Austin Fi­do

"The oth­er day, a friend said to me, 'You know, I nev­er miss mass,'" says the char­ac­ter Gene Miles from the stage of the Lit­tle Carib The­atre, adopt­ing the slight­ly haughty tone of well-in­tend­ed piety. "Well, nei­ther do I," she con­cludes, with the sem­blance of a wink to her au­di­ence.It's a fun­ny line in the con­text of the play, Miss Miles–The Woman of the World, and in the con­text of Car­ni­val 2014, which was a busy sea­son for Gene Miles, per­haps her busiest since her death in 1972."I dyed my hair blonde so every­one would un­der­stand: I am not Miss Miles," says Ce­cil­ia Salazar, whose abil­i­ty to in­hab­it a char­ac­ter is salut­ed by nine Cacique Awards.

Miss Miles, how­ev­er, is no or­di­nary char­ac­ter for the ac­tor. She likens the role to a mas­ters de­gree. Salazar and play­wright Tony Hall first got to­geth­er in 2006 to dis­cuss a pro­duc­tion based on the life of the T&T civ­il ser­vant, TV per­son­al­i­ty, so­cialite and an­ti-cor­rup­tion cru­sad­er. The play pre­miered in 2011 and has been reg­u­lar­ly re­vived, in full and in part, ever since–most re­cent­ly on March 8-9.This is no mas­ters. If Gene Miles is part of Ce­cil­ia Salazar's ed­u­ca­tion as an ac­tor, she is her PhD.This year Salazar brought Miss Miles to Queen's Hall, St Ann's, for a week-long pre-Car­ni­val stint in the 3Canal Show, Grimee. When the cur­tain went down for the last time in St Ann's, Miss Miles took to the road for Car­ni­val Mon­day, lead­ing a band through Port-of-Spain.

The band, de­signed by Pe­ter Min­shall, put every mem­ber in the same cos­tume: Gene Miles, reimag­ined as an "aveng­ing an­gel" (Min­shall's phrase), el­e­gant and fu­ri­ous. For the mas, Miss Miles is a woman dressed in black, made icon­ic by a sim­ple pol­ka-dot­ted belt and match­ing head­band, a dystopi­an ha­lo of feath­ers, and a mask. It be­came the face of Car­ni­val 2014. That face–sheet white, with a strong jaw, high cheek­bones, a burst of black lash­es un­der sharp, slash­ing eye­brows; stark, red lips, caught in a pout be­tween se­duc­tion and cen­sure–is hard to for­get.

On the road, the black-and-white pro­ces­sion brought ban­ners, plac­ards, and Gene Miles' tena­cious con­dem­na­tion of cor­rup­tion to a new au­di­ence.

"When we went to Pic­cadil­ly [Pic­cadil­ly Greens, a judg­ing point in the pa­rade of the bands], chil­dren came and asked me what cos­tume we were play­ing, who it was," re­calls Salazar. "I talked to them about Gene Miles and they held the plac­ards. We spent a good time talk­ing to them–chil­dren and chil­dren, chil­dren all around us."The band drew spon­ta­neous ap­plause from on­look­ers, even when sim­ply mov­ing through tight streets to the next judg­ing point."Out­side Rene­gades' pa­n­yard," says Hall, "it was so ex­cit­ing, peo­ple in the band were say­ing 'Let's do a dra­ma and per­form!'" "It moved peo­ple who saw it," says Salazar, while tak­ing off her make­up back­stage at the Lit­tle Carib on March 8, In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day.The sto­ry of Gene Miles is a tragedy: a woman who strayed close enough to the nexus of pow­er in pre-and post-In­de­pen­dence Trinidad to see the dis­fig­ur­ing im­pact of po­lit­i­cal con­trol, shed light on that ug­li­ness, and was de­stroyed by it. She spoke out, in the 1960s, against a seem­ing­ly clear-cut, al­most ba­nal, in­stance of cor­rup­tion, the Gas Sta­tion Rack­et.

