The ex­ec­u­tive of the Na­tion­al Dra­ma As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T will host the gala open­ing of the 2013 NDATT The­atre Fes­ti­val on Oc­to­ber 22, at the Lit­tle Carib The­atre, Wood­brook. Play­wright/thes­pi­an Tony Hall will be ho­n­oured at this year's fes­ti­val.

Born An­tho­ny Michael Hall on Ju­ly 16, 1948, Hall writes and makes plays for street, stage and screen func­tion­ing as an ac­tor, di­rec­tor, writer, dra­ma teacher and work­shop leader. Hall was born in Port-of-Spain, and at­tend­ed Na­pari­ma Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do. He gained a Bach­e­lor's de­gree in dra­ma and ed­u­ca­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ber­ta (1969-73), Ed­mon­ton, Cana­da and ob­tained a diplo­ma in film and ad­vanced tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion at the North­ern Al­ber­ta In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (1978-80).

It is be­lieved re­gion­al­ly that Hall is a pi­o­neer in com­mu­ni­ty tele­vi­sion in the Caribbean. With the video pro­duc­tion house Banyan Lim­it­ed, in T&T, he was part of a group, of artists, which cre­at­ed in­dige­nous soap op­eras, TV dra­mas and cur­rent af­fairs pro­grammes in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

At Banyan, Hall pre­sent­ed, with Er­rol Sita­hal, Den­nis "Spran­galang" Hall and Niala Ma­haraj, one of the most suc­cess­ful mag­a­zine pro­grammes on TV in the Caribbean, Gayelle (1985-90), ci­ta­tion giv­en at IN­PUT–In­ter­na­tion­al Pub­lic Tele­vi­son Con­fer­ence.

Gayelle laid the foun­da­tion for the first com­mu­ni­ty tele­vi­sion sta­tion (24 hours of Caribbean pro­gram­ming) in the re­gion, Gayelle The Chan­nel (2004), found­ed by Christo­pher Laird and Er­rol Fa­bi­en.

Hall ap­pren­ticed in the Caribbean with No­bel Lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott in his flag­ship com­pa­ny, Trinidad The­atre Work­shop TTW), as an ac­tor and a di­rec­tor (1973-1981). At the TTW, he per­formed in the world pre­mier pro­duc­tions of Wal­cott's The Jok­er of Seville (1975) and O' Baby­lon (1976-81). He al­so di­rect­ed, un­der Wal­cott's as­tute guid­ance, Jean Genet's The Maids (1977).

In 1992, Christo­pher Laird and Hall di­rect­ed the award win­ning BBC/TVE/Banyan doc­u­men­tary film, And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon, pro­duced by Bruce Padding­ton, and hailled as "an as­ton­ish­ing­ly sear­ing look at TV" by Star­week Mag­a­zine. This film won Best Video Doc­u­men­tary & Best En­vi­ron­men­tal Film, Im­ages Caraibes (Mar­tinique, 1992) at the Third Caribbean Film & Video Fes­ti­val and al­so won first place in the Pub­lic Af­fairs Doc­u­men­tary Cat­e­go­ry at the 13th an­nu­al In­ter­na­tion­al Film and Video Com­pe­ti­tion, Prized Pieces (Ohio, 1993) Na­tion­al Black Pro­gram­ming Con­sor­tium, USA.

In the ear­ly 1990s Er­rol Fa­bi­en and Hall launched Lord­street The­atre Com­pa­ny with a prize win­ning tril­o­gy of J'Ou­vert mas­quer­ade Car­ni­val bands on the streets of Port-of-Spain: A Band On Drugs (1990), A Band On Vi­o­lence (1991) and A Band On US (1992). This com­pa­ny pro­mot­ed orig­i­nal work for street, stage and screen from its very in­cep­tion and since 2003 has done so pri­mar­i­ly through a Play­wrights Work­shop.

Al­so in 1990, af­ter years of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry re­search in­to man­i­fes­ta­tions of pop­u­lar cul­ture in the Caribbean, Hall re­alised and pre­sent­ed, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Win­ches­ter (King Al­fred Cam­pus), UK, Jou­vay Process as a dis­tinct and pos­si­bly help­ful 'post post-New World' per­spec­tive on dra­ma prac­tice or 'ac­tion' in re­la­tion to liv­ing and be­ing.

