Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray

This year 3Canal has a brand new per­for­mance space: the Big Black Box. The new space is tech­ni­cal­ly an old space–Bo­hemia, at 33 Mur­ray Street, Wood­brook, the back­yard of which has been leased, ren­o­vat­ed and re­pur­posed for per­for­mances from the 3Canal band and oth­er lo­cal acts.The house on the lot is the for­mer res­i­dence and work­space of late lo­cal play­wright, ac­tor, pro­duc­er and the­atre ac­tivist God­frey Sealey and so the space it­self has the bless­ing of a long his­to­ry of the­atre pro­duc­tion.

3Canal's Wen­dell Man­war­ren said the tra­di­tion­al black box the­atre space–a bare-bones, emp­ty space that can be­come any­thing de­sired–fa­cil­i­tates an ease of trans­for­ma­tion with­in which per­for­mances can change. "The em­pha­sis is not so much on the fa­cil­i­ties, but the tech­ni­cal side of things and it's re­al­ly a util­i­tar­i­an space for ex­per­i­men­ta­tion and the per­for­mance of works that you can't re­al­ly do in a con­ven­tion­al con­cert space be­cause of cost or time or oth­er fac­tors," he said.

3Canal in­tends to use its new lo­ca­tion as an in­cu­ba­tor space both for its shows as well as oth­er ex­per­i­men­tal per­for­mance works. The house is al­so be­ing ren­o­vat­ed as a lo­ca­tion of the busi­ness arm of the group's op­er­a­tions and the en­tire space will be man­aged by their Cut + Clear Pro­duc­tions."The idea be­hind the Big Black Box is: 'New space, new time, new pos­si­bil­i­ties'. It's al­ways been a dream of ours to have a space that we can op­er­ate out of in to­tal­i­ty."The ex­pe­ri­ence of the of­fice, the stage and the stu­dio, the gath­er­ing of artists on the reg­u­lar, and the con­junc­tion of all those en­er­gies is a syn­er­gy that is un­beat­able. It is some­thing we have al­ways strug­gled to cre­ate."

They are not new to the space. "We've been us­ing 33 Mur­ray Street as a re­hearsal space for our Car­ni­val show for the past three years and Cyrus Sylvester, the gen­tle­man we've been rent­ing from, hap­pened to be around for Car­ni­val while we were there this sea­son."A con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Sylvester and Stan­ton Kew­ley, an­oth­er front­line mem­ber of 3Canal, re­sult­ed in the group leas­ing the space in an open end­ed agree­ment, though it is their hope to even­tu­al­ly own the prop­er­ty.

The pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny has al­ready be­gun to ap­proach a team of lo­cal pro­fes­sion­als who will hope­ful­ly col­lab­o­rate in the Big Black Box, in­clud­ing per­form­ers such as Ian and Dion Bap­tiste, Dave Williams, Ce­celia Salazar and Pene­lope Spencer, and mu­si­cal train­er and vo­cal coach Glen­da Col­lens.The ul­ti­mate goal for the space is to form an acad­e­my for lo­cal the­atre and the arts. "Right now we're at a stage of our ca­reers and our lives where it's im­por­tant to men­tor, train and de­vel­op oth­er prac­ti­tion­ers. The em­pha­sis is not on us, it is on those com­ing."

He al­so con­firmed that there were many bud­ding writ­ers, ac­tors, chore­o­g­ra­phers and artists who were ea­ger to have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to use the space to show­case their works, where pre­vi­ous­ly they could not due to lim­i­ta­tions of time, fund­ing and un­avail­abil­i­ty of an ap­pro­pri­ate space.Man­war­ren did ac­knowl­edge that there were both ben­e­fits and draw­backs to mov­ing the en­tire 3Canal pro­duc­tion in­to a some­what small­er space than that to which they are ac­cus­tomed.Ren­o­va­tions in­clude brand new truss­ing for per­for­mance grade light­ing, an el­e­vat­ed stag­ing area, full-sound tech­ni­cal booth, a 360-de­gree stag­ing ef­fect, a pro­duc­tion of­fice in the front, and an all-black-every­thing d�cor.

Some of the more prac­ti­cal ben­e­fits in­clude a com­plete re­duc­tion in re­hearsal rentals for the 3Canal group. The Big Black Box will be a venue open and wel­com­ing to any lo­cal the­atre or mu­si­cal group in­ter­est­ed in us­ing the space for re­hearsals, projects or per­for­mances, he said.More in­fo: 623-7411 or vis­it 33 Mur­ray Street, Port-of-Spain.