The sim­ple ob­ser­va­tion that a se­nior fig­ure in the gov­ern­ment's li­cenc­ing of gas sta­tions ap­peared to be lack­ing im­par­tial­i­ty in his de­ci­sion-mak­ing was spun in­to a show tri­al, more fo­cused, at times, on Miles's in­tegri­ty than that of the gov­ern­ment.She weath­ered ir­rel­e­vant lines of ques­tion­ing about whether she had ever been a top­less mod­el, stuck to her guns, and lived to see a scant mea­sure of jus­tice af­ford­ed her ef­forts. The se­nior fac­to­ry in­spec­tor, her boss whose ap­par­ent blind­ness to cer­tain gas-sta­tion li­cence ap­pli­ca­tions sparked the whole af­fair, was re­moved from his po­si­tion at the Min­istry of Pe­tro­le­um and Mines in June 1968.Miss Miles–The Woman of the World tells this sto­ry from Gene Miles's per­spec­tive, fol­low­ing her from birth to death. It is a one-woman play: we see one ac­tor play­ing one char­ac­ter.Every­one else is played by Gene Miles: par­ents, the scold­ing nun who tells her she is in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly dressed for a teacher at a con­vent school; the men who ques­tion her in court, try to shut her up, watch her shut up in the "mad­house in St Ann's," rape her and see her un­rav­el, drunk and in­co­her­ent in the street.

It is a play at times un­set­tling to its au­di­ence. We watch Gene Miles grow up, watch her change her clothes, from school­girl's uni­form to work suit to evening wear to strait­jack­et. We lis­ten to her voice ma­ture, her val­ues form un­der in­flu­ence of the church and the ex­am­ple set by her fa­ther, him­self a whistle­blow­er of an­oth­er era.Mr Miles ex­posed the Cau­ra Dam Rack­et. There is no record of his ever be­ing ques­tioned about ap­pear­ing bare-chest­ed in front of a cam­era.Most ac­tors will tell you they draw heav­i­ly on "emo­tion­al mem­o­ry" on stage: think about some­thing that makes you sad so you can shed re­al tears on stage, for ex­am­ple. For Salazar, Miss Miles is in­ex­tri­ca­bly tan­gled up with re­al mem­o­ries. Part of this is the col­lab­o­ra­tive, im­pro­vi­sa­tion­al stage­craft Tony Hall chris­tened the "Jou­vay Process."There is a mo­ment in the play when school­girl Gene re­counts lead­ing her house to vic­to­ry in the march-past at sports day: "Our house adds flags to the event and changes it for­ev­er."That was me," says Salazar, "Ex­cept it wasn't flags, it was fish­nets."

Salazar feels a close­ness to Gene Miles based on more than play­ing her on stage."She was born in Au­gust, I was born in Au­gust. We are both Leos. She went to St Joseph's Con­vent, I went to St Joseph's Con­vent. She's a white Trinida­di­an with Por­tuguese par­ents, my moth­er is Por­tuguese. I lived in Glen­coe, right next to where Gene Miles lived, till I was about three years old."

What­ev­er its prove­nance, the au­then­tic­i­ty of the per­for­mance is en­dorsed by a pho­to al­bum which Salazar brings in­to her dress­ing room every time she pre­pares to go on stage as Gene Miles.

It is a gift from the Miles fam­i­ly, who did not par­tic­i­pate in the de­vel­op­ment of the script, pre­fer­ring to leave painful mem­o­ries undis­turbed. The al­bum, filled with orig­i­nal pho­tographs of Gene as child and adult, was en­trust­ed to Hall and Salazar af­ter her sur­viv­ing fam­i­ly had seen the play for them­selves.

Miss Miles–The Woman of the World will next be staged in Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut, April 24- 26, at Gar­many Hall, Austin Arts Cen­ter, Trin­i­ty Col­lege.