Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips

Af­ter years of ap­pear­ing in the­atre pro­duc­tions writ­ten, pro­duced and di­rect­ed by oth­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly men, Nik­ki Cros­by, Pene­lope Spencer and Mairoon Ali are now pool­ing their tal­ents to earn a big­ger share of the the­atre pie.

"We are the­atre prac­ti­tion­ers; we act, teach and di­rect and at some point, you want to make mon­ey from the craft, the men mak­ing all the mon­ey. "We, as women, say the men can't make all the mon­ey," said Spencer when Wom­an­Wise met the trio to dis­cuss the mo­tives be­hind their one-year old com­pa­ny, Ha Ha Ha Pro­duc­tions. Lest any­one sens­es any bac­cha­nal be­hind Spencer's de­c­la­ra­tion, the women are clear: they are not at log­ger­heads with the likes of Ray­mond Choo Kong and Richard Ra­goo­bars­ingh with who, they have worked and strong­ly ad­mire. "There's no bad blood. We have much re­spect for the men," point­ed out Ali. "We need­ed to grow." De­spite pro­duc­ing three plays over the last year – The Best Lit­tle Whore­house in Guapo, Vagi­na Di­a­logues and the cur­rent one, Sex in de City – Ha Ha Ha is yet to turn in­to a cash cow.

"To pro­duce a show costs $100,000, it is very chal­leng­ing," said Spencer. "It hasn't been fi­nan­cial­ly re­ward­ing." "Our be­gin­ning wasn't bad," Ali in­ter­ject­ed. "We have learnt so many lessons. With our last play, we were very eco­nom­i­cal," she said. At­tract­ing spon­sors, es­pe­cial­ly to­day when many lo­cal com­pa­nies are us­ing the eco­nom­ic slow­down as an ex­cuse to cut ex­pen­di­ture, is a ma­jor chal­lenge. So too is find­ing ap­pro­pri­ate spaces to ex­e­cute their craft, an age-old is­sue that not even the Na­tion­al Per­form­ing Arts Cen­tre, cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion, will erase. "We want to do dra­mat­ic pieces, but we need spaces for that," said Spencer when asked if they in­tend to branch out from farces to do oth­er gen­res. With a max­i­mum of 400 pa­trons at­tend­ing shows, small, in­ti­mate spaces are need­ed in this coun­try, the trio said. "The Na­tion­al Per­form­ing Arts Cen­tre will have one the­atre seat­ing over a 1,000 peo­ple," re­vealed Cros­by.

Ad­dress­ing peo­ple crit­i­cal of their plays and the per­cep­tion that it is all about sex, Cros­by said from a pro­duc­tion point of view, sex sells. "Deep is not sell­ing. Some­times sex is just in the name, peo­ple's per­cep­tions are taint­ed by the name. Sex in de City is about re­la­tion­ships and is­sues." "We do work to ed­u­cate and en­ter­tain and we want peo­ple to laugh," said Spencer. Col­lab­o­rat­ing is not new for Cros­by, Spencer and Ali, who pro­duced De Vices about sev­en years ago. They al­so worked to­geth­er at the Maljo Kaiso tent which Cros­by ran with Er­rol Fa­bi­en. Hav­ing their own com­pa­ny is just a nat­ur­al di­rec­tion for ac­tors and pro­duc­ers, Cros­by said.

"It had to hap­pen when we were all ready," said Ali, who re­tired from teach­ing at Holy Name Con­vent af­ter 34 years in the ser­vice.

With long­stand­ing ca­reers in com­e­dy and act­ing, each woman in­vests her unique strengths in the de­vel­op­ment of the com­pa­ny. "Every tri­an­gle has a peak, the more we work to­geth­er, the more we learn our strengths," said Ali. "Pene­lope is a su­per­in­ten­dent freak. She takes over where she shouldn't. She has been in the­atre longer than all of us so she knows every­thing to do with pro­duc­tion. Nik­ki is amaz­ing when deal­ing with the pub­lic and she have a lil' Chi­nee in her so she good with mon­ey, beg­ging spon­sors and so on. "I have a lot of time on my hands now, so I do all of the ad­min­is­tra­tive work – send press re­leas­es, let­ters, fol­low ups – my house is like the sec­re­tari­at. If we work our skills, we are a for­mi­da­ble team," said Ali.

To that end, Ha Ha Ha is not just lim­it­ed to pro­duc­ing plays. The com­pa­ny has pro­duced in­fomer­cials for the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) and the Copy­right As­so­ci­a­tion (COTT). Come Au­gust 3, it will al­so pro­duce the 2009 Cacique Awards, which will ho­n­our the best dra­mat­ic works and ac­tors over the last two years, since no awards were giv­en in 2008. But it's the tele­vi­sion projects that are re­al­ly ex­cit­ing the women, though de­tails were kept un­der wraps for ob­vi­ous rea­sons. "We have two ma­jor tele­vi­sion projects, a sit­com and a talk show. We are de­vot­ing a lot of time to those so we won't be do­ing any new stage pro­duc­tions," said Spencer.

The trio would al­so like to tour, to take their shows around the Caribbean, and pos­si­bly to the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty in New York, but they need spon­sors. "We are look­ing for cor­po­rate Trinidad to in­vest in Ha Ha Ha," said Ali. As oc­cu­pied as they are with build­ing their fledg­ling com­pa­ny, the women are al­so busy with their in­di­vid­ual projects. For Cros­by, it's Nik­ki Land, her an­nu­al chil­dren's Car­ni­val event which has be­come a year­long job. For Spencer, it's Nec­es­sary Arts, an arts school for chil­dren and teens. And for Ali, it's the pub­li­ca­tion of Mairoon's Mind, a col­lec­tion of quotes from her show on i95.5 FM. "Pen­ny is al­so work­ing on a com­pi­la­tion of plays and mono­logues," said Ali.