Gillian Moore

Three months of in­ten­sive re­hearsals cul­mi­nat­ed in a two-night stag­ing of Earl Lovelace's play, The Wine of As­ton­ish­ment, by Sec­ond and Third Form stu­dents of St Au­gus­tine Girls' High School on De­cem­ber 9 and 10. Un­der the di­rec­tion of school dra­ma teacher Rosh­ni Tewarie, stu­dents brought the play to life with song, dance and some com­pelling dra­mat­ic per­for­mances. With mu­si­cal di­rec­tion by Sa­tanand Shar­ma and chore­og­ra­phy by Derek Casano­va, the three-and-three-quar­ter-hour long stag­ing gave ev­i­dence to the hard work that had gone in­to the pro­duc­tion.

Against a set de­signed by El­win John­son, with light­ing by Cur­tis Bachan and sound by Tony Nar­ine, and with Kur­tis Gross as pro­duc­tion as­sis­tant and Kar­ish­ma Dow­tal as stage man­ag­er, the team pulled off a com­mend­able pro­duc­tion on a lev­el that be­lied the stu­dents' ten­der years. The Wine of As­ton­ish­ment deals with the fam­i­ly of a Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist min­is­ter and the tri­als they faced when their faith was out­lawed in T&T.

Tewarie and her charges con­sult­ed the Holy Nazarene Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Church and the New Cre­ation Em­manuel SB Church, who as­sist­ed the chil­dren to un­der­stand and au­then­ti­cal­ly por­tray their re­li­gion.

Af­ter the play, the au­di­ence was treat­ed to a pre­sen­ta­tion of sea­son­al mu­sic by the SAGHS Steel Or­ches­tra and the school's own La Nue­va Ex­pe­ri­en­cia parang group. Lovelace graced the pro­duc­tion with his pres­ence, as did mas­ter artist Leroy Clarke, play­wright Rawle Gi­bons and Leader Daniel of the Holy Nazerene SB Church.