Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts (DC­FA), in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Mal­ick Folk Per­form­ing Com­pa­ny (CMT), pre­sent­ed On The Line, a cap­ti­vat­ing the­atri­cal show­case, on April 25 and 26 at Queen’s Hall, Port-of-Spain.

The pro­duc­tion fea­tured high­lights of Er­ic The Mu­si­cal by Zeno Con­stance—a bi­o­graph­i­cal ca­lyp­so mu­si­cal chron­i­cling the life and lega­cy of Dr. Er­ic Williams, the first Prime Min­is­ter and “Fa­ther of the Na­tion” of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Di­rect­ed by Michailean Tay­lor, On The Line brought to­geth­er a vi­brant mix of tal­ent and cre­ative en­er­gies, fea­tur­ing mu­si­cal di­rec­tion by Mar­va New­ton and chore­og­ra­phy by De­on Bap­tiste.

Tay­lor de­scribed the pro­duc­tion as a “big project” that unit­ed UWI’s DC­FA Year 1 BA dance stu­dents, Mal­ick Folk, and THEA 2299 - Pro­duc­tion II stu­dents, merg­ing their the­atri­cal works with Con­stance’s mu­si­cal.

In ad­di­tion to the cen­tral mu­si­cal adap­ta­tion, the pro­duc­tion fea­tured five bold, orig­i­nal 10-minute plays writ­ten and per­formed by DC­FA stu­dents.

Work­ing with the stu­dents, he said, guid­ed a process that merges mul­ti­ple voic­es.

“Their short­scripts, root­ed in re­search, ex­am­ine the so­cio-po­lit­i­cal com­plex­i­ties of to­day,” Tay­lor said.

His role was to find co­he­sion, not by eras­ing their in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty, but by weav­ing their nar­ra­tives in­to a flu­id and mean­ing­ful whole.

The Mal­ick Folk Per­form­ing Com­pa­ny brought ad­di­tion­al cul­tur­al flair and dy­nam­ic stage pres­ence.

The cast in­clud­ed stu­dents and Mal­ick mem­bers Zerkiphe Fran­cis, Sha­ni­ah Garib, Kha­dine Ed­wards, An­ton Brew­ster, Chyvonne Nurse, Christie Mil­lette, Scott Hamil­ton-Co­zi­er, Nikiesha Smith, Ajah John­son, Patrice Vi­dal, Abi­gail Seaforth-Leslie, Azaria Halls, Kier­an Mc Sweeney, Bri­an­na Worme, Tevin Dou­glas and Nys­sa Bai­ley.