Voices in the Creation of an Indigenous Trinidad and Tobago Theatre

This book explores how, from the mid-20th century, a new form of theatre that 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 Trinidads theatrical practitioners developed methodologies that formulated an indigenous theatre. This book 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 Trinidads Afro-Creole folk. This book establishes a premise on which the term folk and indigenous have been shaped by Trinidads socio-historical past. The book develops an argument that outlines how Trinidads 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 postcolonial 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 Tobagos theatrical journey, one that is still very much underway. Readers that have an interest in theatre, cultural, gender, postcolonial or Caribbean studies will enjoy this book.