Zahra Gor­don

Paul Keens-Dou­glas be­lieves spon­sor­ship is killing cul­ture. And that's one of the rea­sons why in 30 years of host­ing the al­ter­na­tive com­e­dy show Talk Tent, he's nev­er had cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship or used ex­trav­a­gant tele­vi­sion ads.On Feb­ru­ary 15, Talk Tent will cel­e­brate its 30th an­niver­sary at Queen's Hall.

Keens-Dou­glas, one of this coun­try's lead­ing racon­teurs will be joined on stage this year by singer Ray­mond Ed­wards, mid­night rob­ber Rashid Ho­sein, the singing MC Lord Su­pe­ri­or, ca­lyp­son­ian Short Pants and co­me­di­an Miguel Browne.These per­form­ers are Talk Tent reg­u­lars who in­clude a long list of stal­warts and leg­ends who made up the Talk Tent cast, in­clud­ing Ho­race James, Bill Trot­man, Glenn Davis, Pearl Ein­tou Springer, Re­la­tor and David Bereaux.

A fo­cus of Talk Tent has al­so been giv­ing space to up-and-com­ing artists and many es­tab­lished en­ter­tain­ers got very ear­ly gigs at Talk Tent when the ca­lyp­so are­na had no room or pa­tience for them.These en­ter­tain­ers in­clude Er­rol Fa­bi­en, Broth­er Re­sis­tance, Kare­ga Man­dela and Atak­lan. In more re­cent years, Talk Tent has al­so in­clud­ed young artists of the new sto­ry­telling gen­er­a­tion, like spo­ken-word artist Muham­mad Muwak­il and singer Neval Chate­lal.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view at his Diego Mar­tin home, Keens-Dou­glas shared pho­tos of the show's ear­ly days, when it was held in an ac­tu­al tent on Vic­to­ria Av­enue in Port-of-Spain.The show is tout­ed as the on­ly show "where talk is art."He added that many mis­take him for a co­me­di­an al­though he is a sto­ry­teller who us­es com­e­dy to paint a pic­ture.Keens-Dou­glas says a sto­ry­teller may be fun­ny and tell jokes but they are fo­cused pri­mar­i­ly on nar­ra­tive. He said all the per­form­ers in his show, from the MC to the Mid­night Rob­ber, use nar­ra­tive in their work.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, he be­lieves sto­ry­telling is dy­ing."Sto­ry­telling is dy­ing in the sense that peo­ple are do­ing mu­sic now. They are still telling sto­ries, just on a dif­fer­ent fo­rum."Peo­ple should be telling their chil­dren sto­ries in their homes still, but we have so many DVDs and video games now that they're not in­ter­est­ed in it any more. What should be hap­pen­ing is that all these games should be lo­cal and have lo­cal con­tent," he said.Keens-Dou­glas al­so be­lieves that even though schools par­tic­i­pate in pro­grammes like Best Vil­lage and San­Fest, where there are sto­ry­telling cat­e­gories, there is no feed­er pro­gramme for af­ter chil­dren leave school.

"Schools have a lot of pro­grammes but the prob­lem is they stop at school. Even with the Best Vil­lage com­pe­ti­tion there's so much tal­ent there, but you can't make it out of that and make a liv­ing off these crafts. We need more shows," he said. It was the need for more shows that in­spired Keens-Dou­glas to cre­ate Talk Tent in the first place."The idea for hav­ing a Talk Tent was born out of the per­cep­tion that there was no fo­rum I knew of for the talk artists in T&T.

"One heard the words 'oral tra­di­tions' be­ing bandied about but you had to look hard and far for our Mid­night Rob­bers or Pier­rot Grenades, not to men­tion a To­ba­go speech band, dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son" he said.The first Talk Tent was held in 1983 and was the on­ly Car­ni­val talk show at the time. Now, many Car­ni­val com­e­dy shows have emerged.How­ev­er, Dou­glas moved his show to im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Car­ni­val, to avoid con­flict with ca­lyp­so tents who hired some of the same en­ter­tain­ers.The tent has moved through a se­ries of homes in­clud­ing Arthur's Pub in Mar­aval and the Roxy The­atre. The show is near­ly the same age as Keens-Dou­glas' ca­reer, which be­gan in the late 1970s when the record­ing of his sto­ry Tim Tim was picked up by ra­dio sta­tions both lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly.

Fol­low­ing his Tim Tim suc­cesss, Keens-Dou­glas went on to self-pub­lish nu­mer­ous books and record live DVDs and CDs of his per­for­mances. Cur­rent­ly, Keens-Dou­glas al­so us­es sto­ry-telling in work as a mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er and pre­sen­ter.How­ev­er, whether sto­ry­telling is dy­ing or not, Talk Tent has re­mained pop­u­lar by pre­sent­ing a good qual­i­ty show and "clean" hu­mour, ac­cord­ing to Keens-Dou­glas.Part of the clean hu­mour Talk Tent pro­vides is the now fa­mous door-prize: in his liv­ing room, Keens-Dou­glas had an ac­tu­al five-foot door wrapped and ready to give away."We have a cer­tain vi­sion and we have cer­tain val­ues that we want to pre­serve.

"We're not do­ing this to make mon­ey and we're not telling dirty jokes just to pull a crowd. We try to get peo­ple to think dif­fer­ent­ly about life," he said.

Talk Tent runs from Feb­ru­ary 15-17 at Queen's Hall. Tick­ets are $150.For more in­for­ma­tion call 632-1647 or 624-1284.