His­tor­i­cal­ly, the­atre in Latin Amer­i­ca has played an ac­tive role in the con­struc­tion of na­tion states and na­tion­al iden­ti­ties. In ad­di­tion, be­ing a com­bi­na­tion of all arts, the­atre cre­ates a set­ting for ac­tors to ex­hib­it their tal­ents through per­form­ing. De­spite the main fo­cus on the ac­tors dur­ing per­for­mances, the back­bone of this art form should not be for­got­ten - the di­rec­tor. In Au­gust of 2010, the young Michailean Tay­lor de­vel­oped a group known as the Ah'Peel­in Feel­ings Play­back The­atre (APF). So what is play­back the­atre you ask? In an in­ter­view with gieMAGAZINE Tay­lor stat­ed that he has heard this ques­tion sev­er­al times since his birthing of this group. Ba­si­cal­ly, play­back the­atre refers to the im­promp­tu reen­act­ment by the cast of ac­tors, of a sto­ry giv­en by one per­son from the au­di­ence where the cast in­cor­po­rate mu­sic, dance, singing and dra­ma to re­flect that per­son's sto­ry. Some of the forms which play­back the­atre takes are the Flu­id Sculp­ture, Pairs and the Cho­rus. APF ex­e­cutes all of these forms. Be­ing the in­no­v­a­tive and am­bi­tious in­di­vid­ual he is, Tay­lor has cre­at­ed his own form of Play­back The­atre. He calls it the mas­ter­piece. The APF group al­so sep­a­rates it­self from oth­er play­back the­atre com­pa­nies as it fo­cus­es its reen­act­ment of sto­ries on a feel­ing. Tay­lor al­so stressed the need for mem­bers to get in each oth­er's per­son­al spaces in or­der to ex­press dif­fer­ent emo­tions sur­round­ing a theme, while still per­form­ing as one en­ti­ty.

The the­atre ge­nius was first in­tro­duced to play­back the­atre by Tra­cie Rogers when he pur­sued his Cer­tifi­cate in Dra­ma and The­atre in Ed­u­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. This im­me­di­ate­ly cap­tured his in­ter­est in the art form. As a re­sult, since then he has in­cor­po­rat­ed play­back in­to al­most every as­pect of the Bach­e­lor of Arts de­gree that he has re­cent­ly com­plet­ed in The­atre Arts with a mi­nor in Lit­er­a­tures in Eng­lish. Tay­lor is due to grad­u­ate in Oc­to­ber of this year. The APF group be­gan with on­ly 10 mem­bers. On Car­ni­val Mon­day of last year, one of the mem­bers lost his life at a shoot­ing in Ari­ma. This oc­curred soon af­ter the group had per­formed at an event and this left the group mem­bers dev­as­tat­ed. Fol­low­ing this, the APF group broke up for a short time then re­unit­ed, prov­ing to be stronger and bet­ter per­form­ers than they were be­fore. They con­tin­ued per­form­ing at dif­fer­ent sec­ondary schools and events across Trinidad. The group has since been to To­ba­go and Guyana in an ef­fort to broad­en its scope and au­di­ence. I have had the priv­i­lege of see­ing the APF the­atre com­pa­ny in ac­tion at Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Week at UWI, St. Au­gus­tine, ear­li­er this year. It was quite an ex­pe­ri­ence! The group's abil­i­ty to cap­ture and por­tray spe­cif­ic feel­ings which an­oth­er per­son's sto­ry may en­tail is tru­ly amaz­ing! Tay­lor dis­closed to gieMAGAZINE that do­ing play­back af­fects his job and how he treats peo­ple. "Be­cause of play­back, I tend to be more un­der­stand­ing and ap­pre­cia­tive of per­son's sto­ries and per­son's back­grounds," he stat­ed. As a re­sult he is able to re­late to these dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions in a calm man­ner rather than laugh or mur­mur about it (like some Trinida­di­ans may be in­clined to do).

This in­dus­tri­ous young man is not on­ly a di­rec­tor, but has al­so per­formed in a num­ber of plays. At present he is re­hears­ing to act in 'Hair­spray - the Broad­way Mu­si­cal' a prod­uct of the lo­cal 'Must Come See' the­atre com­pa­ny. He has al­so di­rect­ed an Au­rand Har­ris play for chil­dren 'An­dro­cles and the Li­on' which proved to be a huge suc­cess. De­spite his ex­po­sure to both act­ing and di­rect­ing, Tay­lor be­lieves that di­rect­ing is his call­ing and he ex­pe­ri­ences great en­joy­ment do­ing it. As for his play­back the­atre group, when asked what he sees for the fu­ture, the de­ter­mined the­atre ge­nius sim­ply replied, "Big things. I see many APFs." The young­ster wants APF to im­pact Trinidad so much as mem­bers con­tin­ue their art, that every­one knows about play­back the­atre and the APF. He al­so hopes that more peo­ple take it up­on them­selves to start shar­ing sto­ries as he be­lieves that this is a step to­wards get­ting your­self known, shar­ing your ex­pe­ri­ence and tal­ents, and in turn, achiev­ing suc­cess. If you would like to sup­port this com­pa­ny please con­tact Michailean Tay­lor at the fol­low­ing email ad­dress:

apf­play­back­the­atre@gmail.com