Shereen Ali

When youth and great the­atre meet, the re­sults can be im­pres­sive. The up­com­ing pro­duc­tion of The Phan­tom of the Opera promis­es not on­ly en­ter­tain­ing mu­si­cal the­atre, but a tru­ly ed­u­ca­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence for the many T&T stu­dents who gave up their Au­gust va­ca­tions (and many week­ends) to re­hearse for this first full per­for­mance of the fa­mous mu­si­cal in Trinidad. It is to­tal­ly a youth pro­duc­tion, with all the key par­tic­i­pants (ac­tors and be­hind-the-scenes work­ers) aged from 14 to young adults. The lo­cal com­pa­ny Caribbean The­atre Pro­duc­tions, found­ed by Nicholas Gor­don, is bring­ing the pro­duc­tion here un­der li­cence from Cameron Mack­in­tosh and The Re­al­ly Use­ful The­atre Com­pa­ny Inc.

If past youth mu­si­cals from the Caribbean The­atre Pro­duc­tions team–such as West Side Sto­ry and Les Mis­er­ables–are any­thing to go by, then mu­si­cal fans are in for an­oth­er treat.

The idea for get­ting stu­dents in­volved in Broad­way pro­duc­tions ini­tial­ly came from a Cana­di­an pro­gramme which or­gan­ised tal­ent­ed Cana­di­an high school stu­dents to per­form in pro­duc­tions.

"So we de­cid­ed to do a sim­i­lar thing, with our schools, uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges," shares a mem­ber of the Caribbean The­atre Pro­duc­tions team: "We au­di­tioned tal­ent­ed youth, and gave them an op­por­tu­ni­ty to per­form. March 2011 was the first time we did this, with the show West Side Sto­ry, pro­duced un­der our High School Broad­way Show pro­gramme." The show was pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and was al­so sup­port­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Tal­ent­ed youth

The Caribbean The­atre Pro­duc­tions team says they dis­cov­ered "an abun­dance of tal­ent, un­tapped, in T&T. They just need­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty. Not on­ly the ac­tors, but all the back­stage crew are stu­dents. Un­der the guid­ance of pro­fes­sion­als in the field, many youths have dis­cov­ered their tal­ents. It's been a spring­board for some, with the pro­duc­tions re­ceiv­ing ex­cel­lent re­views so far."

Mu­si­cal di­rec­tors for this year's pro­duc­tion of Phan­tom of the Opera are Vic­tor Prescod and as­sis­tant Gre­go­ry Wong Fo Sue. Christo­pher Gor­don is di­rect­ing the graph­ic de­sign, while Dr Helmer Hilwig is the dra­mat­ic di­rec­tor. A Nether­land-born doc­tor who came to T&T in 1983, and stayed, Hilwig is not on­ly an avid drama­tist, but al­so heads the Adult Emer­gency De­part­ment of the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, and is a board mem­ber at Queen's Hall.

This is his third time di­rect­ing youth per­for­mances at shows by Caribbean The­atre Pro­duc­tions, and he is pas­sion­ate about the ex­pe­ri­ence: "The two pre­vi­ous pro­duc­tions (West Side Sto­ry in 2011 and Les Mis­er­ables in 2012) ex­posed some most ex­cit­ing tal­ent," he com­ment­ed in his di­rec­tor's notes to the Phan­tom pro­duc­tion: Hilwig con­grat­u­lat­ed the mas­ter­minds be­hind Caribbean The­atre Pro­duc­tions, Elis­a­beth and Nicholas Gor­don, who he said showed "fan­tas­tic ini­tia­tive" as well as "tenac­i­ty and courage to take on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the tricky and risky the­atre busi­ness. "Just to get the rights to per­form the Phan­tom, one starts at TT$80,000, and that is on­ly the be­gin­ning; be­cause then the bills start pil­ing up: sound, lights, sets, cos­tumes, rent of the hall, ad­ver­tise­ments, etc. Luck­i­ly, I on­ly have re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the di­rec­tion," he said.

Mon­ey is still need­ed to con­tin­ue the youth dra­mat­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties made pos­si­ble by Caribbean The­atre Pro­duc­tions, say team mem­bers. While they are grate­ful for cur­rent sup­port, they say more cor­po­rate sup­port is need­ed to help fund ex­pens­es which in­clude cos­tumes, salaries for mem­bers of the live or­ches­tra, and set de­sign. For this pro­duc­tion, for in­stance, the team rent­ed a chan­de­lier from the Ken­tucky-based Amer­i­can firm ZFX Fly­ing Ef­fects Com­pa­ny, as well as sourc­ing some back­drops. These props will be re­turned af­ter the pro­duc­tion ends.

Tech­ni­cal chal­lenges

Hilwig al­so com­ment­ed on some of the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges of Phan­tom: these in­clud­ed "the 'float­ing' gon­do­la, the 'mag­i­cal' mir­ror, the ap­pear­ance and dis­ap­pear­ance of the Phan­tom out of or in­to 'nowhere,' and the many dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions, just to name a few." As di­rec­tor, he said while be­ing true to the script, he has coloured the per­for­mances to bet­ter in­ter­pret the char­ac­ters."I feel that such choic­es make the Phan­tom much more vul­ner­a­ble, and Chris­tine more ma­ture and stronger than the of­ten por­trayed an­gry, grumpy, vi­o­lent Phan­tom to­wards the over­ly in­no­cent, frag­ile, scared Chris­tine," he said. "I al­so tried to ac­cen­tu­ate the con­tin­u­ous tri­an­gu­lar ten­sion and fight be­tween Raoul as the ex­po­nent of the 're­al' world...the Phan­tom as the ex­po­nent of the 'oth­er,' the 'sur­re­al' world, ... and Chris­tine of­ten tan­gled up in her own world."

'A won­der­ful jour­ney'

"It was a won­der­ful three-month jour­ney," said Hilwig of this di­rect­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. He was es­pe­cial­ly moved by the T&T stu­dents' en­thu­si­asm: "You are all such shin­ing youths," he said, clear­ly im­pressed with not on­ly the stu­dents' ded­i­ca­tion, but al­so their liv­ing demon­stra­tion that there's still a lot of hope and tal­ent amongst young peo­ple.

DE­TAILS: The Phan­tom of the Opera is based on the French nov­el Le Fan­tome de l' Opera by Gas­ton Ler­oux. The mu­si­cal fea­tures mu­sic by An­drew Lloyd Web­ber with lyrics by Charles Hart and ad­di­tion­al lyrics by Richard Stil­goe.The T&T pre­miere of Phan­tom of the Opera is to­mor­row at Queen's Hall, un­der the pa­tron­age of the French Am­bas­sador, Jacques Sturm. Pro­ceeds from the open­ing show will sup­port the Grant-A-Wish Foun­da­tion for ter­mi­nal­ly-ill chil­dren. Show­times: Oc­to­ber 31 at 8 pm; No­vem­ber 1 at 8 pm; and No­vem­ber 2 at 5 pm. The Cas­cade Fes­ti­val Bal­let group will be mak­ing a spe­cial guest ap­pear­ance at the shows every night.Tick­ets: Elle Fash­ion, Gulf City Mall (652-3149); Par­ty Plan-It, 31 Pat­na Street, St James (628-7526); Le­Ja­by Hair Sa­lon, 94 East­ern Main Road, St Au­gus­tine (645-7644); and Queen's Hall Box Of­fice.