To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?In the wake of an ag­gres­sive refu­ta­tion by the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture of his ac­cu­sa­tions of in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ness in con­struc­tion of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts, ac­tivist Rubadiri Vic­tor has cir­cu­lat­ed a new doc­u­ment al­leg­ing the many fail­ures of con­sul­ta­tion on the way to the the­atri­cal fa­cil­i­ty Trinidad and To­ba­go has to­day. It is pos­si­ble that as ear­ly as this week, Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald will open the doors of Na­pa for a full me­dia tour, pre­sum­ably af­ter the soft-test­ing phase of the acad­e­my's op­er­a­tions is paused to al­low fresh scruti­ny of the fa­cil­i­ty. In an­tic­i­pa­tion of a new spir­it of dis­cus­sion and con­sul­ta­tion that the min­is­ter might wish to con­sid­er as a fol­low-up to such a tour, it's worth ex­am­in­ing ex­act­ly what is known about the fa­cil­i­ty. Since its grand open­ing en­gage­ment dur­ing CHOGM and per­for­mances of a sin­gle play, there have been no no­table con­certs or per­for­mances at Na­pa.

It is un­clear whether there has been a short­age of re­quests for the fa­cil­i­ty, what the rental struc­ture is, or if it is, in fact, avail­able for pub­lic use, and on what ba­sis. Through­out the en­tire 2010 Car­ni­val sea­son, there was no event that met the re­quire­ments of Na­pa's ex­ist­ing con­trollers, ei­ther by in­vi­ta­tion or by re­quest. An over­ture from at least one Car­ni­val stake­hold­er, the Na­tion­al Chut­ney Foun­da­tion, for stag­ing the World Chut­ney So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, was re­fused. The Gov­ern­ment's pro­duc­tion of El Cer­ro del Aripo for Di­manche Gras was, ac­cord­ing to Mc­Don­ald, re­hearsed on the main stage be­fore be­ing moved to the Sa­van­nah. It is un­clear who is in charge of Na­pa. No gov­ern­ing board has been an­nounced, and the fa­cil­i­ty is sup­posed to fall un­der the aegis of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In June, 2009, Prof Ken­neth Ram­c­hand re­signed as as­so­ciate provost at UTT, in cir­cum­stances that sug­gest­ed he was un­com­fort­able with the way the arts port­fo­lio at the uni­ver­si­ty was be­ing man­aged. The gulf in con­sul­ta­tion be­tween Min­is­ter Mc­Don­ald's per­cep­tion and Vic­tor's ac­count­ing is star­tling­ly large. In a new doc­u­ment be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed on-line in the wake of the Cul­ture Min­is­ter's press con­fer­ence ti­tled "No Con­sul­ta­tion – A path­way to dis­as­ter," Rubadiri Vic­tor lists a damn­ing­ly thor­ough se­quence of dis­in­ter­est in mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers in the arts sec­tor. By her own ad­mis­sion at that press con­fer­ence, Na­pa is mod­elled on sim­i­lar fa­cil­i­ties in the Baltics, Shang­hai and Chica­go. Which is all well and good, but our cul­tur­al tra­di­tions bear lit­tle re­sem­blance to those that have evolved in tem­per­ate coun­tries where, per­for­mance has evolved in en­closed, shel­tered halls out of ne­ces­si­ty.

Trinidad and To­ba­go's tra­di­tions evolved in en­vi­ron­ments with greater de­grees of crowd par­tic­i­pa­tion and open air en­gage­ment. Com­pli­cat­ing this is­sue is Min­is­ter Mc­Don­ald's open­ly bel­liger­ent dis­missal of every ques­tion re­lat­ed to Na­pa and Rubadiri Vic­tor's ca­pac­i­ty for sprawl­ing, in­clu­sive state­ments which make it dif­fi­cult to fo­cus on his points. Vic­tor's ini­tial doc­u­ment on Na­pa's fail­ings ran to 39 pages, and his fol­low-up state­ment on the his­to­ry of con­sul­ta­tion re­lat­ed to the fa­cil­i­ty runs more than 5,000 words. Sand­wiched be­tween these wide­ly-di­ver­gent views of Na­pa are the peo­ple who would ac­tu­al­ly like to make use of the space who must, ap­par­ent­ly, choose be­tween be­ing ac­tivist and run the risk of be­ing locked out of a space that is, ap­par­ent­ly, still very much un­der the purview of the Cul­ture Min­is­ter, and cheer­ful­ly ac­cept­ing the struc­ture in what­ev­er form it is of­fered to them.

There is an­oth­er, more pro­duc­tive way of han­dling this mat­ter, and that path re­quires a deep­er com­mit­ment to con­sul­ta­tion than the Gov­ern­ment has been will­ing to give more than lip ser­vice to. Let's have a tour of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts, but al­low the me­dia to be ac­com­pa­nied by artistes, ar­chi­tec­tur­al and the­atre en­gi­neer­ing spe­cial­ists will­ing to speak in­de­pen­dent­ly about what they find, so that the re­port­ing on the tour can be in­formed by a prac­ti­cal ap­pre­ci­a­tion of what Na­pa has to of­fer and what still re­mains to be done. The Cul­ture Min­is­ter should ap­proach this sit­u­a­tion with a clear eye on the kind of con­sul­ta­tion and en­gage­ment that will be nec­es­sary, not on­ly to suc­cess­ful­ly launch Na­pa as a func­tion­al, well-utilised fa­cil­i­ty that adds val­ue to our cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty, but al­so as a soft test­ing of her own for the kind of col­lab­o­ra­tion that will be nec­es­sary in prepar­ing for the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Cen­tre.