The Little Carib Theatre (LCT) was established in Woodbrook, Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1947 by Beryl McBurnie "to showcase the vibrant and rich culture of the Trinbagonian people". [1] The first permanent folk-dance company and theatre in Trinidad, it has been described as "the mecca of West Indian folk dance". [2] It remains the only dance theatre of its kind in the region. [3]
The Little Carib Theatre was formally opened in November 1948. The foundation stone was laid by Paul Robeson, who at the time was visiting Trinidad, and whom the founder Beryl McBurnie had met in New York. [4] [5]
By the 1960s, the work of the Little Carib Dance Company had been recognised and celebrated overseas, having performed at such events as the Caribbean Festival of Arts in Puerto Rico in 1952, the Jamaica Tercentenary Celebrations in 1955 and the opening of the Federal Parliament of Toronto in April 1958. The Little Carib building had to be demolished in the 1960s, and it was rebuilt in three years. [4]
Many of the plays of Nobel Prize-winner Derek Walcott were first staged at the Little Carib Theatre, [6] [7] where he held weekly theatre workshops [4] as founding director, from 1959 to 1971, of what became the Trinidad Theatre Workshop. [8] [9]
Sir Derek Alton Walcott OM was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem Omeros (1990), which many critics view "as Walcott's major achievement." In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Walcott received many literary awards over the course of his career, including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen's Medal for Poetry, the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of poetry White Egrets and the Griffin Trust For Excellence in Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award in 2015.
Port of Spain, officially the City of Port of Spain, is the capital of Trinidad and Tobago and the third largest municipality, after Chaguanas and San Fernando. The city has a municipal population of 37,074 (2011), an urban population of 81,142 and a transient daily population of 250,000. It is located on the Gulf of Paria, on the northwest coast of the island of Trinidad and is part of a larger conurbation stretching from Chaguaramas in the west to Arima in the east with an estimated population of 600,000.
The culture of Trinidad and Tobago reflects the influence of Indian-South Asian, African, Indigenous, European, Chinese, North American, Latino, and Arab cultures. The histories of Trinidad and Tobago are different. There are differences in the cultural influences which have shaped each island. Trinidad and Tobago is an English-speaking country with strong links to the United Kingdom.
André Michael Tanker was a Trinidad and Tobago musician and composer.
Earl Wilbert Lovelace is a Trinidadian novelist, journalist, playwright, and short story writer. He is particularly recognized for his descriptive, dramatic fiction on Trinidadian culture: "Using Trinidadian dialect patterns and standard English, he probes the paradoxes often inherent in social change as well as the clash between rural and urban cultures." As Bernardine Evaristo notes, "Lovelace is unusual among celebrated Caribbean writers in that he has always lived in Trinidad. Most writers leave to find support for their literary endeavours elsewhere and this, arguably, shapes the literature, especially after long periods of exile. But Lovelace's fiction is deeply embedded in Trinidadian society and is written from the perspective of one whose ties to his homeland have never been broken."
Trinidad Theatre Workshop was founded in 1959, by 1992 Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, with his twin brother Roderick Walcott and performers including Beryl McBurnie, Errol Jones and Stanley Marshall, and started at the Little Carib Theatre before moving to other venues in Port of Spain. Derek Walcott was the founding director, from 1959 to 1971. In its inaugural season, the Workshop presented The Blacks by Jean Genet, Eric Roach's Belle Fanto, and The Road by Wole Soyinka. The company continues to produce works by Walcott and others, and in recent years has offered educational programs and community outreach in the region in addition to its production schedule.
Caribbean literature is the literature of the various territories of the Caribbean region. Literature in English from the former British West Indies may be referred to as Anglo-Caribbean or, in historical contexts, as West Indian literature. Most of these territories have become independent nations since the 1960s, though some retain colonial ties to the United Kingdom. They share, apart from the English language, a number of political, cultural, and social ties which make it useful to consider their literary output in a single category. The more wide-ranging term "Caribbean literature" generally refers to the literature of all Caribbean territories regardless of language—whether written in English, Spanish, French, Hindustani, or Dutch, or one of numerous creoles.
