Ak­ile Si­mon

Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc Don­ald says crit­ics of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts are com­plain­ing for ab­solute­ly no rea­son­able cause. Mc Don­ald said so while speak­ing with re­porters af­ter the of­fi­cial launch of the The­atre Arts Com­pa­ny of T&T at the acad­e­my on Sat­ur­day night. "I say to (the crit­ics) them, come, look at the pro­duc­tion, look at what we are giv­ing to our youths in the coun­try, and the rest (cost) wouldn't mat­ter...I think we com­plain with­out cause," she said.

"I think we need to sit, set back a lit­tle bit, and analyse and see what is the ben­e­fits to be de­rived," Mc Don­ald said. She said the­atre com­pa­ny was all about "de­vel­op­ing in­no­v­a­tive peo­ple and bring­ing out the tal­ent and cre­ativ­i­ty in our peo­ple." Mc Don­ald said in the very near fu­ture, more qual­i­ty pro­duc­tions would been seen at the fa­cil­i­ty. She said a board of di­rec­tors had been put in place to man­age the af­fairs of the the­atre com­pa­ny, which had to go for Cab­i­net ap­proval. The min­is­ter, said, too, it would be the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the di­rec­tors to ex­am­ine the type of pro­duc­tion and train­ing for the com­pa­ny.

"It is not about aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion...It is such a won­der­ful thing to be a young per­son now be­cause to en­ter the acad­e­my is based on your tal­ent," she said. "We are re­al­ly tak­ing it to a dif­fer­ent lev­el and I am so hap­py, words can't de­scribe how I feel." She said with­in the next two weeks, a new board of di­rec­tors of the acad­e­my would be an­nounced. Mean­while, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Ude­cott Calder Hart said he was pleased the the­atre com­pa­ny had such a won­der­ful fa­cil­i­ty to dis­play lo­cal tal­ent. "It was an out­stand­ing show and I think the young per­form­ers made every­body proud," he said.