creating the work um to become a part of the the ethos.
Speaker 2:So how are you going about doing that? Because that's 17 when you say you're doing a workshop yeah what does that look like? You're gonna rent a space. You're gonna advertise.
Speaker 1:I was working with a theater company at the time, and so that was the avenue through which I would have done that right um, and so we would have invited these, these teenagers, to come and, as they're preparing for cxc, I I was a drama facilitator and then the practitioners of the midnight rubber, babyber, babydoll, damarine they came in and they bolstered the theatre to what they practice, I see. So that's what we did with Carnival Workshop. So that's the first thing I ever, as I leave school, I was teaching that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then teaching little children theatre, which was very interesting, because I was like oh my gosh, they're children, they're small, are they going? To understand. And they did. I was like, oh my gosh, they're children, they're small, are they going to understand? And they did. The first play I ever directed was Sonia Dumas' Two Villages on a River, and that was beautiful and that was a nice entryway into working with children. And then I did that for many years and then I started teaching teachers how to teach drama, which was very interesting.
Speaker 1:When there was an effort to want to get rid of se and create um like through your yeah, move the continuous yes continuous assessment component, as they called it, and so I was part of the visual and performance um curriculum team so to help build the curriculum as well as go out and teach teachers how to integrate drama dance into their already established curriculum. So how do you teach mathematics with drama? There's exercises, theater exercises you could use to teach how to multiply and how to add and how to do vocabulary.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask if you find children who are already like yourself in families, who in the arts or who in school add and how to do vocabulary as well. I'm going to ask if you find children, if you find children who already like yourself in families, who in the arts or who in school doing arts or something.
Speaker 1:Most times, no, no most times no, um their children who are engaged because they came to a theater camp, because they want to be a star. So there's also that spectrum, but most times no no most times, no um teens also.
Speaker 2:They're just like I don't really want to be here asking because, like I was exposed, let me put this out there too right, I want to write a play one day, something I want to do I don't know where to start eric has a workshop started in the next week, so I'll send you good good, that may be the best thing to do.
Speaker 1:There we go.
Speaker 2:I've been playing this in chat GPT. I've got chat GPT. You want to write the play for me? I don't like that. No, no you have to write your own thing yourself, yeah yeah, every couple of weeks stop coming up but I was exposed to it well through, of course, auntie Saka, who I used was the boy in the play right. Every single time her daughter was always in the play gabby and I know it was her. So I remember doing several places in francis.
Speaker 1:Church is yes, I'm about to see.
Speaker 2:Yeah I always bought the one boy anything and then I used to go to church camp back in the day, and in church camp he's a victory heights ah, okay there would always be a night where we all play like a competition. So I started to get exposed. Exposed to coming up with some ideas, making an idea into a production. They give us a little thing and you buy some things from the tuck shop and you make it happen. And then, of course, school was a lot like Iwan Newton boys.
Speaker 1:And there was always something that had to be a part of it. You know only a Maraval street.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the whole Maraval Val Road. You had to make it happen. It's TTT, of course it's not, but I feel like if sometimes we discuss things like plays on the arts in general as if it's for people like yourself and somebody who is an academic or an engineer can't benefit from it and I feel like we're missing something oh yes, we're missing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because we're missing a lot when I do those things for church and we talk, you know, church in church, we're talking about Ebenezer church and the man that gets saved in the end, right, so we know what will happen in the end, but at least you get the opportunity to explore different concepts and real life and what was actually happening in the block on St James and then some kind of not resurrection but some savior come through in the end and we're good and I wonder if, like when you say, use drama to help with maths or use drama to help with different subjects.
Speaker 2:I I wonder how, um, how far are we from getting things like that into the curriculum, like very, very early, to help our children learn differently?
Speaker 1:um, how far away are we from it?
Speaker 2:um, well first, if you see benefits in it. Yes, I do Definitely.
Speaker 1:How far away from it, I think, unless we have constitutional change.
Speaker 2:Oh, as deep as that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's trying to. She's not siloed, but she's deep. You know what I mean. The education system that we currently have is built on a British system, a British system which is based on eugenics. Okay, it's proven. The literature is there.
Speaker 1:You can read it when we veer away from that, I think we will be in a better standing. However, we also need to not be on a five-year cycle. We've now entered a new five-year cycle and it seems as though everything that happened in the last 10 years has been wiped clean. Nothing existed before April of 2020.
Speaker 2:So we're always starting out fresh.
