Er­line An­drews

When the pres­ti­gious Ac­tor Boy Awards–the Ja­maican equiv­a­lent of the Amer­i­can Tonys–were hand­ed out at the Lit­tle The­atre in Kingston on March 25, few were sur­prised when Ru­ined, an ac­claimed adap­ta­tion of the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning play about life af­ter rape in the war-torn De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic of Con­go, took the award for best dra­ma.

Com­ing as more of a shock–at least to the win­ner her­self–was the con­fer­ring of the bronze stat­uette on the play's lead ac­tress, 26-year-old Trinida­di­an RisAnne Mar­tin.

Mar­tin had climbed the stage ear­li­er in the evening with di­rec­tor Eu­gene Williams to col­lect the best dra­ma award on­ly part­ly be­cause she want­ed to share in the glo­ry of a mo­ment she and the rest of the cast had worked hard for–im­mers­ing them­selves in months of re­hearsal for the two-week run in mid-April last year of the har­row­ing play, an ex­pe­ri­ence Mar­tin called "psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly drain­ing".

Mar­tin con­fessed to Williams back­stage af­ter­ward that she al­so want­ed the chance to show off her dress, a shim­mer­ing African print de­sign by Trinida­di­an Karen Davis. She didn't ex­pect to get an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty that night.

An hour lat­er, she learned she'd trumped old­er, more ex­pe­ri­enced Ja­maican con­tenders in the lead ac­tress cat­e­go­ry.

"When they called my name I couldn't move," Mar­tin, who played cyn­i­cal broth­el own­er Ma­ma Na­di, re­called dur­ing a re­cent phone in­ter­view. "I wasn't ex­pect­ing it. I had no ac­cep­tance speech. I thanked my di­rec­tor and dif­fer­ent peo­ple that helped me along the way and ex­it­ed, still in shock."

Mar­tin now ex­tends the list of Trinida­di­an win­ners of the 23-year-old award, which can be giv­en to any mem­ber of the cast or crew of Ja­maican pro­duc­tions, even if they're not Ja­maican.

Trinida­di­an Na­dia Khan won the lead ac­tress Ac­tor Boy in 2010 for her role in the com­e­dy The Love List.

"The Ac­tor Boy award isn't giv­en ac­cord­ing to na­tion­al­i­ty; it's giv­en ac­cord­ing to the per­for­mance," said head judge Tanya Bat­son-Sav­age. "And the truth of the mat­ter is Ja­maican the­atre has ben­e­fit­ted sig­nif­i­cant­ly from writ­ers, ac­tors, di­rec­tors from across the Caribbean."

One of the five judges of this year's awards, or­gan­ised by the In­ter­na­tion­al The­atre In­ter­na­tion­al In­sti­tute Ja­maica Cen­tre, is Trinidad-born ed­u­ca­tor Kei­th Noel.

Eu­gene Williams, who won an Ac­tor Boy for di­rect­ing Ru­ined and heads the School of Dra­ma at the Ed­na Man­ley Col­lege of the Vi­su­al and Per­form­ing Arts, is Guyanese.

Mar­tin, a grad­u­ate of Ed­na Man­ley who had on­ly been in a few plays pri­or to Ru­ined, was al­so hon­ored for her role with a Thes­pi­an Spir­it Award, or Thes­py, from Tallawah mag­a­zine, a pub­li­ca­tion that high­lights Ja­maican cul­ture.

"I was moved to tears. That's how amaz­ing she was," said ed­i­tor Ty­rone Reid of Mar­tin's per­for­mance. "I'm al­ready look­ing for­ward to see­ing her in ac­tion again."

Reid may have a long wait. While in Ja­maica, Mar­tin dis­cov­ered her tal­ent and pref­er­ence for fash­ion and af­ter a se­ries of as­sist­ant­ships now runs a style con­sul­tan­cy in Wood­brook and is the of­fi­cial styl­ist for Bmo­bile. She still us­es her ex­pe­ri­ence in the­atre to di­rect a small troupe that is cur­rent­ly tour­ing pri­ma­ry schools as part of a pro­gramme from Brown Cot­ton Out­reach, an art-pro­mot­ing NGO run by Mar­tin's fam­i­ly.

A re­turn to act­ing is un­like­ly. Mar­tin said the dis­ci­pline of the field and tak­ing di­rec­tion are dif­fi­cult for some­one with her strong-willed per­son­al­i­ty.

"I think I'm nat­u­ral­ly a di­rec­tor," she said. "Act­ing I've al­ways had a knack for, but I've nev­er been par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ed in it."

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