Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Vic­tor Ed­wards has spent more than 35 years of his life work­ing tire­less­ly to raise dra­ma and the­atre to a lev­el of re­spectabil­i­ty and ac­cept­abil­i­ty in T&T.Look­ing back, Ed­wards, 61, of Princes Town, said he feels ac­com­plished es­pe­cial­ly since dra­ma and the­atre arts now form part of the school syl­labus, and plays pro­duced by his com­pa­ny, Iere The­atre Pro­duc­tions, are the toast of the town.

His plays like Er­ic the Mu­si­cal, Ten to One, and the re­cent­ly com­plet­ed Sun­dar: A Love Sto­ry have been en­joyed by thou­sands of stu­dents and the­atre lovers around the coun­try.Ed­wards said of all the plays he has pro­duced and di­rect­ed, Sun­dar: A love sto­ry has been the most im­pact­ful for him.He said the feed­back he re­ceived was phe­nom­e­nal.

"Peo­ple talk about the play in pos­i­tive ways, how they cried, and it was so touch­ing how they were able to re­late to it and to me, that is what the­atre is about. Peo­ple go and see them­selves on the stage, they see the sit­u­a­tions they are in­volved in and there is some sort of res­o­lu­tion, sug­gest­ed res­o­lu­tions or sug­gest­ed con­clu­sions in the play that help them to make bet­ter lives or a per­son­al change. To me, that is im­por­tant," Ed­wards said.

He said his wife, Lezo­ra, and chil­dren, Ste­fan, 33, Re­an­na, 29, and Ali­cia, 27, were all in­volved in dra­ma. They share the same love and pas­sion for the arts. His daugh­ter Re­an­na works with him in Iere The­atre Pro­duc­tions, as well as his wife who is do­ing her PhD in the­atre arts.

Why dra­ma?

Ed­wards was born on a sug­ar es­tate in Gol­con­da, and his fam­i­ly moved around from there to Ves­signy to La Brea, then to Mara­bel­la. He ex­celled at school and at­tend­ed St Bene­dict's Col­lege where he said that dra­ma found him in 1972.He said as a Sixth Form stu­dent at St Bene­dict's Col­lege, dra­ma tu­tors Mar­i­lyn Fres­co and Shakun­ta­la Per­sad se­lect­ed him and his friend Michael Ram­cha­ran to act in the school play that year.

He ad­mit­ted he was not in­to the play for the dra­ma, but for "kicks." How­ev­er, that con­cept changed for him when he ac­tu­al­ly start­ed tak­ing the play se­ri­ous­ly."We (Michael and him) were like ring­lead­ers in school. They (Fres­co and Per­sad) felt that we would make good char­ac­ters and ac­tu­al­ly, we went for kicks. We felt that we were the big boys in the school and that we were not in­to 'no play thing.' But what re­al­ly caught my at­ten­tion was the dis­ci­pline it re­quired and the ex­pe­ri­ence it­self was quite ful­fill­ing. It got me in touch with my in­ner self," Ed­wards said.

From that ex­pe­ri­ence, he said, "there was no turn­ing back."When he fin­ished Sixth Form, Ed­wardswent on to teach at Point Fortin In­ter­me­di­ate RC School and con­tin­ued with dra­ma.He met Gre­go­ry McGuire and to­geth­er they taught the chil­dren dra­ma.The chil­dren, he said, reached the fi­nals of the dra­ma fes­ti­val.

As Ed­wards ad­vanced in his ed­u­ca­tion­al ca­reer, so too did his pas­sion for dra­ma. He be­came the pres­i­dent of the Sec­ondary Schools' Dra­ma As­so­ci­a­tion, a post he held for 20 years. He was al­so in­stru­men­tal in the for­ma­tion of the Caribbean Sec­ondary Schools' Dra­ma As­so­ci­a­tion, of which he was the chair­man.

Can dra­ma make a dif­fer­ence?

