Paula Lin­do

Play­wright, di­rec­tor and ac­tor Ronald Amoroso cred­its his ear­ly in­flu­ences in life grow­ing up in South Trinidad and study­ing abroad with his lat­er suc­cess in the the­atre.

The 81-year-old al­so stud­ied as a civ­il en­gi­neer and told the au­di­ence at the Mon­day Night The­atre Fo­rum at the Trinidad The­atre Work­shop, Bel­mont, that he us­es the tech­niques of the two dis­ci­plines in­ter­change­ably. On May 2 he was the fea­tured thes­pi­an in the month­ly se­ries which con­tin­ues to­mor­row with ac­tor, di­rec­tor and rap­so artist Wen­dell Man­war­ren.

Amoroso was born in San Fer­nan­do and moved to Siparia when he was five. He lived with­in walk­ing dis­tance of a Por­tuguese rum shop where Shouter Bap­tists would con­gre­gate, a dance­hall, a movie the­atre, and In­di­an, Span­ish and Chi­nese fam­i­lies.

Amoroso's first ex­po­sure to the­atre came while he at­tend­ed the Siparia Cana­di­an Mis­sion where the arith­metic teacher would write lo­calised plays for the head­mistress's year­ly con­cert. He won an ex­hi­bi­tion schol­ar­ship in 1945 to go to Queen's Roy­al Col­lege (QRC), where he won a math­e­mat­ics schol­ar­ship to Birm­ing­ham Uni­ver­si­ty in the UK, where he took every op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to the the­atre in Lon­don. In the sum­mers, he at­tend­ed the bal­let and the opera, and al­so hitch-hiked across Eu­rope.

Amoroso at­tend­ed MIT in the Unit­ed States from 1960- 1962. He par­tic­i­pat­ed in a the­atre pro­gramme and did more trav­el­ling, in­clud­ing tour­ing the deep South of the US where he ex­pe­ri­enced seg­re­ga­tion and overt racism.

Amoroso came back to Trinidad two days be­fore In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions in 1962, and be­gan work­ing at WASA. One of his first acts was to put on the satir­i­cal Russ­ian play The In­spec­tor Gen­er­al, a com­e­dy of er­rors that re­sults when a cor­rupt gov­ern­ment of­fice is told there will be a sur­prise in­spec­tion.

Amoroso was then able to do class­es in act­ing and di­rect­ing where he met play­wright Er­rol Hill and joined the Com­pa­ny of Play­ers, which he end­ed up di­rect­ing in 1966. He per­formed in one of the first lo­cal TV pro­duc­tions, The Pro­fes­sor, and oth­er plays such as The Dev­ils and Oth­el­lo.

In 1968, Amoroso be­came di­rec­tor and play­wright of the QRC Dra­ma So­ci­ety. He put on The Long, The Short and The Tall at the Sec­ondary Schools Dra­ma Fes­ti­val in San Fer­nan­do; he called it the best play he ever di­rect­ed. He re­mem­bers be­ing fol­lowed home one night be­cause he was car­ry­ing guns in the trunk.

In the fol­low­ing year, 1970, dur­ing the height of the Black Pow­er Move­ment, Amoroso wrote The Blood Clot un­der the pseu­do­nym Jim Grant. When it was per­formed at the Dra­ma Fes­ti­val dur­ing the state of emer­gency the en­tire au­di­ence was do­ing the Black Pow­er chant in the first five min­utes, and Amoroso ex­pect­ed to be ar­rest­ed when he got home. Luck­i­ly for him, that was the night the state of emer­gency was lift­ed.

In 1971, Amoroso wrote The Broth­ers Five about the sol­diers who had mu­tinied in the Teteron Bar­racks. It was a comedic satir­i­cal take on Black Pow­er where the true mo­tives of the play­ers come out un­der hyp­no­sis. While the play won first place in the Dra­ma Fes­ti­val, Amoroso said his Black Pow­er friends were not amused.

He joined the Barataria Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil in 1972, di­rect­ing The Doc­tor in Spite of Him­self, which came first in the Best Vil­lage com­pe­ti­tion.

The fol­low­ing year, he con­vert­ed Eu­tonn Jarvis' short sto­ry The Mas­ter of Car­ni­val in­to a play that was a tremen­dous suc­cess. He al­so wrote one of his best-known plays in 1973, The Dry Sea­son, a full-length play about the dra­ma in the Black Pow­er move­ment. The play took a look at how dif­fer­ent lev­els of so­ci­ety re­act­ed to the Black Pow­er Move­ment. He even­tu­al­ly rewrote it as a mu­si­cal and a Best Vil­lage play.

From 1976 to 2002, Amoroso worked with the Mal­ick Folk Per­form­ers, which had evolved from Barataria Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil and end­ed up com­pet­ing against them. He was the re­cip­i­ent of a British Coun­cil Schol­ar­ship from 1975 to 1976 to go to Lon­don, which he said was one of the great­est years of his life.

Amoroso has writ­ten ap­prox­i­mate­ly 34 plays, most­ly for Best Vil­lage, in­clud­ing The Storm­ers, Good­bye Pa, The Probe, Mid­night John­ny, the Fi­nals, Pa­pa Brock, San­gre Grande by Two, Man Over­board, By the Hook or the Crook, D Con­tract, the Hall of Shame, the Hon­ey­comb, Skins, Go­ing Home, Crea­tures of the Night and the La Di­a­b­lesse Chron­i­cles. He al­so wrote a trio of plays on pan his­to­ry, Blood and Steel, Pan Ris­ing, and The Un­known Band. He draws his in­spi­ra­tion for plays from his­to­ry, re­al life and cur­rent top­ics.

Amoroso helped to es­tab­lish the Na­tion­al Dra­ma As­so­ci­a­tion and held sev­er­al posts with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. He left WASA in 2002 and has been ad­ju­di­cat­ing plays in To­ba­go, rewrit­ing scripts to be done by DMAD Co and is cur­rent­ly work­ing on his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy.