Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

Tim­mia Hearn Feld­man is not in Kansas any more. "You know how many peo­ple have said that to me?" dead­panned the new as­sis­tant artis­tic di­rec­tor of the Trinidad The­atre Work­shop (TTW) at an in­ter­view at a New­town cof­fee shop last week. Her moth­er is Trinida­di­an, and her fa­ther Is­raeli, but Hearn Feld­man grew up in Kansas in the Mid­west­ern Unit­ed States, spend­ing many hol­i­days in Trinidad in the in­ter­im. It was four days be­fore the open­ing of the TTW stag­ing of the Ja­maican clas­sic An Echo in the Bone, which Hearn Feld­man came to Trinidad in May to be­gin di­rect­ing. She first read Echo when she came to as­sist in di­rect­ing an­oth­er Ja­maican play, Trevor Rhone's Smile Or­ange, staged at the Lit­tle Carib last year. "[Echo] was every­thing I had to say about my own frac­tured an­ces­try and his­to­ry and where I come from. I think be­ing mixed is one of the hard­est things you can be, be­cause you don't have any­thing that you can be. You can't be black, you can't be white. Peo­ple of­ten make as­sump­tions about me be­cause of the colour of my skin which are not true. I grew up hear­ing my mom's mom's mom's sto­ries, which are the sto­ries of slav­ery. So that is very much a part of how I iden­ti­fy. "When I read Echo, which does a beau­ti­ful job of ex­plain­ing and ex­plor­ing the slave nar­ra­tive from a black per­spec­tive, a white per­spec­tive and a mixed per­spec­tive, I thought this is every­thing I want to say."

Hearn Feld­man is pe­tit, and very light skinned, with a cas­cade of loose chest­nut curls that cas­cade down the left side of her face, Mick Huck­nall-style cir­ca 1987. She twirled the curls ab­stract­ed­ly as she field­ed phone calls dur­ing the in­ter­view, pac­ing as she talked about drum­mers with one caller.

Drums play an in­trin­sic part in Echo, which is set in a coun­try wake in Ja­maica in 1937. A vil­lager is dead and his com­mu­ni­ty gath­ers to re­mem­ber him; the ex­er­cise be­comes one of an­ces­tral mem­o­ry, and scenes flash to slave ships, plan­ta­tions, and the ma­roon bush. Hearn Feld­man has changed the set­ting to Trinidad, hop­ing to re­mind the pop­u­la­tion that, yes, there was slav­ery here, and all its con­se­quences. In a re­hearsal at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um that night, ac­tor Michael Cher­rie shift­ed from the char­ac­ter of Stone, a black vil­lager, to the char­ac­ter of a white ship's bo­sun tak­ing en­slaved Africans out for air­ing on a slaver's deck, while oth­er vil­lagers be­come the Africans bound in a line be­hind him. Hearn Feld­man is a good di­rec­tor, said Win­ston Duke, who plays Son­son, the dead vil­lager's son. "She works very hands-on with her ac­tors, and goes for very hon­est and deeply felt work, which is some­thing that gives the au­di­ence great shows," Duke said. (See side­bar.) Echo is "a dif­fi­cult play-for au­di­ences as well," said TTW artis­tic di­rec­tor Al­bert Laveau. Laveau has en­gaged Hearn Feld­man to be his ap­pren­tice with an eye to her suc­ces­sion as artis­tic di­rec­tor of the ven­er­a­ble TTW. "I know that my clock is wind­ing down and it would be re­miss of me to not put suc­ces­sion in place," said Laveau, who is 77 this year and has led the work­shop for decades. "I think she will be a great as­set to the the­atre move­ment in Trinidad," he said at the Echo re­hearsal that night. "She's keen to dis­place me. I'm look­ing for­ward to it," he said with a smile. He's es­pe­cial­ly glad she's teach­ing in the TTW's School for the Arts, which con­tin­ues with an act­ing class for teens to­mor­row at its Jern­ing­ham Street, Bel­mont, head­quar­ters. "Train­ing is vi­tal for the arts, the bedrock on which the damn thing thrives," Laveau said.

Hearn Feld­man re­fused to give her age, but her chub­by cheeks and en­thu­si­asm speak of youth. She has an im­pres­sive re­sume, how­ev­er; she has played Juli­et and Pe­ter Pan, and has di­rect­ed four plays on her own and as­sist­ed in di­rect­ing four oth­ers; she's al­so taught dra­ma at US high schools and in Nepal. In 2006 she won a gold medal for her per­for­mance as Queen Eliz­a­beth I at Lawrence High School, Kansas, and was award­ed a num­ber of fel­low­ships and grants while at Yale. Giv­en this back­ground, why Trinidad? "I asked my­self that ques­tion a lot for the first two weeks that I was here," she said. "I have three places that I call home: Trinidad, Is­rael and the Unit­ed States. I don't feel I need to find a fourth be­cause it would take me decades to be able to call that place home." She's bit­ter about the New York the­atre scene, de­scrib­ing it as "a very crit­i­cal, judg­men­tal arts scene that is very bour­geois and very ed­u­cat­ed". Plus, she felt, "No­body's go­ing to hire [me] in New York to do any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ing." She wasn't yet ready to go to Is­rael, and she had the TTW project in hand-sort of. Though last year she was asked to come to work on the pro­duc­tion, fund­ing fell through, and if she were to come she knew she would have had to start again from scratch. Con­fer­ring with a dean at Yale, he asked her, "You have a pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny down there that has a mis­sion you like, a reper­toire that you love and a his­to­ry with a name. Can you man­age it?"

The an­swer seemed to be yes.

TTW's pro­duc­tion of An Echo in the Bone by Den­nis Scott con­tin­ues tonight and Au­gust 9-12 at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um, Port-of-Spain. Show­time is 6 pm on Sun­days, and 8 pm on oth­er nights. For tick­et in­for­ma­tion, call the TTW at 624-8502.

New kid on the block

Though he was born here, Win­ston Duke is a new face to Trinidad the­atre. The 25-year-old em­i­grat­ed from To­ba­go to the US with his fam­i­ly when he was ten. Armed with a bach­e­lor's in the­atre from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Buf­fa­lo, New York, he en­tered the Yale School of Dra­ma two years ago to do a mas­ter's in act­ing. There he met fel­low ex-pat ac­tor Paul Pryce, and through Pryce, Tim­mia Hearn Feld­man, who in­vit­ed him to come home to play Son­son, a ma­jor role in An Echo in the Bone. He's very tall, well over six feet, and has the pres­ence of a lead­ing man on stage even sur­round­ed by such crit­i­cal­ly ac­claimed ac­tors as Michael Cher­rie, Glenn Davis, Eve­lyn Cae­sar Munroe and Arnold Goind­han. While he in­tends to re­turn to the US to fin­ish his de­gree, Duke said, "I plan on com­ing back home to do more work. I'm a son of the soil. I would love to help Trinidad the­atre and be as much a part of it as I can."