The Theatre Workshops & Mentorship, Tallman Foundation and Rainbow Rescue have teamed up to create a link between the Yale School of Drama in Connecticut and the University of Trinidad and Tobago Performing Arts programme. The team will present Smile Orange, a play that will run at the newly-renovated Little Carib Theatre from July 14 to 24 with a total of ten shows. First generation Barbadian guest-director, Charlotte Brathwaite, a recent graduate from the Directing programme at the Yale School of Drama in Connecticut, has decided to return "home" to the Caribbean to work on a piece that Caribbean people can relate to. Brathwaite has worked professionally in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia.
Timmia Hearn Feldman, director in the Theatre Studies programme at Yale University spearheaded an outreach programme with disadvantaged youth at Judy Wilson's Rainbow Rescue, and Michelle Ayoung Chee's Tallman Foundation from July 4 to 9. The programme worked directly with 20-25 young people, primarily at-risk young boys, in creating theatre and finding their individual voice and empowering them with tools and techniques to create works of art expressing the world in which they live and the emotions that reside within them. The workshop included a training and development component, where the young people were exposed to various aspects of the theatre by the various creative heads-director, det designer, actors-and were a part of the actual behind-the-scenes duties of the show itself.