Speaker 1:We're always starting fresh existed before april of 2020, so we always start in our fresh. We always start and fresh. How we will get anything done if we always start and from zero? We should be in a place of building on what already exists because we're going backward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if we have to start from scratch all the time by design so there must be a way, whether it's through constitutional reform and legislature of yo. You can't wipe away what happened before. We need to build on it. There also needs to be a collective agreement between everybody in Trinidad and Tobago that we need to get rid of exams, and I say that with my chest. The children I deal with they always have a test. They always have it. So now, when they reach by me now, they have severe anxiety because they think that when I ask them a question it's an exam when really and truly I just want to have a conversation. There's no reason we should be having an exam at standard one, standard three and then standard five. There's no reason why at standard three, we throw away social studies and be only focusing on maths, english, creative writing. I'm ponging that in the chair and you're right.
Speaker 2:In r wrote too. Yes, memorize it.
Speaker 1:So you, because you have to do it just as it says on paper, so you're not creating holistic human beings, you are creating little machines who will then go into this wrecked system. So what are we doing? We are testing. We are testing society. Now, that's what we just do. We just do tests.
Speaker 2:And you know what adds away, saying we have a culturally, I suppose, attitude where everything that is not maths, english and creative writing is considered extracurricular. And you must stop extracurricular when tests come in, which drives me up every wall.
Speaker 1:Don't play no sports, don't play no pan considered extracurricular, yeah, and you must stop extracurricular when tests come yeah, which drives me up every wall don't play no sports.
Speaker 1:No, don't play no pan when all of these things scientifically contribute to you doing well in the maths, english and all of these things, because if you're in theater you're gonna be able to tell stories, so your creative writing is going to be exceptional. You're playing football, you're playing hockey. It's all about strategy. It's all about working in teams. It's all about knowing scores. It's also fitness and exercise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you could show up to study better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but now it's only test, test, test, test, test. And then you've removed social studies and civics and and he tests, tests, tests, tests, tests. And then you remove social studies and civics and he says so, these children have no clue who Baz Diop and is Rude, how you could not know the silver fuck? Yes.
Speaker 2:They only know.
Speaker 1:You have no clue. Who the.
Speaker 2:They know how much worse off their life is for not knowing that.
Speaker 1:The diploma, you know leaders of this country.
Speaker 2:It's difficult, and you're talking about the politics.
Speaker 1:Emblems. You don't know. Your national anthem, your school pledge? Your school will have a school song. It's you know. There's a lack of belief in country because we don't teach it, we don't engender it. The only time we wear red, white and black is if it's our football match in the stadium or it's Independence Day.
Speaker 1:But because there's no pride in our country and it shows in the infrastructure being what it is and the crumble of the like, the literal crumble of the infrastructure. When the folks at the top don't care, why I should care? All in effects in the roads I will throw the garbage. The garbage collection is few and far between, and so you know I will litter.
Speaker 2:Add that to the people who you say looking for a daily hustle and to get any other ones, okay, they'll destroy whatever it is including yourself. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's multi, it's multi-layered and it's. And I? Marlon Hopkinson told me I sound like a politician when I came to his show to promote poison. I said no, marlon, don't tell me that, oh girl no, but you sound like that's good.
Speaker 2:That's a good thing.
Speaker 1:I said to him there are four things that are going to get you around in a better place, and that's the arts, which is creative and performing arts, sport, agriculture and the tourism. Of all those three things and I was doing some maths the other day, or at least attempting to we have nine prisons in Trinidad and Tobago, nine in Trinidad and Tobago, nine. All of the population of those prisons put together is, I want to say, a small fraction of the amount of artists and artisans we have in Trinidad and Tobago. Why do we have more criminal lawyers than entertainment lawyers?
Speaker 2:Are you trying? To blow my mind here than entertainment lawyers You're trying to blow my mind here. You say the daily hustle, the daily hustle.
Speaker 1:So we have more criminal lawyers than we have people who could tell you how to write a contract. Or folks who go into psychology and mental health practitioners, because we need those. Why we don't have people talking about branding and sponsorship for sportsmen and sportswomen and doing endorsements and understanding that type of contract law. Why we don't have people doing agricultural law and understanding land and probate and all of these different things people is who learn and probate as a side hustle to the criminal career.
Speaker 1:That blows my mind and if we, if we take care of our environment and we invite people to trinidad to see it, and that's pulling people for tourism and this is outside a carnival, the amount of performers that we have, be it dancers, drummers, any type of musician in the space, creative space, the visual artists, people who are doing sculpting.
Speaker 1:And to the technicians in the creative space, right Men who pulling cable and putting up trusses and is more than them, nine stations put together. Who's the representation for them? Who is, you know, having their backs and making sure that they're well taken care of? Where's their OSHA? Where you know what is our? Where are our trade lawyers? Where are the people who will assist us in making Trinidad and Tobago a one-stop shop where everybody in the career wants to come out and make a movie, they want to make a TV series, they want to come and do theater, they want to do sport meets here? Kishan Walker just opened a spa, a med spa, where you can go as an athlete and do recovery because he had an injury two years ago.
