Geral­dine Con­nor (PHD, BA, MA, MMUS (SOAS) LRMS, DIP ED) is the con­ceiv­er, co-writer, com­pos­er, arranger and artis­tic di­rec­tor of Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah. She is a free­lance the­atre di­rec­tor and an eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist by pro­fes­sion.Ms Con­nor has di­rect­ed many pro­duc­tions, in­clud­ing Yaa San­te­waa, Blues in the Night, San­ti­man­i­tay–for Pe­ter Min­shall, The Hard­er They Come (Lon­don West End), Ven­don Na­tion­al, (UK Arts), Moses, Can­dy­land (Sell­fridges 2003) and many more.

Geral­dine is the daugh­ter of Pearl and Edric Con­nor, two pro­found pi­o­neers of black and Caribbean the­atre in Britain. They both found­ed the Pearl Con­nor Man­age­ment Agency, as­sist­ing ac­tors of West In­di­an, African and black Amer­i­can her­itage dur­ing the '60s, and fol­low­ing. Ram John Hold­er, Joan Ar­ra­trad­ing, Pa­tri­cia Ebeigu­ie, George Ma­haris, Car­men Mon­roe, Rudolph Walk­er and many more.

Edric Con­nor was the first per­son to make a film about Car­ni­val and an­oth­er fea­tur­ing the game of crick­et. He tried end­less­ly to start a film­ing in­dus­try in T&T, but did not re­ceive the fi­nan­cial back­ing that was re­quired. Yet he was an im­por­tant fig­ure in Hol­ly­wood. A renowned bari­tone, he per­formed with the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny and act­ed in films such as The Vikings and Mo­by Dick. He col­lect­ed a sem­i­nal book of folk songs. Through the Caribbean Artis­tic Move­ment, Pearl and Edric Con­nor not on­ly knew George Lam­ming, but were vis­it­ed in Lan­cast­er Gate by both CLR James and Mar­tin Luther King. Geral­dine con­tin­ues the lega­cy of her par­ents, along the path to Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah.

Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah comes with not on­ly a pro­found sense of his­tor­i­cal events, but an in­clu­sion of eth­nic and cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty in its in­ter­pre­ta­tion. To­wards a vi­sion of the near fu­ture, Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah plans to move in­to the di­rec­tion of con­firm­ing na­tion­al recog­ni­tion. Plans for the pro­duc­tion to ex­tend to Aus­tralia, the US and the Caribbean are well on their way, with plan­ning stages tak­ing time and fi­nance to come to fruition.

Mean­while, ex­cerpts and work­shops con­tin­ue in Eng­land, in prepa­ra­tion for the mas­ter­piece and build­ing the mo­men­tum to open­ing night.Ear­li­er this year, the spec­tac­u­lar pres­ence of Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah thrilled the Roy­al Al­bert Hall for Prince Charles' char­i­ty, Busi­ness in the Com­mu­ni­ty Award 2008. Sir Michael Paul­son com­ment­ed on how beau­ti­ful the cos­tumes were, and that T&T should be proud of its cul­tur­al her­itage.

Jonathan Bish­op, tal­ent­ed son of the soil, who per­formed the role of Sim­ba in Lon­don's West End pro­duc­tion of The Li­on King, danced the Dovette for Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah with grace and poise and, along with Car­ol La Chapelle, de­light­ed the elite au­di­ence.

We need to fol­low Jonathan's ca­reer close­ly, and sup­port him spir­i­tu­al­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly.

Melodies unit­ed

Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah has been re­arranged mu­si­cal­ly, with the com­bined text of west­ern me­dieval pop­u­lar the­atri­cal gen­res, Trinida­di­an tra­di­tion­al folk tech­niques, match­ing theme along­side a mul­ti­tude of pop­u­lar in­dige­nous mu­sic and dance gen­res. Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah boasts of in­clu­sion of every re­li­gious faith rep­re­sent­ed in the pro­duc­tion, along with its rit­u­al and cel­e­bra­tion.

It re­flects close­ly the cross-fer­til­i­sa­tion of the cul­tures of Africa, Eu­rope and Asia in the Caribbean dur­ing the past 400 years. Its melodies were unit­ed in an un­for­get­table cel­e­bra­tion, telling the sto­ry of birth, death and re­birth. Arrange­ments of Caribbean folk myths, Yoru­ba/Or­isha rit­u­als, Is­lam­ic and Hin­du cul­tur­al ref­er­ences, added to the mu­sic of Han­del's Mes­si­ah, add flavour and com­bine all this in ...a pot­pour­ri of mu­si­cal ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Many Trinida­di­ans have gained recog­ni­tion in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, as a re­sult of hav­ing per­formed in Car­ni­val Con­tin­ued from Page B4

Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah: Nigel Wong, Ronald Samm, Re­nee Cas­tle, Bri­an Green, Jeannene de Bique and Melanie Hud­son are now work­ing in ma­jor pro­duc­tions in Lon­don's West End, Eu­rope and en­vi­rons.

