Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray

Praise has been pour­ing in from all quar­ters of the lo­cal fash­ion, vi­su­al arts and the­atre in­dus­try for Sarah Wood­ham, a bur­geon­ing fash­ion and cos­tume de­sign­er, on her ac­cep­tance to the Yale School of Dra­ma.She has been award­ed a schol­ar­ship to pur­sue the mas­ter of fine arts (MFA) post­grad­u­ate de­gree in de­sign at this pres­ti­gious, glob­al­ly renowned school in New Haven, Con­necti­cut. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12 stu­dents are ad­mit­ted to the pro­gramme each year.

Wood­ham al­ready has an im­pres­sive re­sume of col­lab­o­ra­tions, in­clud­ing a stu­dent de­sign cri­tique ses­sion with T&T fash­ion icon Meil­ing Esau, cos­tume de­sign­ing with Robert Young for the leg­endary Car­ni­val pro­duc­tions of mu­si­cal trio 3canal, and co-or­di­nat­ing wardrobe for Kaz Ove's award-win­ning short film Dubois.

She has had a strong foun­da­tion of cre­ative ex­pe­ri­ences from her par­ents Greer Jones-Wood­ham and Gabriel Wood­ham, both of whom are artists. Her first taste of work­ing in the the­atre was with Trinidad The­atre Work­shop's (TTW) 2005 pro­duc­tion of Derek Wal­cott's mu­si­cal Steel.

"I was 15 at the time, help­ing my moth­er with cos­tum­ing and Jack­ie Hink­son with the set af­ter school. I com­plete­ly fell in love with the way a team was able to ex­e­cute the imag­in­ings of the writer. I saw a dif­fer­ent world come to life on that stage and I en­joyed every minute of it," she said.

Years lat­er, she re­turned to the TTW and was hired on her first so­lo project as a cos­tume de­sign­er for its pro­duc­tion of An Echo in the Bone. There she met To­bag­on­ian-born ac­tor Win­ston Duke and TTW as­sis­tant artis­tic di­rec­tor Tim­mia Hearn-Feld­man, alum­ni of the Yale School of Dra­ma, who first en­cour­aged her to ap­ply to the school.

Aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, Wood­ham has ex­celled. At Bish­op Anstey High School she earned the cer­tifi­cate of aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment at the CSEC ex­am­i­na­tion lev­el. She was al­so award­ed a cer­tifi­cate of ex­cel­lence in vi­su­al arts for a wide range of artis­tic tech­ni­cal skills taught at the school, in­clud­ing paint­ing, draw­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, wire bend­ing, pa­per sculpt­ing, fab­ric sur­face de­sign and ce­ram­ics.

She earned her bach­e­lor of fine arts in fash­ion de­sign in 2013 at UTT. She al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the uS­TART pro­gramme–the first uni­ver­si­ty-co-or­di­nat­ed busi­ness in­cu­ba­tor in T&T–out of which she start­ed AMEN Print house, which she co-man­ages with her moth­er.

Be­ing ac­cept­ed to Yale was a dream come true; she is "equal parts hap­py, ex­cit­ed, scared and ner­vous," she said."This ac­cep­tance has been a re­al­i­sa­tion of a dream of mine. I can on­ly smile when I think that all the hard work I have done in my life has led me on­to this path es­pe­cial­ly when I had been re­ject­ed at first. It's like falling, on­ly to be stopped be­fore your nose hits the ground and al­lowed to soar."

Prof Jess Gold­stein, a Tony Award-win­ning cos­tume de­sign­er at the Yale School of Dra­ma, in re­ply to in­quiries from the Sun­day Arts Sec­tion, gave the fol­low­ing com­men­da­tion on her ac­cep­tance to the school:

"We were very im­pressed and en­thu­si­as­tic about her port­fo­lio which we viewed on­line and re­quest­ed her to take the next step of in­ter­view­ing with us in New Haven on the Yale cam­pus. As she was un­able to make the trip, we agreed to speak with her via Skype and were charmed by her in­tel­li­gence, se­ri­ous­ness of pur­pose and de­light­ful man­ner.

"We look for­ward to meet­ing Sarah in per­son. We all be­lieve she will ben­e­fit great­ly from her ex­pe­ri­ence at Yale and, equal­ly im­por­tant, Sarah will al­so bring a very fresh and unique point of view to us."

Gold­stein shared these sen­ti­ments on be­half of de­part­ment head Stephen Straw­bridge and co-fac­ul­ty mem­bers Ilona So­m­o­gyi and Jane Green­wood who com­prise the cos­tume de­sign fac­ul­ty.Wood­ham's re­ac­tion on re­ceiv­ing the news of her ac­cep­tance was ex­plo­sive."It was an ear­ly morn­ing. I was still in my py­ja­mas check­ing my e-mails for things to do for the day... and there it was. I'd re­ceived an e-mail from one of the lec­tur­ers in the de­part­ment say­ing that I'd been ac­cept­ed and I'd get the of­fi­cial news from the school soon.

"I start­ed jump­ing up and down and scream­ing and laugh­ing. My dad knew at once that I'd got in. No need to ask 'if,' just a re­as­sur­ing hug to say con­grat­u­la­tions."

In­clud­ing her close fam­i­ly and friends, Wood­ham gave cred­it and thanks to sev­er­al key peo­ple who have as­sist­ed her. They in­clude her for­mer pri­ma­ry school teacher Tina Schuller, high school art teach­ers Leona Fa­bi­en with Lisa Hutchin­son, and uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er Ba­batu Spar­row. To Yale, she will take her ex­pe­ri­ences, train­ing and cul­tur­al in­spi­ra­tion from T&T.

"Any per­son grow­ing up in a par­tic­u­lar vi­su­al and cul­tur­al en­vi­ron­ment will be in­flu­enced by it no mat­ter if they are aware of it or not. Every fes­ti­val, sound, smell, colour of this coun­try has left an in­deli­ble mark on my aes­thet­ic mem­o­ry. It is what I car­ry with me and what sets me apart from the rest."

Wood­ham starts her three-year course of study this Sep­tem­ber.