Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray

Af­ter a big, cel­e­bra­to­ry birth­day bash put on by his staff and friends of the Trinidad The­atre Work­shop (TTW) on Ju­ly 4, ac­tor, the­atre vet­er­an and TTW artis­tic di­rec­tor Al­bert Laveau sat talk­ing with a guest at his pic­turesque and art-filled home in the hills of San­ta Mar­gari­ta."This is sur­pris­ing to me. I didn't ex­pect to be 80 years old," he con­fessed with mild sur­prise.

"I nev­er used to think about it. But I al­most got killed a cou­ple of times, you know," he con­fid­ed, his eyes alight with mys­tery and a twin­kle of mis­chief."They not ready for me yet, I still have work to do," he said know­ing­ly.Do­ing good work is prob­a­bly one of the things for which Al­bert Laveau would like to be known. He is a man who says he has al­ways been in­fused with pur­pose and one who un­der­stands the val­ue of hav­ing work to do.

In re­count­ing his life's work, Laveau took the long and ad­ven­tur­ous sto­ry­telling road, over the hills and val­leys of his ca­reer and through the wind­ing paths of his per­son­al life from his youth grow­ing up in Plai­sance Park, Point-a-Pierre.

He start­ed per­form­ing in his fa­ther's liv­ing room as a young boy, sur­round­ed by his sib­lings. Sto­ry­telling, singing and in­ter-fam­i­ly en­ter­tain­ment by lamp­light were the norm in a 1940s rur­al com­mu­ni­ty, where the on­ly elec­tric­i­ty peo­ple knew were the search lights of the World War II planes that flew over the vil­lage from time to time.

"Every year there was a new ba­by un­til we end­ed up with about nine or ten–a whole the­atre com­pa­ny," he said, jok­ing."But it broke up when I was about nine. They sent me to live with my grand­fa­ther who was get­ting old. He had al­ways liked me, they said."A self-con­fessed op­ti­mist, he in­clud­ed anec­dotes of the cre­ative pun­ish­ments met­ed out by his grand­fa­ther's care­tak­er "Aun­ty Ang­ie," whom he called "a wicked woman."

Sur­viv­ing the house of his grand­fa­ther was par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing. "They used to say things to make me feel less con­fi­dent in my­self, so even­tu­al­ly I be­came a silent child, ex­cept for when I went to school," he said, the twin­kle re­turn­ing to his spec­ta­cled gaze. "In school I was gar­ru­lous!"At Cara­pichaima RC School, Laveau was en­cour­aged by one par­tic­u­lar teacher who would write skits and host school con­certs. Laveau found the spot­light again and was once more able to have his tal­ent on the stage shine.

He was al­so a church-go­ing Catholic and even­tu­al­ly be­came an acolyte. At the al­tar, like the stage, Laveau rev­elled in the rit­u­al and cer­e­mo­ny and likened the ex­pe­ri­ence to per­for­mance art for the Lord.As an adult he trav­elled the world both for his day job at Lever Broth­ers as well as an ac­tor, most no­tably with po­et, play­wright and No­bel Lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott and the TTW, which he joined in 1962.

Laveau se­cured a star­ring role as the dev­il in Wal­cott's Ti Jean and his Broth­ers. The part launched his very lu­cra­tive and ben­e­fi­cial ca­reer as a pro­fes­sion­al ac­tor in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca in the ear­ly 70s.From the ini­tial ex­port of the Ti Jean play to the New York Shake­speare Fes­ti­val, Laveau rode the mo­men­tum of rave re­views and pos­i­tive at­ten­tion to hire an agent and cre­ate book­ings for him­self in the US.

He even­tu­al­ly trav­elled across the US on tour with Joseph A Walk­er's hit Broad­way mu­si­cal The Riv­er Niger, an African Amer­i­can play which won the 1974 An­toinette Per­ry Award at the Tonys among sev­er­al oth­er ho­n­ours.In 1977, af­ter four years of a US act­ing ca­reer, Laveau re­turned to T&T and to the TTW.

Laveau be­lieves nur­tur­ing the artis­tic abil­i­ties of young peo­ple adds pos­i­tive­ly to their over­all de­vel­op­ment as in­di­vid­u­als. He brings this be­lief and his faith in that process to his work with the TTW."I want­ed to have more Trinida­di­ans who keep talk­ing about pro­fes­sion­al act­ing and go­ing abroad to be suc­cess­ful, know about [the ex­pe­ri­ence I had]. But when I came back, the TTW was go­ing through a kind of cross­roads, Derek and his per­son­al life was in­fring­ing on the work­shop.

"He pulled out and then I of­fered to help run it. They want­ed to run it their way. A frac­ture was tak­ing place, but if we want­ed it to con­tin­ue, it had to change and be some­thing else. I told them this was the time to fo­cus on train­ing–to es­tab­lish a school of train­ing."For 12 years Laveau worked on his vi­sion for build­ing and ex­pand­ing the train­ing el­e­ment of the TTW. He was met with con­sid­er­able re­sis­tance.