Many great artistes have con­tributed their ex­per­tise to the suc­cess of Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah: Wayne Berke­ley, pro­duc­tion de­sign­er, is well-known for his de­signs in the Car­ni­val are­na, but has al­so worked ex­ten­sive­ly in the­atre. Some of his de­signs for the stage in­clude Romeo and Juli­et, Twelfth Night, The Pi­rates of Pen­zance and Car­men.

Berke­ley de­signed the stage at the 1999 Miss Uni­verse beau­ty pageant, and con­tin­ues to work, paint­ing with his left hand, af­ter a stroke in 2005. He mas­ter­mind­ed and de­signed the new ramped spi­ral stage which rep­re­sent­ed the pow­er of Africa, the sym­bol of con­ti­nu­ity rep­re­sent­ing birth, ini­ti­a­tion, mar­riage and death, of which uni­ty, or­der and har­mo­ny are ex­pressed.

Car­ol La Chapelle, dance pi­o­neer and in­ter­na­tion­al chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, has served as dance di­rec­tor for Po­et Lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott for many years, and was com­mis­sioned by the RSC to chore­o­graph the Jok­er of Seville and Odyssey. La Chapelle has ap­peared with Mel­ba Moore, Jose Fe­li­ciano and Bob Mar­ley. Clary Sa­landy, Car­ni­val and the­atre de­sign­er, was re­spon­si­ble for de­sign­ing and man­ag­ing the Queen's Ju­bilee Car­ni­val Pa­rade in 2002.

Her com­pa­ny, Ma­hogany Arts, was cho­sen to open the Mil­len­ni­um Dome in Lon­don and the Chi­nese New Year Mil­len­ni­um cel­e­bra­tion in Sin­ga­pore. Ma­hogany won Lon­don's Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val with a por­tray­al of Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah in 2000.

Glit­ter­ing cos­tumes

A tru­ly spec­tac­u­lar por­tray­al, Clary cre­at­ed the enor­mous glit­ter­ing cos­tumes, in­clud­ing the Mes­si­ah, Ma­ma God, Es­hu the Dark An­gel and the Dove of Peace. All of these cos­tumes were show­cased by Trinidad's finest, in­clud­ing Alyson Browne, El­la An­dall, Chris Shep­herd, Na­tal­ie Set­tle and Bri­an Green. The pro­duc­tion was made pos­si­ble by a team of pro­fes­sion­als. The late An­dre Tanker, con­sid­ered the great­est com­pos­er and mu­si­cian of Caribbean con­tem­po­rary mu­sic in T&T, cre­at­ed the ini­tial foun­da­tion of Caribbean mu­sic in Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah, and left a last­ing im­pres­sion on those who met and worked with him. He worked as mu­si­cal su­per­vi­sor on the pro­duc­tion, and was a great and gift­ed per­son­al­i­ty.

Many of the mul­ti-tal­ent­ed and gift­ed sons and daugh­ters of Trin­ba­go have con­tributed to the suc­cess of Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah tak­ing a step to­wards the fu­ture. We still hold the at­tempts of pi­o­neers like Aubrey Adams (Am­bakaila) Boscoe Hold­er (The Wiz and Tim­buk­tu, on Broad­way) in high es­teem. They, too, tried end­less­ly to in­tro­duce the cul­ture of T&T to the world.

We are ex­treme­ly for­tu­nate to have Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah, a work of art de­signed to en­light­en and pro­vide a chan­nel for tal­ent­ed peo­ple of this twin-is­land, to be show­cased around the world. We are tru­ly blessed, as there is an abun­dance of tal­ent in this coun­try ready for ex­po­sure.

The con­tin­u­ous chal­lenge is to pro­vide the fi­nan­cial sup­port that is need­ed to bring this pro­duc­tion to per­for­mance. Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah re­mains the pro­duc­tion that shows that our eth­nic di­ver­si­ty is alive and vi­brant in its por­tray­al. It pro­vides a vi­brant land­scape in which peo­ple and cul­tures are unit­ed in an ex­hil­a­rat­ing sense of com­mon hu­man­i­ty and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. It is unique­ly Trinida­di­an and has sur­vived the weath­er of ob­jec­tive crit­i­cism. It pro­vides pow­er­ful ev­i­dence of what uni­ty can achieve.