Anton Phillips is a Jamaican-born British actor who found success appearing in British television. He remains best known for his role as Dr. Bob Mathias in the science fiction series Space: 1999. Also a theatre producer and director, he has been involved over the years with many initiatives to showcase high-quality professional theatre by and for black people, including the Carib Theatre Company, co-founded with Yvonne Brewster in 1980.
Boscoe Holder, born Arthur Aldwyn Holder in Arima, Trinidad and Tobago, was Trinidad and Tobago's leading contemporary painter, who also had a celebrated international career spanning six decades as a designer and visual artist, dancer, choreographer and musician.
Beryl Eugenia McBurnie OBE was a Trinidadian dancer. She established the Little Carib Theatre in Woodbrook, Port of Spain, and promoted the culture and arts of Trinidad and Tobago as her life's work. She helped to promote the cultural legitimacy of Trinidad and Tobago that would shift the country into the age independence. McBurnie dedicated her life to dance, becoming one of the greatest influences on modern Trinidadian pop culture.
Gabrielle Walcott is a Trinidadian artist, model, charity worker and beauty pageant titleholder who won Miss Trinidad and Tobago 2008 and placed as the second runner-up in Miss World 2008. She is also titleholder of Miss World Beauty with a Purpose 2008, Miss World Caribbean 2008, and Miss Trinidad and Tobago Universe 2011. She represented Trinidad and Tobago at the Miss Universe 2011 pageant in São Paulo but was unplaced. Gabrielle resides in Petit Valley, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. She is of mixed Carib, Indian, Portuguese, Chinese and English descent
Russell Audley Ferdinand "Russ" Henderson was a jazz musician on the piano and the steelpan. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, he settled in England in the 1950s. He is most widely recognised as one of the founding figures of the Notting Hill Carnival in London, United Kingdom.
Beef, No Chicken is a two-act play by Caribbean playwright Derek Walcott. The play is set in the town of Couva, in Trinidad and Tobago. It follows restaurant owner Otto Hogan, whose refusal to accept graft delays the building of a highway through the centre of the town.
The term Caribbean culture summarizes the artistic, musical, literary, culinary, political and social elements that are representative of Caribbean people all over the world.
Roderick Aldon Walcott, OBE, was a St Lucian playwright, screenwriter, painter, theatre director, costume and set designer, lyricist and literary editor. As a dramatist he "has been recognised as one of the most committed figures in the effort to develop a distinctive Caribbean theatre in the region". He was the twin brother of Nobel laureate Derek Walcott.
Roger Robinson is a British writer, musician and performer who lives between England and Trinidad. Best known for A Portable Paradise which won the T. S. Eliot Prize 2019.
Pearl Connor-Mogotsi, née Nunez, was a Trinidadian-born theatrical and literary agent, actress and cultural activist, who was a pioneering campaigner for the recognition and promotion of African Caribbean arts. In the UK, in the 1950s, she was the first agent to represent black and other minority ethnic actors, writers and film-makers, and during the early 1960s was instrumental in setting up one of Britain's first black theatre companies, the Negro Theatre Workshop. In the words of John La Rose, who delivered a eulogy at her funeral on 26 February 2005: "Pearl Connor-Mogotsi was pivotal in the effort to remake the landscape for innovation and for the inclusion of African, Caribbean and Asian artists in shaping a new vision of consciousness for art and society."
Eric Merton Roach was a Tobagonian poet and playwright. He published some early writing under the pseudonym Merton Maloney.
Marina Ama Omowale Maxwell, also known as Marina Maxwell and Marina Maxwell Omowale, is a Trinidadian playwright, performer, poet and novelist. She was associated with the Caribbean Artists Movement in London in the late 1960s, working with Edward Kamau Brathwaite, while back in the Caribbean she was responsible for developing the experimental Yard Theatre, which was "an attempt to place West Indian theatre in the life of the people [...] to find it in the yards where people live and are." The concept of "yard theatre" was considered revolutionary, according to Brathwaite, because it not only "rejected/ignored... traditional/ colonial Euro-American theatre," it also "provided a viable and creative alternative."
Martina Laird is a Trinidadian British actress, director and acting teacher.