Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

?Be­fore I start this thing, let me make some­thing very clear: I is a the­atre per­son. The­atre, the thing where re­al live peo­ple stand­ing up on some kind of stage and act­ing in front of a re­al live au­di­ence. I start writ­ing as a child and one of the first things I ever write was a skit. I does write plays, I act with the Trinidad The­atre Work­shop (TTW) and I study di­rect­ing and stage man­age­ment at UWI in my un­der­grad days. All that is to tell you I's not no kicksy the­atre per­son. I like it bad and I like it long time. So when I hear we was get­ting a big new na­tion­al the­atre build­ing, I had mixed feel­ings. Yes, mixed feel­ings, be­cause as far as I hear and see in this coun­try, the­atre peo­ple don't need a big hall like that. What I per­son­al­ly hear them ask for was pur­pose-built the­atres (not mul­ti-use halls or au­di­to­ri­ums, but the­atres) in North, South, To­ba­go and Cen­tral, and to fix the the­atres we done have. Just as Queen's Hall get a whole ren­o­va­tion the oth­er day, Lit­tle Carib The­atre and Na­pari­ma Bowl could do with a over­haul, too. (Carib get­ting one all now... I wish they coul­da get a few mil­lion from the Na­pa bud­get to fin­ish the thing, yes.)

I is not no con­struc­tion ex­pert. I nev­er lay a brick my­self, so you could take this how you want: I sure sure sure the bud­get for them build­ings the the­atre fra­ter­ni­ty did ask for wasn't go­ing and cost half a bil­lion dol­lars. And is half a bil­lion dol­lars, give or take a cou­ple mil­lion, that Gov­ern­ment spend on the Na­pa. I nev­er went in­side, but I hear peo­ple like caiso­ni­ans, rap­so peo­ple and the opera singer Anne Fridal re­al like it. Give Jack he jack­et, it very shiny and im­pres­sive from the out­side, and I know plen­ty peo­ple find it glam­orous and ex­cit­ing and pret­ty. And then it have the oth­er side of the pen­ny. In a press con­fer­ence in Marl­bor­ough House in Lon­don, as part of the Com­mon­wealth Day com­mem­o­ra­tion on March 8, the PM stand up and say the Na­pa build­ing is boss. News­day quote him as say­ing that, at the CHOGM last year when Na­pa open, "...we were able to ex­pose to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty a new fa­cil­i­ty in Port-of-Spain: a Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts which, as every­body saw, we be­lieve is ac­knowl­edged to be a world class fa­cil­i­ty in a small de­vel­op­ing coun­try, seek­ing and striv­ing to take its place among the great coun­tries of the world."

The good­ly PM is many things but I nev­er hear he have no the­atre cre­den­tials yet. Every the­atre per­son I talk to, in­clud­ing some who was watch­ing the specs for the build­ing as it was go­ing up, say Na­pa is boo. Rubadiri Vic­tor, a fel­la I act with at TTW and who does write and di­rect for stage, write a 39-page re­port on be­half of the Artists Coali­tion of T&T (ACTT). I read it Mon­day, the same day as the PM was giv­ing he speech. The re­port name "The Tragedy & the Hid­den His­to­ry of Na­pa." In short, he say the Na­pa the PM so talk­ing up is a com­plete waste. I go give you the Cliff Notes ver­sion:

n "Hav­ing seen Na­pa from the in­side now, and hav­ing vis­it­ed dozens of rooms, I now con­clude that it will cost a fur­ther $80 mil­lion to con­vert a hand­ful of rooms to acad­e­my and per­form­ing arts spec­i­fi­ca­tions. This would still leave dozens of rooms un­touched and un­us­able. Be­cause of this I am now pre­pared to con­cede that it may be more fea­si­ble to give the en­tire Na­pa fa­cil­i­ty over to be­ing a ho­tel and that an­oth­er site be sought to con­struct a prop­er school for the arts and a na­tion­al per­form­ing arts cen­tre.

Na­pa is com­plete­ly un­suit­ed for ei­ther func­tion and will cost too much to con­vert it in­to such." n "Artists... po­lite­ly re­quest­ed stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion (on Na­pa's de­sign). A let­ter was draft­ed with the sig­na­tures of more than ten rep­re­sen­ta­tive group lead­ers, an ex-deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of cul­ture, Sat Balka­rans­ingh, ex-Di­rec­tors of Cul­ture Mun­gal Patasar, Chalk­dust, and Eu­gene Joseph, and the three se­nior artists of the coun­try–Leroy Clarke, Pe­ter Min­shall, and Earl Lovelace. It was a his­toric doc­u­ment. It was ig­nored."

1. It have no load­ing bay for the stage.

2. The stage too big.

3. The or­ches­tra pit too deep.

4. The black box the­atres is just emp­ty rooms with no dress­ing rooms, rig­ging for lights, or even seats.

5. The light and sound mix­ing boards is ana­log, where­as state-of-the-art mix­ers is most­ly dig­i­tal. The Na­pa boards is mid- lev­el, not top of the line.

6. It have "hun­dreds of prob­lems with light­ing and sound fix­tures and equip­ment."

7."Every­thing is writ­ten in Chi­nese. ...The tech­ni­cal boards con­trol every sin­gle out­let and plug in the whole build­ing from cen­tral switch­ing. And no one can say what switch is for what on hun­dreds of switch­es. So you then have to man­u­al­ly go through each one to find the cor­re­spond­ing switch. And then la­bel it with mask­ing tape."

The­atre don't need a stage or a build­ing to hap­pen. It could hap­pen in the road, un­der a tree, in a church or a class­room or a la­trine if you could fig­ure out how to get the au­di­ence in­side with you. We the­atre peo­ple ac­cus­tom to hard times and mak­ing do. Na­pa might be a na­tion­al dis­grace, but it wouldn't kill we. But to boast that the sil­ver ele­phant at the top of Fred­er­ick Street is a na­tion­al trea­sure? That is in­sult on top of in­jury. The the­atre com­mu­ni­ty–and all the rest of the arts com­mu­ni­ty of T&T–de­serve a prop­er, func­tion­al, well-de­signed fa­cil­i­ty they could use, not just a use­less but shiny trin­ket to gallery with.