Hall es­tab­lished Jou­vay Pop­u­lar The­atre Process (JPTP), a dra­ma work­shop which in­volves free im­pro­vi­sa­tion "the ex­tem­po im­pulse" and sto­ry­telling in­spired by the tra­di­tion­al mas/mask/mas­quer­ade char­ac­ters found in the Trinidad Car­ni­val along­side 'ana­logue' folk and an­cient re­li­gious char­ac­ters found through­out the Caribbean and in oth­er cul­tures world­wide, all as ar­che­types of hu­man be­hav­iour.

Hall's play 'Jean and Di­nah . . . Speak Their Minds Pub­licly' (1994) is a crit­i­cal­ly ac­claimed work in West In­di­an the­atre. This play has been per­formed through­out the Caribbean and in North Amer­i­ca and the UK. A French ver­sion of the play was per­formed suc­cess­ful­ly at the UWI In­ter-Cam­pus Eighth An­nu­al For­eign Lan­guage The­atre Fes­ti­val in 2007 on the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.

Hall has led dra­ma cours­es and the­atre work­shop ses­sions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ber­ta, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Win­ches­ter (King Al­fred Cam­pus), at Col­gate Uni­ver­si­ty, New York, at In­di­ana State Uni­ver­si­ty, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Brad­ford and at the Car­ni­val Arts Cen­tre, Isle of Wight.

He has func­tioned as an Artist-in-Res­i­dence at Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut, be­tween 1998 and 2007, where he di­rect­ed plays and worked with stu­dents, pro­fes­sion­al ac­tors and play­wrights, and with young film­mak­ers at both the grad­u­ate and un­der­grad­u­ate lev­els.

Hall has al­so func­tioned as On-Site Aca­d­e­m­ic Di­rec­tor (1999-2007) at Trin­i­ty Col­lege's Trin­i­ty-in-Trinidad Glob­al Learn­ing Site. At present, func­tion­ing as a Lec­tur­er in Glob­al Stud­ies (Fes­ti­val and Dra­ma), he is ex­plor­ing with stu­dents, "Work & Play" and "Fes­ti­val Arts as Cul­tur­al Per­for­mance" at the Trin­i­ty-in-Trinidad Glob­al Learn­ing Site.

Last Thurs­day night, in a mes­sage from Cos­ta Ri­ca, Hall told the T&T Guardian: "All the arts are re­al­ly oxy­gen for the com­mu­ni­ty, 'cre­at­ing breath­ing space'. If we don't breathe we die. We need oxy­gen. Awards, like this one, help pro­vide oxy­gen for the artist. This award is ful­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed and even more so be­cause it is from peers at the NDATT. Thanks to every­one."

NDATT The­atre Fes­ti­val

Five plays will be show­cased dur­ing NDATT's The­atre Fes­ti­val from Oc­to­ber 22-30.

A com­plete sched­ule of these and re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties can be had by email­ing na­tion­al­dra­mat­nt@gmail.com or by vis­it­ing the Fes­ti­val site at http://then­datt.word­press.com

Oc­to­ber 22

Gala Open­ing of the Fes­ti­val

Bit­ter Cas­sa­va by Lester Efebo Wilkin­son

Di­rect­ed by Shawn Smart

The play is about Samuel Bland­ell who is about to be ar­rest­ed for the mur­der of his wife and child. As the sto­ry un­folds, how­ev­er, these deaths are not so straight­for­ward, but are the re­sult of a thir­teen-year-old curse from Samuel's ex-wife Justi­na, who was filled with rage at be­ing left for an­oth­er woman. It's a tale of do­mes­tic be­tray­al and re­venge.

