Com­mu­ni­ty and Vil­lage Coun­cil lead­ers is­land-wide were in­vit­ed to a spe­cial launch and pre­view of a new ini­tia­tive by the Trinidad The­atre Work­shop (TTW) on Sat­ur­day March 16.The The­atre in Ed­u­ca­tion (TIE) Com­mu­ni­ty Out­reach Pro­gramme will bring LIVE per­for­mance of plays on the CXC Syl­labus di­rect­ly to com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters through­out T&T from April. In ad­di­tion to these com­mu­ni­ty per­for­mances, the plays will be filmed and pack­aged as DVDs for dis­tri­b­u­tion to sec­ondary schools and li­braries.

As the longest es­tab­lished The­atre Com­pa­ny in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the TTW pi­o­neered the TIE pro­gramme to na­tion­al sec­ondary schools in the 1990s. The com­pa­ny has a long his­to­ry bring­ing the plays on the CXC Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture syl­labus to life through LIVE per­for­mance of the scripts; and tour­ing schools to present them to help stu­dents bet­ter pre­pare for the ex­ams. How­ev­er due to lack of fund­ing, the TTW was un­able to con­tin­ue the pro­gramme to its full ex­tent since the ear­ly 2000s. In De­cem­ber of 2012, TTW re­ceived fund­ing to ful­ly re­sume its The­atre In Ed­u­ca­tion ac­tiv­i­ties from the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. This new in­car­na­tion of The­atre in Ed­u­ca­tion (TIE) Com­mu­ni­ty Out­reach Pro­gramme will ben­e­fit not on­ly stu­dents, but al­so wider au­di­ences across both is­lands. Through the filmed ver­sions of these plays, TTW is al­so en­sur­ing that these pro­duc­tions are doc­u­ment­ed and archived for ex­tend­ed fu­ture use by stu­dents.

The first of these CXC Syl­labus plays to be pro­duced for stage and filmed archived is William Shake­speare's A Mid­sum­mer Night's Dream. The clas­sic play is giv­en a re­fresh­ing, mod­ern in­ter­pre­ta­tion, in­cor­po­rat­ing el­e­ments of tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters. Set in con­tem­po­rary Trinidad and To­ba­go com­bined with hints of An­cient Athens, TTW's ver­sion A Mid­sum­mer Night's Dream will draw on the tra­di­tions of the Jab Jab and Jab Mo­lassie to rein­ter­pret the crea­tures of the woods in­hab­it­ing the play.Ac­cord­ing to Al­bert Laveau, TTW's Artis­tic and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, "At TTW, we strive to cre­ate the­atre ground­ed in the re­al­i­ties around us; with the abil­i­ty to ed­u­cate as well as en­ter­tain." As­sis­tant Artist Di­rec­tor, Tim­mia Hearn, who is di­rect­ing the pro­duc­tion, ex­plains her in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the play: "The sto­ries en­cased in A Mid­sum­mer Night's Dream are deeply re­lat­able to us. With­in the spir­its of the woods, we see ar­che­types, which we have ground­ed in our lo­cal cul­ture: The Blue Dev­ils and Jab Jab among them. The wars that go on with­in the spir­it world in the play mim­ic those we see in to­day's so­ci­ety. Gos­sip and vi­cious lies, tricks, sub­stance abuse and dis­tor­tion of pow­er to per­son­al end all come in­to play."

At Sat­ur­day's launch, a 15-minute pre­view of the play was pre­sent­ed to an is­land wide cross sec­tion of com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers. The pur­pose of the launch event was to in­tro­duce the The­atre in Ed­u­ca­tion (TIE) Com­mu­ni­ty Out­reach Pro­gramme and to in­vite groups to host the plays for stu­dents and wider au­di­ences at com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters. The play will open at TTW's home in Bel­mont on April 18th. Then the show will be­gin it's Com­mu­ni­ty Out­reach tour. Fol­low­ing the na­tion­al per­for­mances, TTW is hop­ing to tour the play re­gion­al­ly and take it to in­ter­na­tion­al arts fes­ti­vals.The launch of the pro­gramme al­so in­tro­duced TTW's new Com­pa­ny of Ac­tors, all of who are cast in mul­ti­ple roles in A Mid­sum­mer Night's Dream. Well known stage and film ac­tor, Arnold Goind­han; mu­si­cian, artist and ac­tor, Nick­o­lai Sal­cedo; fight chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, ac­tor and di­rec­tor, Joel Joseph; ac­tors Sindy Nurse, Kearn Samuel, Tis­han­na Williams; and Afi Ford-Hop­son, TTW's Com­mu­ni­ty Out­reach Co­or­di­na­tor and ac­tor all com­prise the ad­ven­tur­ous cast of this ex­cit­ing ini­tia­tive. The filmed DVD ver­sion of the play will be pro­duced by TTW's of­fi­cial film part­ner, Mac­Far­lane Film.

Fol­low­ing com­ple­tion of the Com­mu­ni­ty Out­reach tour and DVD pro­duc­tion of A Mid­sum­mer Night's Dream, TTW will al­so present Trevor Rhone's Old Sto­ry Time lat­er this year, and Julius Ceasar in 2014. Com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and or­gan­i­sa­tions wish­ing to par­tic­i­pate in the on­go­ing TTW The­atre in Ed­u­ca­tion (TIE) Com­mu­ni­ty Out­reach Pro­gramme are in­vit­ed to vis­it the Trinidad The­atre Work­shop at23 Jern­ing­ham Ave, Bel­mont;call at 625-8502 or email­trinidadthe­atre@gmail.com