Laveau re­flect­ed on this pe­ri­od."I re­alised that I was be­ing treat­ed with hos­til­i­ty, not on­ly for go­ing away to be a pro­fes­sion­al ac­tor, but for com­ing back! 'What did you come back for?', their re­sis­tance seemed to say. These were peo­ple who I thought were my friends. Even­tu­al­ly," he added, wry­ly, "They did tru­ly be­come my friends."

In light of the re­cent es­tab­lish­ment of a new Na­tion­al The­atre Arts Co by the Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Laveau said he did not feel be­trayed as much as dis­mayed. In the past he's said the TTW was "a na­tion­al the­atre"; Judy Ray­mond wrote that Prof Rex Net­tle­ford called it "the flag­ship of the the­atre move­ment in the Caribbean."

"I don't feel be­trayed, but I think they are mis­guid­ed," Laveau said with a chuck­le. "We were 'in­for­mal­ly' the na­tion­al the­atre arts com­pa­ny be­cause we were do­ing and are con­tin­u­ing to do the work of such an or­gan­i­sa­tion."

Past work of the TTW in­clud­ed an­nu­al Caribbean tours of the the­atre com­pa­ny to sev­er­al neigh­bour­ing is­lands to per­form, en­gage and share un­der­stand­ing among the peo­ple of the Caribbean in the wake of the West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion fail­ure of the 1960s.

In the 1990s the TTW's work al­so in­clud­ed tour­ing to US uni­ver­si­ties and col­lab­o­rat­ing with ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions such as Boston Uni­ver­si­ty and Har­vard to cre­ate schol­ar­ships for TTW mem­bers and trainees to go abroad to study the­atre in an in­ter­na­tion­al set­ting. Of­ten times schol­ar­ship ex­changes would take place and for­eign stu­dents would al­so come to Trinidad for in­tern­ships at the TTW.

In 2003, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Li­brary pur­chased the en­tire archival cat­a­logue of the TTW for its preser­va­tion–over 14 box­es of every­thing from show re­views, news­pa­per and pho­to­graph­ic orig­i­nal clip­pings, work­books, scripts to VHS tapes of play per­for­mances.The rep­u­ta­tion and long-stand­ing lega­cy of the TTW has been a bea­con for many re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al arts or­gan­i­sa­tions and Trinidad re­mains an un­der­de­vel­oped des­ti­na­tion for cul­tur­al and the­atre ex­change for the rest of the world.

These days Laveau's role in­volves be­ing con­sult­ed with for his ideas and his knowl­edge of TTW's his­tor­i­cal con­text. Still, he re­mains com­mit­ted to the task at hand, which now in­cludes ce­ment­ing the lega­cy of the TTW by se­cur­ing a per­ma­nent home and base of op­er­a­tions.Laveau re­mains op­ti­mistic that the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism will as­sist the TTW as it did the Lit­tle Carib The­atre in pre­serv­ing this im­por­tant his­tor­i­cal land­mark of Caribbean the­atre.

In the past, the TTW has hoist­ed its flag at sev­er­al lo­ca­tions in­clud­ing at Bret­ton Hall Ho­tel base­ment, the Old Fire Sta­tion next to the Na­tion­al Li­brary, as well as the Lit­tle Carib The­atre. An old gin­ger­bread house on Jern­ing­ham Av­enue, Bel­mont, is its cur­rent res­i­dence. The build­ing is up for sale–at a cost of $2 mil­lion.

"We are open­ing dis­cus­sion with the min­istry and oth­er cor­po­rate en­ti­ties be­cause we have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to buy our cur­rent space in Bel­mont. We are al­so do­ing a crowd fund­ing ven­ture and its go­ing slow­ly but it will pick up."For Laveau, the mis­sion of se­cur­ing a per­ma­nent space is to con­tin­ue the work of the last 50 years and to pre­serve the au­then­tic soul of Caribbean the­atre.

"This is what I dreamt about: a cen­tre where peo­ple can meet, ex­change ideas as we used to do when we had a the­atre work­shop wher­ev­er we were, when Derek Wal­cott was there. Peo­ple were fly­ing in from all over the place, pass­ing through and they would come down and meet us here.

"You'd meet big lu­mi­nar­ies in the­atre, writ­ers and po­ets all in the same space, like (nov­el­ist John) Hearne and (po­et) John Figueroa from Ja­maica, po­ets and play­wrights, (Guyanese nov­el­list) Jan Carew and (Guyanese po­et) Mar­tin Carter. All these peo­ple would come and meet down in that base­ment in Bret­ton Hall be­cause they knew we were there. This space will be the nu­cle­us for the pro­fes­sion­al ex­plo­sion of the­atre in Trinidad.

"I know that I may not be here to see it, but I want to fin­ish the work, plant the seeds and give the peo­ple of T&T the build­ing, at least. From there, the space will then in­fuse the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty and the coun­try. Peo­ple re­spect the space and that's the space that the TTW is meant to be."