The Trinidad The­atre Work­shop (TTW) is re­turn­ing to CXC-geared The­atre in Ed­u­ca­tion (TIE) with its new Com­mu­ni­ty Out­reach Pro­gramme. Com­mu­ni­ty and vil­lage coun­cil lead­ers were in­vit­ed to a spe­cial launch and 15-minute pre­view of its first show, Shake­speare's A Mid­sum­mer Night's Dream, at TTW on March 16.

The re­vamped TIE will bring live per­for­mances of plays on the CXC syl­labus di­rect­ly to com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres through­out T&T from April. In ad­di­tion to these com­mu­ni­ty per­for­mances, the plays will be filmed and pack­aged as DVDs by Mac­Far­lane Film for dis­tri­b­u­tion to sec­ondary schools and li­braries, TTW said in a press re­lease. Fu­ture stag­ings planned are Trevor Rhone's Old Sto­ry Time and Shake­speare's Julius Cae­sar.

"TTW pi­o­neered the TIE pro­gramme to na­tion­al sec­ondary schools in the 1990s," the com­pa­ny said in the re­lease."In De­cem­ber 2012, TTW re­ceived fund­ing to ful­ly re­sume its TIE ac­tiv­i­ties from the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. This new in­car­na­tion [...] will ben­e­fit not on­ly stu­dents, but al­so wider au­di­ences across both is­lands. Through the filmed ver­sions of these plays, TTW is al­so en­sur­ing that these pro­duc­tions are doc­u­ment­ed and archived for ex­tend­ed fu­ture use by stu­dents."

A Mid­sum­mer Night's Dream "is giv­en a re­fresh­ing, mod­ern in­ter­pre­ta­tion, in­cor­po­rat­ing el­e­ments of tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters," TTW stat­ed. "Set in con­tem­po­rary T&T com­bined with hints of an­cient Athens, TTW's ver­sion of A Mid­sum­mer Night's Dream will draw on the tra­di­tions of the jab jab and jab mo­lassie to rein­ter­pret the crea­tures of the woods in­hab­it­ing the play."

The play will open at TTW on April 18, fol­lowed by a na­tion­al tour. TTW is al­so hop­ing to tour the play re­gion­al­ly and take it to in­ter­na­tion­al arts fes­ti­vals.The launch of the pro­gramme al­so in­tro­duced TTW's new com­pa­ny of ac­tors: Arnold Goind­han, Nick­o­lai Sal­cedo, Joel Joseph, Sindy Nurse, Kearn Samuel, Tis­han­na Williams, and Afi Ford-Hop­son, the re­lease said.Com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and or­gan­i­sa­tions wish­ing to par­tic­i­pate in the Com­mu­ni­ty Out­reach Pro­gramme are in­vit­ed to vis­it the Trinidad The­atre Work­shop at 23 Jern­ing­ham Av­enue, Bel­mont; call at 625-8502 or e-mail trinidadthe­atre@gmail.com