Shereen Ali

The Trinidad The­atre Work­shop (TTW) is more than half a cen­tu­ry old, and has pro­duced the­atre clas­sics like Dream on Mon­key Moun­tain and Jok­er of Seville that cap­ti­vat­ed past gen­er­a­tions of lovers of the­atre in the Caribbean. Yet de­spite its rich cul­tur­al pedi­gree–it was found­ed in 1959 by St Lu­cian po­et/play­wright Derek Wal­cott, his twin broth­er Rod­er­ick Wal­cott, along with per­form­ers in­clud­ing Beryl McBurnie, Er­rol Jones, and Stan­ley Mar­shall–the TTW re­mains, up to this day, home­less.

In an ef­fort to fi­nal­ly, like Mr Biswas, ob­tain a home of their own, the TTW is launch­ing a crowd­fund­ing cam­paign at a pri­vate gala func­tion this Sat­ur­day evening at the TTW venue in Bel­mont.

Artis­tic as­so­ciate and dra­ma in­struc­tor Tim­mia Hearn re­called some of the the­atre's rov­ing his­to­ry in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian on Mon­day:

"We've been a home­less en­ti­ty since 1959," she said. "We start­ed at the lit­tle Carib The­atre, but had to move. Then we were in the Base­ment The­atre for a while. Then in the late 80s to ear­ly 90s, we ap­plied to the Gov­ern­ment for use of one of their free build­ings: the Old Fire Sta­tion. And we were there for al­most 20 years."

Then, she re­called, around 1999, of­fi­cials de­cid­ed they want­ed an­oth­er kind of part­ner for the li­brary, and the TTW once again had to move.

"We then went on Rust Street, and var­i­ous oth­er places for a few years...then in 2004, we got the chance to lease the Bel­mont build­ing where we are lo­cat­ed now.

"It was just a house in Bel­mont, which used to be­long to the Gomes fam­i­ly. We built the back court­yard of the house in­to a the­atre. With the help of spon­sors in­clud­ing BP and the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, we were able to build the the­atre and air- con­di­tion it," said Hearn.

But she em­pha­sised that they on­ly oc­cu­py the Jern­ing­ham Av­enue, Bel­mont build­ing on a lease ba­sis. This means the TTW can­not do any long term in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment.

Re­cent­ly, how­ev­er, the own­er of the prop­er­ty has of­fered to sell the house to the TTW.

"In or­der to seize this op­por­tu­ni­ty, and con­tin­ue our jour­ney stronger than ever be­fore, we are launch­ing a crowd­fund­ing cam­paign ti­tled Trinidad The­atre Work­shop: The Jour­ney Con­tin­ues," ex­plained Hearn.

"Crowd­fund­ing has made tons of in­de­pen­dent films pos­si­ble, but there haven't been many crowd­sourc­ing projects here. Not be­cause it won't work, it just hasn't been done much," com­ment­ed Hearn. Crowd­fund­ing is the prac­tice of fund­ing a project or ven­ture by rais­ing mon­e­tary con­tri­bu­tions from a large num­ber of peo­ple, typ­i­cal­ly via the in­ter­net. In 2013, ac­cord­ing to Daniel Brod­er­ick, an HS­BC con­trib­u­tor writ­ing for www.forbes.com, the crowd­fund­ing in­dus­try grew to be worth over US$5.1 bil­lion world­wide.

"In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the TTW has friends who are work­ing in many places, in­clud­ing Broad­way and the West End. We part­nered with a Nor­we­gian the­atre com­pa­ny for a while. There are prob­a­bly as many T&T peo­ple liv­ing abroad as those who live here," re­flect­ed Hearn. This means many peo­ple have ei­ther been part of the TTW or have been touched by its work, so the com­pa­ny feels the time is right to reach out to these friends now.

"We're still strug­gling to pay rent every month," re­mind­ed Hearn.

The crowd­sourc­ing idea is not just about rais­ing mon­ey, but al­so about rais­ing aware­ness of the TTW's work, said Hearn.

Funds will help fund a per­ma­nent home as well as help fund the TTW's pro­grammes, in­clud­ing good qual­i­ty the­atre pro­duc­tions–the kind that once earned the com­pa­ny the praise of Ja­maican schol­ar and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Sir Rex Net­tle­ford, who once called it "the flag­ship of the the­atre move­ment in the Caribbean."