Speaker 1:So now I feel like, and that's how he was like, but I don't have nothing.
Speaker 2:I'm going to start it.
Speaker 1:I'm going to take my money and I'm going to invest it into this thing. We should have people training to be chiropractors. Of course, we should have young people working alongside the boys who are going to learn to play football. We have children going to learn how to do deep massage and physical therapy.
Speaker 2:But now I understand the answer in terms of constitutional change, because we ain't reaching there right now. Because I can ask like is there somebody in the arts and in performing arts societally you feel like it's a respected profession. Is it something that people look at and they say, no, there's no point? Everybody wants their child to be a doctor, a liar engineer yes, engineer, and these things are great.
Speaker 1:We need those things but we need to pair them with all the other things so you brought up colin lucas, right?
Speaker 1:I find it's one of the most interesting things about us as well, or mark lequan as an example yes we have so many people like the Trinbake onion is not one thing no, we could never be, which is why people be like you have to choose one thing. No, I'm a multi high-flying person. I do everything, and the only thing I don't do is underwater welding the you know the I mean. Mark is a brilliant example. I had the joy of working with him um a couple years ago, of understanding that I love this thing. I am a musician in my heart. My day-to-day are dealing with the politicians and making big decisions, multi-million dollar moves, but the thing that saves me from not going in my office and strangling people is playing the guitar or composing a piece of music for Deshra to sing.
Speaker 2:Of course. Of course. It defines us. It's who we are.
Speaker 1:That is such a beautiful thing and I think that if we on that whole exam tip of test, test, test, test, test tests, we lose the value of all the other things and then people who see the value take advantage of it and then talk about how they own it, which is crazy to me, because you cannot own something that we have inherited yeah, of course, and that's not yours because you had to leave when you're dead and gone it's the children who are coming up, people who aren't even born yet it's their own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, something that's so interesting about the testing too, because I never thought about that. One of the questions I had to ask you about was stage fright and anxiety. But when you say that it's so, it's profound because we create this environment from as soon as you're in kindergarten. You're coming up the road where you're bound to be frightened if you have a question, or you're bound to be frightened if you had to go and stand up and talk in front of people much less sing or act, because I don't know if that's your experience, that you have a lot of people who come with that stage fright.
Speaker 1:Yes, and they think it's bad. I think stage fright could actually fuel your thing and you use that anxiety to push you through to the end of your speech or your monologue or the play. I tell my babies, like yo, that feeling of butterflies in your stomach. Use that as excitement.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I know. Think of it as excitement rather than nerves.
Speaker 1:That's what it is. It's excitement and your body knows that you're going to do this performance and your body is excited. So match the excitement in your body with your exuberance and push that voice from where you have to project. Right you have to project your voice so that the audience will hear you. So use that to be able to present to your audience Right.
Speaker 2:I have some brilliant babes. I would imagine.
Speaker 1:They're amazing.
Speaker 2:I love them and what age is it?
Speaker 1:my youngest is five my youngest is five. Yeah, good, good so youngest is five and then the eldest. How old is the eldest boy? I think she's 19. So what are we 19? Yeah, there's a whole bangalation on them, but 20-something on them.
Speaker 2:So that's what Preto is designed for? That, yes, okay, gotcha.
Speaker 1:So, as founded 27 years ago by Earl and Christine Mark, it is a cornerstone of Belmont. It is important for BFT to encourage young people to be involved in the performing art and so we have, you know, some of the best small drummers. We have some of the best small drummers in the country and they are. So one of them who drums with us, also drums with Renegades, also drums with some band, donk Sounds he's, he's, he's, he's, he's he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's he's who drums with us
Speaker 1:but, also drums with St Margaret's boys. I see Brilliant drummer, disciplined young man, respectful. Love her drum.
Speaker 1:Love her wall If you give him a pencil here you go he knock him. Yes, sorry, sorry, auntie, Sorry auntie, sorry, auntie Right, beautiful family and that encourages him to continue with his instrument he at rehearsal when we're not using, he in front, he doing his homework nice when he finish your homework, he's right there. All right, aren't you ready? Yes, I'm ready. Okay, cool, great. So we have those, those young men, and we have our little dancers who are?
Speaker 1:very, very popular when we have our show, because they're small and they're chunky and they look cute and everybody's fascinated and they can remember choreography. So we have Zafira and Shiloh and Asia. You know they're dancing. They like market they do a choreography to market last year.
