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Voices in the Creation of an Indigenous Trinidad and Tobago Theatre

By (author) Patrick Brennan

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This book explores how, from the mid-20th century, a new form of theatre emerged in Trinidad and Tobago as its playwrights came to mine the Afro-Creole Trinidadian folk milieu. This book focuses primarily on the period from the 1950s through to the contemporary moment, investigating how Trinidadâ€™s theatrical practitioners developed methodologies that formulated an indigenous theatre. It examines how in its creation, it would distance itself from Western forms as the stage was decolonized, making way for a variety of new forms that mimetically reflect the reality of Trinidadâ€™s Afro-Creole folk. This book establishes a premise on which the terms â€œfolkâ€ and â€œindigenousâ€ have been shaped by Trinidadâ€™s socio-historical past. It develops an argument that outlines how Trinidadâ€™s African cultural retentions form a central basis on which a theatrical tradition was established. This book traces the historical impetus and driving forces that gave rise to a body of writers for whom the vitally important link between the production of drama and the search for identity in the immediacy of the post-colonial period is established. The book develops a structure that forms three lines of discrete research: folk expression, women, their portrayal and their emergence as theatrical practitioners, and theatrical developments through the decades. These subject areas are examined through the work of a broad body of playwrights. Exploring their theory and praxis, their work is described in terms that exhibit a variety of genres, with tropes that have become indelible resources for theatrical practitioners to draw from. With a theatrical base that extends from popular comedy to avant-garde spiritual works, the theatre is shown to represent a composite entity, one that accommodates a plurality of forms, which, in their summation, express the breadth and depth of Trinidad and Tobagoâ€™s theatrical journey, one that is still very much underway. Readers that have an interest in theatre, cultural, gender, post-colonial, or Caribbean studies will enjoy this book.