Fay­ola K J Fras­er

When the cur­tains closed on “Queen of the Road–The Ca­lyp­so Rose Mu­si­cal” last Sun­day, the cap­tive au­di­ence was quick to its feet, cheer­ing and prais­ing the play’s cast along with its fear­less writer and di­rec­tor, Rhoma Spencer. Queen of the Road took the view­ers on an en­thralling jour­ney, high­light­ing the chal­lenges, tri­umphs, and over­com­ings of the Queen of Ca­lyp­so. Ca­lyp­so Rose, armed with her tenac­i­ty and re­silience, rose to the top of a male-dom­i­nat­ed field and has paved a path not on­ly for fe­male mu­sic artistes but for women through­out T&T, em­pow­er­ing them to stand tall even un­der back­lash and scruti­ny. This thread of Ca­lyp­so Rose as a mouth­piece for women was ex­pert­ly weaved through­out Spencer’s pro­duc­tion, and Spencer, a trail­blaz­er in her own right, was de­ter­mined for the au­di­ence to see and feel Ca­lyp­so Rose’s in­domitable spir­it through­out the show. 

For many scenes in the ear­ly parts of the show, the au­di­ence was treat­ed to the young Ca­lyp­so Rose speak­ing To­bag­on­ian Cre­ole, us­ing words and ex­pres­sions that even many Trinida­di­ans are not ac­cus­tomed to. This was an au­then­tic ode to the is­land’s lin­guis­tic ex­pres­sion, as Spencer her­self spent many for­ma­tive years liv­ing in her par­ents’ guest house in To­ba­go.

Eden­vale was one of on­ly five guest hous­es at the time on the is­land and was very pop­u­lar be­cause of her moth­er’s “sweet han”, with tourists flock­ing year af­ter year to get a taste of her bread, cakes, “cold tea” and Sun­day lunch. When the guest house closed, Spencer’s fam­i­ly moved to the vil­lage of Canaan, where Spencer felt that the out­door cook­ing, out­door toi­lets, and farm an­i­mals ex­em­pli­fied the essence of what she thought of as true vil­lage life. “This ex­pe­ri­ence liv­ing in Canaan formed me. It gave me my iden­ti­ty as a woman from a To­ba­go vil­lage, which I’m true to up un­til this day.” How­ev­er, her affin­i­ty for her learned To­ba­go di­alect was quick­ly sup­pressed by her moth­er, and she wasn’t al­lowed to speak it at home. “I thought it was sweet,” she re­calls. “I can un­der­stand it and I can write it as you wit­nessed in the play, but I can’t speak it.” 

 Even be­fore her fam­i­ly moved back to Trinidad when she was in Form Two, she re­mem­bers feel­ing, un­like her sib­lings, en­rap­tured by lo­cal tele­vi­sion. While her sib­lings were fiend­ing for Bo­nan­za or Lit­tle House on the Prairie, Spencer sali­vat­ed over the dra­ma of lo­cal soap op­eras like Cal­abash Al­ley and was swept away by the vi­brance and ex­cite­ment of Best Vil­lage. She felt con­nect­ed to ac­tors on lo­cal shows, that they mir­rored her per­son­hood, and she want­ed to be like them. By the time she moved back to Trinidad, she in­trin­si­cal­ly knew that she some­how “had to find a way in” as part of the lo­cal tele­vi­sion scene.

As fate would have it, as a stu­dent at St Joseph’s Col­lege, she found her­self sit­ting next to a dancer who hap­pened to per­form with Barataria Best Vil­lage and en­cour­aged her to come to au­di­tion for the pro­duc­tion. In 1980, she was cast in Best Vil­lage’s pro­duc­tion named Blood and Steel, a sto­ry of the birth of the steel­pan. “I nev­er looked back; I was hun­gry for more and more af­ter that.” 

 With this pas­sion ig­nit­ed in­side of her, she pur­sued a Bach­e­lor of Arts in The­atre Arts, and a Mas­ter of Fine Arts in The­atre with a con­cen­tra­tion in Di­rect­ing. Spencer’s tal­ent and ca­pac­i­ty for di­rect­ing were on dis­play at every turn of the Queen of the Road mu­si­cal, as she seam­less­ly brought to­geth­er, trained, and led a ster­ling cast of ac­tors, mu­si­cians, and artists that gave glo­ry and jus­tice to the retelling of a piv­otal sto­ry.

Up­on com­plet­ing her stud­ies, she was head­hunt­ed to join an Afri-Can The­atre en­sem­ble in Cana­da, which pre­sent­ed the­atri­cal pieces from Africa. “Do­ing African the­atre wasn’t hard for me, as it re­sem­bles Caribbean the­atre very close­ly.” As the res­i­dent di­rec­tor of the en­sem­ble, she was thrown in­to the fire to learn the busi­ness be­hind the­atre. Al­though many peo­ple be­lieve ac­tors sim­ply take the stage and ex­e­cute, Spencer em­pha­sis­es that artists in the the­atre have to learn to write pro­pos­als, seek fund­ing, write grants, net­work, bud­get, and ul­ti­mate­ly find paths to get their art on stage. “I learned fast and fu­ri­ous how to nav­i­gate this in­dus­try,” she says, re­mem­ber­ing her time in the en­sem­ble.

“We as artists have to al­so be the busi­ness peo­ple be­hind our art. When we form a com­pa­ny, we have to form a board to be held ac­count­able to, and im­me­di­ate­ly we learn how to man­age our brand and ar­tic­u­late for our art.” 