Speaker 3:So they oh, blinking market I like it, I market, you know, I like it I like it they have a little nylon in the back, and you know.
Speaker 1:So they. They love music, they love dancing. I can't go in this space and not have a million of them coming to hug me, is that?
Speaker 2:of course, of course, they can talk with you just like how you talk. It's just how you call.
Speaker 1:Yeah, call your name this way and I love to see them dance and perform. And then I'm like, oh gosh, is it time to go home? Yet I'm tired, auntie, I want to go. Okay, no, we're going to run one more time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:All right, okay, one more, one more, and they go, and they're ready. Oh nice.
Speaker 1:And they get ready, and then they down, and it's so important, I think for miss christine and, by extension, her husband, uncle, to support them in in their um their journey creatively, but also to make sure, hey, your homework, to do your projects of course, because you have to be well-rounded but this exactly what you're saying is a more well-rounded citizen we created.
Speaker 1:And all of my children, especially my teens, because now the juniors are becoming the junior seniors, as I call them, because they're going into secondary school. Now, Anything that you're not going to learn in school, they're going to learn with me. So when you come, come with your head on come with your listening ears tuned in because you're going to get some gems that are going to help you be a better person. And all of them know I don't play, I'm very, I'm a disciplinarian.
Speaker 1:I don't shout, I don't ball. I'm the queen of silence. I'm the queen of silence, all the talking, read them out and then it's oh, auntie, tiger, auntie tiger.
Speaker 2:Wait, auntie tiger. I must try that.
Speaker 1:I must try it and I'm just watching because clearly all they're having are very meaningful discussion there so when I'm done when the caucus is wrapped. I will then give direction, and so I use the work that I do with them to teach. So, last year for our show. I did the opening piece with them, we did peregrinades and in it was really a love letter to Belmont and to call the names and to be like these are who have contributed to our space. This is the space that we take up.
Speaker 1:This is what we've gifted the world yeah we've gifted the world jason griffith, who has passed. We've gifted the world the king sailor we've. And the fancy sailor we've gifted the world pan borough kids, ellis clark. Ellis clark, the man he titled David Rudder, shadow Over the Hill Boys. You know all these sporting teams that came out of Belmont playing against Woodbrook, fellas and St Anne's men in that same savannah that we have at our doorstep the fact that this was free people who created this community. Yeah, yeah, it didn't have no planning.
Speaker 2:It was put a house, put a house put, a house put a house.
Speaker 1:And then we're like, oh shucks, we need a road. Rest on the road. You got a lot to have to. Right and then donkey cart laying because that's the only vehicle it had the donkey cart to the garbage. They don't have no cars. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they need to walk.
Speaker 1:Now, if you could drive in Belmont, lavonty and Sandow you could drive, you could drive. You could drive, and then the next step up is being able to drive in Grenada, because they have to drive different. Seriously, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see a man, he on the phone, he driving a big truck and he on the phone and he taking so much. He halfway out the truck but he going round a bend like the video. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the road's smaller than the video.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're the holy end, you get some custom if you're the holy end holy end.
Speaker 1:So so to infiltrate their minds with who has gifted us belmont they're critical was so important for me and I I I do with them all the time. I'm like who's this? Like we don't know auntie this person is, and I get them yeah, because the school might not see somebody saying not might, and the school is not. I love that you're giving anybody a bit of a story, but they're not teaching us.
Speaker 2:No, they have to Like. There's a partner I have in Belmont, I think you and Jenning. I'm having you just opposite Trey. I only know him as Mr Cooper. Yes, but he has a whole Steve Cooper yeah. Yeah, he has a sometimes, yeah, like you see, they use the term gangsters you know, I mean if they paint the murals of the heroes all the time. Yeah, we sometimes just leave our heroes to be memories yeah, because who's all here?
Speaker 1:yeah who's all here?
Speaker 2:I like it yeah, because it's.
Speaker 1:It's also in the way that we treat each other. We just okay, we do business, because what Kai saw was singing in a bamboo tent or going and singing for political parties.
Speaker 2:He ain't getting paid.
Speaker 1:He ain't getting rum and roti.
Speaker 2:Of course, of course, of course. Lou was talking about the stick fighters and the pan-man being criminals.
Speaker 1:Yes, them is bad chance. Of course, yeah. Them is bad chance, and the German woman. And maybe they're still out in some instances, yes no, I mean in our mindset as a society. Yes, that's what I mean as that they're still ruffians and slapping a sponsor on them doesn't necessarily, you know, mean that you're rich in society you just have to play a little tunes and then look to press head out, which is what a lot of corporate sponsors do
Speaker 1:yeah with these, with these bands. But you know that that barricade culture I think has to come back, has to return where we take care of each other, that community, and making sure that everybody knows what's happening with everybody yeah and it's a matter of protecting each other yeah, we outsource that.