24 Oc­to­ber

In­de­pen­dence by An­der­son La Bar­rie

Di­rect­ed by Saira Dhanoo

An al­le­gor­i­cal play, In­de­pen­dence tells the sto­ry of Cheryl and Sharon, sis­ters. They have re­cent­ly lost their moth­er, and seem un­able to prop­er­ly cope with­out her. Each small de­tail es­ca­lates in­to a larg­er fight, blame and in­dig­na­tion get­ting in the way of ei­ther of them com­ing to terms with re­al life or the loss of their moth­er. But as time pass­es and the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues, they be­gin to re­al­ize that per­haps re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion will be nec­es­sary to keep mov­ing for­ward.

Oc­to­ber 25-26

A Mid­sum­mer Night's Dream by William Shake­speare

Di­rect­ed by Tim­mia Hearn

This clas­sic tale is brought to new life in our in­ter­pre­ta­tion. Us­ing con­tem­po­rary and tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters and ap­proach­ing the text in our own ac­cents with our own in­to­na­tions, Shake­speare's words, cen­turies old, no longer seem for­eign. Through­out this world of lovers, dev­ils, and dream­ers, the in­con­sis­ten­cy of time, mem­o­ry and love, lead 20 char­ac­ters, por­trayed by sev­en ac­tors, through a life-al­ter­ing night. As these sev­en ac­tors work them­selves through so many char­ac­ters the play starts to ask us to ques­tion where and who we re­al­ly are. This play, one of the great­est farces ever writ­ten, is as bit­ter as it is sweet, for it ex­plores that line be­tween grotesque and beau­ti­ful, trag­ic and comedic. To quote the play it­self, it is: "Very trag­i­cal mirth."

Hearn told the T&T Guardian: "I am very ex­cit­ed and thrilled hav­ing this play se­lect­ed. It is ac­tu­al­ly a strange sit­u­a­tion with our play as we were a last minute ad­di­tion to the fes­ti­val. This ver­sion is a re­turn to the orig­i­nal in­tent of Shake­speare. We have eight ac­tors play­ing 20 roles. I was nev­er in­tereted in do­ing Shake­speare when I lived abroad, but, I was in­ter­est­ed in do­ing Shake­speare in Trinidad specif­i­cal­ly. This play has been re­worked and it in­cludes many char­ac­ters that are in­dige­nous to Trinidad like blue dev­ils, jab jabs and a pier­rot grenade-type char­ac­ter. What is al­so quite ex­cit­ing is that this stag­ing is very ac­ces­si­ble and fam­i­ly-friend­ly."

Oc­to­ber 28

Body = Bar­ri­er

Writ­ten and di­rect­ed by Bren­don O'Brien

The sto­ry is about the bat­tle be­tween good and evil for the souls of hu­mans. The sto­ry ques­tions whether it tru­ly is a fight des­tiny that de­ter­mines where the soul goes. Are the temp­ta­tions of the flesh mak­ing bar­ri­ers for our souls? The play is an at­tempt to con­nect sit­u­a­tions and delu­sions that af­fect peo­ple's dai­ly lives with pos­si­ble spir­i­tu­al in­flu­ences, and ex­plo­ration of how in­se­cu­ri­ty in­flu­ences be­hav­iors, and the ef­fects of peer pres­sure on so­cial group in­ter­ac­tions.

CLOS­ING NIGHT

Oc­to­ber 30

50/25 writ­ten by a col­lec­tive of writ­ers

Di­rect­ed by Camille Quam­i­na and Mar­vin George

The sto­ry is about Pick­ney who comes home with ques­tions for his ail­ing moth­er, Sa­dia. With each ques­tion, each mem­o­ry, Pick­ney makes a jour­ney through time to dis­cov­er him­self. He con­fronts his moth­er, who holds the se­crets to his own be­com­ing. His be­com­ing is our own. Through the po­et­ics of Hosay, Kalin­da, Tra­di­tion­al Mas, Hin­du Rasas, Or­isha Pos­ses­sion, and First Peo­ple's tra­di­tions, the dances of the spir­its, we shift time, char­ac­ter and sit­u­a­tion, seam­less­ly, to make this jour­ney with him. As he ex­humes his lega­cy, we un­earth truths about our­selves.

All pro­duc­tions will be at the Lit­tle Carib The­atre and will be­gin at 8 pm.

Tick­ets are on sale at the Lit­tle Carib Box Of­fice at $75 for one, with a spe­cial dis­count of $100 for two.