 As a Black woman in Cana­da in the ear­ly 2000s, Spencer was nav­i­gat­ing an in­dus­try that wasn’t built to em­pow­er her. She re­called vivid­ly that, com­ing from Trinidad, she did not have a rubric to tru­ly un­der­stand the way that racism can se­ri­ous­ly lim­it peo­ple’s ac­cess to op­por­tu­ni­ties. Cit­ing “not be­ing a white body,” as a cen­tral rea­son she was passed over for many jobs, grants, and op­por­tu­ni­ties, she ac­knowl­edges, how­ev­er, that “in this post-George Floyd era, op­por­tu­ni­ties are now flung at me. This fo­cus on in­clu­sion of the now-called BIPOC (Black, In­dige­nous, and Peo­ple of Colour) com­mu­ni­ty is new, and there is now fund­ing in place ex­clu­sive­ly for BIPOC.” 

Aside from her re­cent pro­duc­tion, Spencer con­sid­ers her role in the pro­duc­tion of Jean and Di­nah as an ac­tress and writer to be sig­nif­i­cant in her ca­reer. Au­thor and No­bel Lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott de­scribed the play on its de­but as “one of the finest pieces of West In­di­an the­atre I have seen in years.”

For Spencer, the process of cre­at­ing and re­search­ing the play was so em­pow­er­ing, as they went out and met with and spoke to the re­al women who had ser­viced the “Yan­kee” sol­diers back in the era of US mil­i­tary bases in T&T. “We went through a process to earn the women’s trust, as they were all, at the time, mar­ried, prim and prop­er, de­cent women, whose hus­bands es­pe­cial­ly tried to block us from talk­ing to them.”

Gath­er­ing these re­al ex­pe­ri­ences was not on­ly eye-open­ing for her, but al­so played a ma­jor part in her abil­i­ty to ful­ly em­body the re­al peo­ple be­hind the role and con­nect with au­di­ences world­wide. An­oth­er of her ma­jor ca­reer high­lights was her nom­i­na­tion for the Mavoor Award, the Cana­di­an equiv­a­lent of the US Tony Awards, cel­e­brat­ing ex­cel­lence in the­atre. 

Her pen­chant for telling our sto­ries is ev­i­dent. In ad­di­tion to her role in the Jean and Di­nah pro­duc­tion, in 1997, she pro­duced “Bass­man”, the sto­ry of the Mighty Shad­ow. Af­ter this pro­duc­tion, she de­clared that she would next do “Fire Fire,” a mu­si­cal on Ca­lyp­so Rose. In 2017, when Ca­lyp­so Rose won the Vic­tore de La Musique Award in France, she felt a pal­pa­ble re­vival of all things Ca­lyp­so Rose, es­pe­cial­ly bub­bling in Eu­rope. She knew then that the time had come to tell Ca­lyp­so Rose’s sto­ry.

Tak­ing mon­ey out of her own pock­et, un­able to wait any longer for fund­ing or the per­fect tim­ing, she trav­elled to New York City in 2019, and stayed with Ca­lyp­so Rose for two days, as­sid­u­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ing her sto­ry through her child­hood, move to Trinidad, and tri­als with­in the ca­lyp­so in­dus­try. She then tabled the project, know­ing that she need­ed funds to do jus­tice to the sto­ry. 

Not know­ing how to fit the nar­ra­tive in­to the Cana­di­an con­text and there­fore ac­cess Cana­di­an pub­lic funds, she even­tu­al­ly stum­bled up­on a call for Queer and Trans Re­search Lab Artist in Res­i­dence fund­ing by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to. Then all the pieces fell to­geth­er.

As Ca­lyp­so Rose’s lat­est al­bum, “Far From Home”, was pro­duced in Toron­to, she could jus­ti­fy us­ing the fund­ing to tell the ca­lyp­son­ian’s sto­ry. Cho­sen from 37 sub­mis­sions, she was elect­ed and re­ceived fund­ing for the pro­duc­tion. Not know­ing how to be­gin writ­ing, she pa­tient­ly wait­ed for the in­spi­ra­tion to strike. “Then, one day, I fig­ured out how the play would start, and I was able to write Act One. Then I chose a drama­tist and for three months, we went back and forth un­til we even­tu­al­ly work­shopped the play in June 2023.” 

 Spencer felt align­ment in writ­ing the play, as she, like Ca­lyp­so Rose, has sought to am­pli­fy women’s voic­es. “Rose was fed up and dis­gust­ed by Spar­row and all the oth­er male ca­lyp­so­ni­ans who said deroga­to­ry things about women. She want­ed to give the women the pow­er back, and that be­came my com­pass in writ­ing the sto­ry.” The play ex­pert­ly presents a woman in Ca­lyp­so Rose, who at every turn peels back a lay­er of pa­tri­ar­chal sup­pres­sion, by weapon­is­ing the art form as a means of lob­by­ing the politi­cians at the time, high­light­ing abuse and poor work­ing con­di­tions through which many women had to suf­fer. Spencer’s next move is to widen the scope of the play, as the tra­jec­to­ry of the Queen of the Road will take her to Broad­way, where she is lined up to pitch the play as a Broad­way mu­si­cal in Oc­to­ber. 

 With her hard work, pas­sion, and com­mit­ment to in­dige­nous sto­ry­telling on dis­play through her salute to Ca­lyp­so Rose, Rhoma Spencer soaked in a well-de­served round of en­thu­si­as­tic ap­plause on the last night of the mu­si­cal. Hold­ing space for our art form and show­ing love and ap­pre­ci­a­tion to our artists through her ded­i­ca­tion to aug­ment­ing our voic­es, she is wav­ing the Trin­ba­go flag high in the in­ter­na­tion­al arts are­na.