Speaker 1:We outsource that to minister of national security and homeland security and police and army and things that we never used to see about our own communities yeah, which is very interesting because those are colonial structures constitutional change yeah, so whereas for me in the character of the jamet is she's a woman in the community who knows who have high blood pressure, so he can't drink it's salt you gain your mother pressure come you sit down and shout some peace and let me get some sense into you, because clearly you forget yeah that we, you, we can take you out and that is the energy we need in this space.
Speaker 1:We need that charm and energy of I can send a well-worded email with that charm to whom it may concern.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's charm and energy for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I will, you will, or say I'm not playing, and I think that you know the holding people accountable is very much Jammet's energy as well too.
Speaker 1:I see you doing nonsense. I'm going to tell you. I see you doing nonsense and you know that what you're doing is nonsense. So when you're finished doing that, we're going to talk. The child is always there, the door is may not always be open, but it's have a window. Is it now can't come? You know, I mean, um, that sense of community is I don't want to say it's lost, I think it is, it is in the minority, and that whole thing of don't talk to my child yeah, imagine that.
Speaker 2:Look who we come to. Whoa, look who would have thought. I see in a return to it. Somewhat, though, because the community was one way Belmont and St James, same thing people born and grow. Their grandparents are great, but now the communities get kind of like contrived, it's gated and it's places where all of we come from different places.
Speaker 2:Just put we together and if people don't make an effort to make community, it's not natural then, it's not so that dieing off a little bit, but in preserving those stories, that is where Pioneer Productions would have come from. Yes, how long ago you started 16 2016 oh 2016, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, she's a baby. She's a baby. It's going to be 10 next year, boy, wow.
Speaker 2:Imagine that.
Speaker 1:Yikes, that's crazy. Yeah, but the birth of Pioneer also, too, was to be able to collaborate with other creatives in this space who were like-minded, Because I am quite aware that I can't have all the things or make all the things. That's reality, and so in order to make work, I'm like I have to partner, I have to collaborate, I have to work with my peers and I also have to make sure that it has to be sustainable. That was always the vision, that how do we make making work sustainable for us all? And that there's a certain level of equity, um, whether it's ownership after the fact that we make it, or we're like we just want to make something and and then we'll divvy it up, or how do we you bring a thing and I bring a thing, and as a real susu vibe, of course. So, for example, with poison, primary productions is the leading producer, of course, to use the resources that we have, shared resources. So my photographer is part of Stenic.
Speaker 1:My stage manager is part of Stenic. We all create a show called Two Jammets. That's us, that's work that we've done, but the rehearsal space is Stenic's. So I don't have to pay for rehearsal space because it's a susu.
Speaker 1:You put a thing and I put a thing, and everybody add to the pot because, we're here for a common goal, so that's an associate producer role that Stenic would have taken up. And then my person who did media like does add into the pot, adding susu, you know, and that for me is really why I keep pushing with Pioneer. There's a while back I was just like I just want to scrap that. But then to do this is damn, please, hard, but I love doing it.
Speaker 2:It's enjoyable.
Speaker 1:It really is. Yeah, I couldn't see myself doing anything else. And also, I am quite aware that the vision I have for myself and for my peers is not necessarily shared on a broad spectrum, because I am very anti-treating artists badly and I'm very vocal about it, and I know that when I very vocal about it, right, and I know that when I'm vocal about it, it riles people up and gets me mm-hmm. But I am in a position now where I'm like I set my time, I set my hours, but I also set my rate. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:So, like earlier this year, I was telling I did a video and I said, Like earlier this year, I was telling I did a video and I said, if you want a higher performance for $500 TTD, get somebody else to do it. Yeah, go do it, I'm not doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate you doing that too, because that's sustainability critical.
Speaker 1:It's not bad. But no, my attitude now is I'm not even, and that was in January when I did that. Now in June or July, I'm like I don't want you to get nobody else to do it Run your dust. Nobody must be doing it for 500 TCD, run your dust. So in that sense now I see Pioneer taking up the fore of championing equity and equitable sharing of resources, because that's what I do in my partnerships with Stenic, with Teatro Junior, which is Taffa's company, with Mova LLC, which are my partners in Los Angeles. So I definitely see my role here as being we not taking that. I had to be the gentleman on the front. So they told me can't. That's my role and responsibility now. So now it's run your dust, because $500 is 1996 rate. It cost me $500 to get here in a taxi, don't pay me that.