Dra­ma is very im­por­tant for all young peo­ple, Ed­wards said, and it is es­sen­tial in schools.He said one of the first lessons he learned in dra­ma was dis­ci­pline and di­rec­tion."It helped to change my life, that ex­pe­ri­ence I had in Sixth Form. I was just a crazy young boy, with no di­rec­tion, just pass your ex­am and you go up and I had no com­pass as it were, but some­how be­ing in­volved in that dra­mat­ic piece helped me to reach my in­ner spir­it," Ed­wards ex­plained.

He re­count­ed times when he skipped re­hearsals on Sun­day morn­ings and while he was in the kitchen help­ing his moth­er pre­pare lunch Frisco would come to his house to col­lect him to take him to re­hearse."That kin­da changed my ap­proach to it (dra­ma). I be­came a more se­ri­ous per­son and I think a per­son who was more car­ing and un­der­stood that for things to be suc­cess­ful. We went straight to the fi­nals and it re­al­ly helped me to change the way I looked at life," he ex­plained.

Ed­wards said it was that ex­pe­ri­ence that spurred him to teach dra­ma."When I start­ed to teach I want­ed oth­er peo­ple to have the kind of ex­pe­ri­ences that I had. When I see chil­dren go­ing astray I know that they do not have that kind of dis­ci­pline and they have not reached the spir­it in them and they need­ed some­body to re­al­ly take them to through those kinds of places," he said.

He said Iere The­atre Pro­duc­tions is work­ing in a play for the Na­tion­al Coun­cil for In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) for Di­vali called The Ad­ven­tures of Gure­de­va. The play is based on a book writ­ten by Seep­er­sad Naipaul, V S Naipaul's fa­ther.

Next year, he said, the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny is plan­ning to mark the 400th death an­niver­sary of lit­er­ary great Shake­speare with a five lec­ture/per­for­mance se­ries fea­tur­ing live per­for­mances in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Deb­o­rah Jean-Bap­tiste and the Or­a­to­ry Foun­da­tion as well as Trinidad The­atre Works and oth­ers.

Changes threat­en

How­ev­er, while Ed­wards be­lieves dra­ma has carved its place in T&T so­ci­ety, he lament­ed that lo­cal com­e­dy/adult plays are threat­en­ing to un­rav­el the work that he has done, and it's sad­den­ing for him."The fact that I work so hard with oth­ers to get dra­ma on the school cur­ricu­lum and then to see and ex­pe­ri­ence the kind of fool­ish­ness that they do out there, come­dies and laugh fes­ti­vals and so on...how that im­pact­ed on me is neg­a­tive­ly," he said.

Ed­wards, artis­tic di­rec­tor of Iere The­atre Pro­duc­tions, sug­gest­ed if a child were to ask his or her par­ents to study the­atre arts those plays would be their par­ents un­der­stand­ing of what the­atre is, "that is what they see and what they hear all the time."The ef­fect of this, he said, "is stunt­ing the growth of that de­vel­op­ment that should be tak­ing place in the schools."

Dra­ma and the­atre is so much more than mere skits for laugh­ter, it is a life chang­ing ex­pe­ri­ence."It (dra­ma) brings things to life, it asks peo­ple to give of them­selves, to de­vel­op their own in­nate tal­ents. Every­body has a tal­ent, I do not think that peo­ple are giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­play those tal­ents," he said.

Dra­ma and the­atre is im­por­tant to every so­ci­ety, once the peo­ple who are do­ing the­atre un­der­stand that im­por­tance, he said. Ed­wards sug­gest­ed that sad­ly, "A lot of peo­ple do things be­cause they want to make mon­ey, so there is a whole com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion."The fa­ther of three is not los­ing hope that his hard work will be lost as he said chil­dren are ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the­atre arts and it is be­ing used in the pri­ma­ry schools for the Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent (CAC) for Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA.)