Speaker 1:And also private entities. Corporate general ad, and the government is not to set my rate for me. They're not doing any work, it's I doing it, so I know how much it costs to do this. A technocrat is not to tell me that I have to work for $500. It's a no. And I've work for $500. It's unknown yeah. And I've already experienced pushback.
Speaker 2:I would imagine.
Speaker 1:I've already experienced pushback, especially and I don't know if this might be, you know, surprising from artists.
Speaker 2:From artists.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Fellow payers. So they're the one, they go to the five, they do the one or more. No, no, the artists who do so. They don't want the five, they don't want no more, no, no.
Speaker 1:The artists who do any higher end don't want to pay the five.
Speaker 2:I see, I see, I see, oh yeah, they want to pay the five.
Speaker 1:Got it, got it, got it, of course, you know how hard it is, of course you have experience, but it might be just the same thing at this stand.
Speaker 2:They'll take the stands that you've taken and I take the short. I'll short the others. Talk about it. In any part of the industry you say four things. Go, bring me back, talk to anybody in them.
Speaker 1:Four things and you'll find that and they'll always take the undercut, because there'll always be somebody who will accept the five, of course, which is crazy to me. Which is crazy to me. But I also like this year, my experience. I told Jor-El, I said I'm not doing the mash gra ever again. No, really.
Speaker 1:Unless I is the producer of the mash gra. I'm not doing the mash gra, no it's it. I'm not doing it Because Calypsonians don't know what things cost, correct, the people who run the organizations on a national level don't know what things cost.
Speaker 2:They don't know.
Speaker 1:Or maybe they just don't care.
Speaker 2:You say it. You know, we have a thing in this society too, where it's that whole eat our food or the hustle thing, people watching. Sometimes we think people making decisions on our behalf. Right, you see, somebody call you a politician. I always feel like politicians. Sometimes we think, okay, it's about building a road or making the community better. Sometimes it's about why I could get out of the deal. You know, and that is precedent. So when you wonder well, why they put this so, why they didn't think of this, why this wasn't beautified.
Speaker 1:It's not in their best interest, and it's not. Part of them would have super and die, which is crazy to me because I am your employer.
Speaker 2:Well, let us forget that I am your employer. Let us forget that. Don't forget they're working for me.
Speaker 1:I forget we're here sometimes talking to each other. So and yeah, but I just feel like there must be somebody standing guard. But I just feel like there must be somebody to stand the guard. When my mother named me, she named me because the name was nice, but the name is Scandinavian. It means pioneer. Tiger means pioneer. The pioneer is the people who's God first. Them is who does draw the tree line and clear the way for everybody. So say there's a way here or there. So I don't know. You know your portion From inception. You know your role. She set me up.
Speaker 1:She set me up, and even in naming the company Pioneer Productions too, it's like ah, because, it's Tony used to call me Pioneer, I see he used to say he asked me one time he said um, what do you? What does it like? I mean? And I told him so every time after that yeah, as soon as he reaches, I go um. Yeah, and then his brother, denn Dennis, used to call him a hard name that is a good flesh. Hard name, Hard name. And then he used to say to me and Taffa, he said Tua Dem, Tua Dem is a problem here, and he's a real hand on his daddy's shoulder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The real McCoy.
Speaker 1:This one name hard, and this one name is an acronym, because that was named with an acronym. Oh it is yeah, it really is I see so I mean, he was just something else.
Speaker 2:I can't remember where you are. When you say Dennis, you have to say Dennis.
Speaker 1:Sprung along hall.
Speaker 2:Because all I don't know people, just in case, sorry.
Speaker 1:Dennis sprung along hall. No people, just in case. Sorry, dennis, cranham Hall who is one of the mentors of Joel and I. And, dear boy, one of the first plays I actually wrote one of his friends, zling Lesley Matthews, who taught me stage management because we do that too Sure she encouraged me to write and she was like you have to write a play, you have to write a play, you have to write a play. You have to write a play.
Speaker 1:You have to write a play, and so I did. I wrote this play called the Lesson, which is about two flag women. Clearly, I love small casts. I managed 15 people. I don't know how Louis Mark Williams does it but pick up, louis pick up Ifebo Dr Ifebo pick up Zenoebo pick up xeno constant. Oh, big gas oh pick up, pick up the tidewords, because, oh you see them, big gas. I never michaelian taylor, he's a big gas man too, the big gas man.
Speaker 1:Um, so, yeah, so um doesn't say yeah, write the script. So I wrote the lesson and sprang read it and sprang say so. So where do you rest? Somebody asked. Somebody asked. I said it stopped short. We're good Him. No, you have to write more, but her name, you ain't easy. I want to know about these two women and what's going to happen? They're going in panorama. He said I'll go. And what's going to happen? They go in the panorama. And he started going saying yeah, I'm all right, I will leave you.
Speaker 1:I will leave you, yeah yeah, yeah, and he started mulling and he started calling names and he started talking about people with the wave flag and I just sit down and I listen and. I take it in and that's been my fortune my entire life To sit at the feet of greats, the greats, the greats, the legends.
Speaker 2:Yeah, imagine that.
Speaker 1:So that's why I say I understand my privilege and I also understand that from the name to knowing that sometimes this road is going to be super lonely, but I'm so privileged to have the people that I have around me right now and this season of my life, it's like I'm like who I don't take it for granted.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm so thankful, I'm so grateful, as she, that all the things, what I went, through has brought me to this point, where I'm surrounded by people who respect me, respect my work, who, when I make a creative decision, they're like ah yes, we like that let's go.
Speaker 2:As is you. You're saying, you say that again, as is me.
Speaker 1:And also the technicians in the space too, the men who does pull the cable, who bring the cameras who bring the lights Plenty of people to make it happen, conrad and them, and switch on the generators. Yeah the crew. Many men was on crew. We have to take care of them. Of course, and my mother Always told me Make sure you feed people.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because I know when I don't eat as I want. Yeah, I mean, there's a viral clip Of me that comes around Every year, of me With a big frill Throwing a man clothes Over a barn Called Rene Divina Charles and there's a line in it that she says I ain't self eat breakfast yet and I had to deal with you my blood sugar is low. That is a line that really came from my life that's real life that's real.
Speaker 1:That was an improv scene and we was there and we was in Lavantie and we was making this thing and we decide we have a free day, let's make something for fun, and that is one of the things people listen to Most common. Ask me. They ask me you used to be on Gael.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They ask me that and they ask me you used to kill who threw the boy clothes over the pan? Yeah, no.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's because you was hungry. You'll be starting to understand.
Speaker 1:I didn't have breakfast, so that's why now you have to feed people, you have to take care of them. I take care of my lesson.
Speaker 2:You have to make sure people reach home safely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's important and you have to make sure that you left the space better than you found it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, receive that. And you also, as you say, you have to make sure you ain't take the shot, because it's not just you taking the shot, it's everybody.
Speaker 1:Everybody. It's everybody. Everybody had to take the shot. When you take it, it's everybody. So because I understand that from all the experience that I've had working in front of the camera, on the stage and behind the scenes, I make a holistic decision where I know everybody will benefit from it.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. I appreciate that that actually sprang into question now. You said you had to do more, so you said you have something coming up in September.
Speaker 1:Yes, in September, belmont Freetown Cultural Arts and Folk Performing Company has Cultural Explosion 5. This is the fifth year and this year we're doing A Wondrous Odyssey. We're taking folks on a journey through our catalogue as well as the inspirations that have lent to trinidad being what it is. So we're going from before enslavement to now. That's what we, that's the, that's the journey that we take and with the work, so it's dancing, it's singing one thing for me to be uneasy in my seat again.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, this is.
Speaker 1:This is actually a showcase for Belmont Freetown and so that every year they have this show and it really is an amalgamation of all the great things that the group does. So it's dance, it's folk dance. It's Miss Christine Tamati doing Monolog again this year Last year I did a flag woman.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let me talk about that flag, flag woman. I'm glad you bring me there. I'm glad you bring me there. Let me talk about that now because Franco Phillip, let me say this to Franco one time no reaction, but I mean, you never know she say, if you're on this journey you have to talk to Taika. I say, franco, I'll get it done. So I look up Taika. She sent me some info. The first thing she sent me is that flag woman and when I see it I say, all right, I understand why.
Speaker 2:And then when I came to Poison, I say right, I understand why. But I feel I only understand today and I'll continue to understand it. It's critical, but that flag woman or something else you on that stage, for people who haven't seen it is maybe you should talk about it better than me. But what I saw was you explaining to people what a flag woman is to. And you know, what kept catching me in the video is, I mean, the flag was a beautiful thing having it flowing that way. I was like this woman's been doing this. And then you see you had to show the people a logo and I'm in marketing. So I see I do marketing for a living. Just want to understand what was that?
Speaker 2:What was it exactly so?
Speaker 1:that's on the same thing that Sprang was reading. Right. That's from 2010. Mm-hmm, and took that, took pieces of it because it's a two-hander, and formed it into this monologue Right. So I was playing the lead, Lorna. Right.
Speaker 1:And I've always been fascinated with the flag men and flag women, like as a child sitting down in All-Star Spaniard on a school night with my mom to take pictures falling in love with the flag women Right. Being like this is a real vibe. And then asking questions again and talking and engaging in community and um, meeting the black man from starlet fun. Yeah, um, I write this piece and I write this piece with all these stories put together and performing lona is. It was very, um, physically challenging, but it last year was the most in my body. I felt in a very long time because I was rehearsing with Belmont all the time, rehearsing about BFD, every week, going, going, going.
Speaker 1:But just to take all these experiences and all the knowledge from all the spaces that I would have gotten it and to put it together and to be like, yeah, all they're coming in the queens, all they bring no flag to reuse. How you gonna learn how to wear a flag? All right, okay, well, you go bring your flag tomorrow, but before we have to learn, this is the movement. Swoop dance, this is the movement, right? This is how you hold the flag. You cannot hold it willy-willy. Okay, look at it. Vai ki vai.
Speaker 1:You have to hold it properly, because when the breeze takes you on the Savannah stage, you can fall off.
Speaker 1:That's a real talk, if you know what you're doing, the breeze will pick you up and carry you. You have to know you. You don't know, you don't mind your business. It's not a whiner gilding. This is not a star gilding. She is originally the flag woman artist, the Germans, who was in the barrack yard, who know where to pass, how to pass, when to pass, where not to go when you go to war. The men in the front is the flag bearers.
Speaker 1:They have this sigil you have to see if this is friendly fire or if this is the enemy, you have to hold your flag up. You kind of drag the flag out and make sure we know what bandit is coming down the road, like he's saying about it invaders coming on right, tokyo coming on the next time. How we know is that because the flag woman in front, she waving, she thinks she you know what ban is what and I think you know. In doing the piece and sharing and I think I think people thought I really is a well, you are a real story so wait a minute, what you telling me is that that wasn't actually.
Speaker 2:You was just showing people what to do. That is what that was. Oh, really, yeah, let me finish.
Speaker 1:I feel finished it's, it's performance, it is a character, it is. You know, the script is written. I mean it's a play, but this is really. It really is Lorna teaching Gertie which is the second character. How? To wave the flag, but it's just me at BFT doing drama right now. So I was like Miss Christine was like she want a monologue and I turned dialogue into monologue and so my audience now is who I'm teaching.
Speaker 1:I am with you and that is how we get that clip, which have what 30 something thousand views or something.
Speaker 2:Is this Swoop? How is it going? It's not Swoop, swoopop, dance, wave and push. That's why I remember how close am I swoop dive, move and dance all right gotcha yeah because you gotta bring it from here.
Speaker 1:Swoop, so, swoop, dive, and then you move it this way and then you dance. That's your movement. That's your movement because you're not just here moving. Yeah, I don't think so. If they let me hear that flag on the stage as well, I'll break loose on it.
Speaker 2:Be sure to take me. Yeah, I mean, and and that's your movement, because they're not just here, that's moving. Yeah, but I think so. If they let go of me with that flag on the stage, it's all hell break loose and it brings show.
Speaker 1:To take me yeah, I mean and that's also part of the job too which is the cultural heritage, our intangible cultural heritage is very important for us to document for us to hold on to, because you know, between the Chinese and whoever else, they're going to take it and call it their own, of course.
Speaker 2:They do the same thing with the pan, so why would they?
Speaker 1:do anything else, you know. So, yeah, I mean it is a joy to be able to create and to make things that I feel very passionate about. I mean alone, it's just one drop. Poison is just one drop, like it's got plenty of things in the audience.
Speaker 2:I'm sure. Well, you tell me. You start by telling me a real thing on the shelf yeah, it have thing on the shelf.
Speaker 1:It have thing on the shelf. It have things that haven't come yet. It have stuff that leave poison and start to work on. Of course there's notebooks that I have thing. You know, I'm travelling in the next few weeks and it's like I I have to decide which notebook to take. I'm sure Am I taking a fresh notebook, am I taking one that has things in it already, because then I can't go too overweight.
Speaker 2:Well, you're coming with a notebook too, isn't it? You're coming with a notebook too so I'm interested in finding out. But thanks a million. I appreciate you coming. I appreciate the fact that you're taking the angle that you take. Yeah, I think it's important, you, that tiger and that pioneer name, you're living up to it. And so I mean, I guess, as you say, you're born doing it. Yeah, you're born taking that lead, so continue to do it.
Speaker 2:And again, this space is open anytime I appreciate it wherever you have going on, I I want to learn more about it and see more of it. I'm going to be in more uncomfortable seats. I'm showing things they're doing, but I feel it's important for the society.
Speaker 1:We had to feel a little more uncomfortable with some of these topics yeah, because when you feel uncomfortable, you make change, you go, work through it, you go work through it.
Speaker 2:So I appreciate you, conrad. I just think I'll stop pressing it. Hit the stop button, thank you.