Sha­had Ali

Se­nior Press Pass Cor­re­spon­dent

The Lil­liput The­atre has clear­ly out­done it­self with its 2012 pro­duc­tion 'Anan­si and the World Wide Web'. Lil­liput The­atre has al­ways been con­sid­ered as the flag­ship of chil­dren's the­atre in Trinidad and To­ba­go, cater­ing for ages three to 18. In its lat­est pro­duc­tion, the Lil­liput cast ex­plored the mem­o­ry of one of West Africa's and the Caribbean's most pop­u­lar sto­ry­telling char­ac­ters. From the trick­ster, Anan­si, to the vic­tim­ized, Br­er Tiger, mem­bers of the me­dia were treat­ed to a spe­cial me­dia pre­view on re­cent­ly at the Queen's Hall Au­di­to­ri­um. As al­ways the Lil­liput The­atre push­es its stu­dents to reach their max­i­mum po­ten­tial. The night was full of young thes­pi­ans boast­ing of ex­pan­sive vo­cals, rhyth­mic dances and ac­tors that ful­ly em­bod­ied their char­ac­ters. In this pro­duc­tion the stu­dents all had a part to play in the writ­ing of their scripts as they ex­plored the con­cept that was Anan­si.

The mis­chie­vous char­ac­ter him­self, on stage, showed sev­er­al peo­ple of a lo­cal aes­thet­ic that ranged from the com­mon man on the street to the high­est class of a so­cial struc­ture. "The essence of this pro­duc­tion is to re­vive the Anan­si sto­ry tra­di­tion while putting our spin on it. We are in­ter­est­ed in what we can learn from this trick­ster" shared Lil­liput's di­rec­tor, Wen­dell Man­war­ren. Since it is a cus­tom of Lil­liput to com­ment on the hap­pen­ings in the coun­try, satir­i­cal com­ments were made on politi­cians as well as on the 50 years of in­de­pen­dence that Trinidad and To­ba­go is about to cel­e­brate. All of this was in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the con­cept of Anan­si and his tales. At the end of the pro­duc­tion gieMAGAZINE was able to sit with four young Lil­liputians to dis­cuss their thoughts on the pro­duc­tion. On stage, there were many em­bod­i­ments of Anan­si; how­ev­er we need­ed to hear the an­swer to 'Who is re­al­ly Anan­si?' from the young ac­tors them­selves. Sev­en­teen-year-old Asia Waite of St Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain spoke about her char­ac­ter: "My Anan­si, is ah dut­ty­ness Anan­si, so there­fore my char­ac­ter is more on the promis­cu­ous side. I re­veal all the lies and all the un­told sto­ries. It's all about how peo­ple do not lis­ten to our sto­ries any­more be­cause of the World Wide Web." An­oth­er stu­dent, 16-year-old, Christo­pher Ross-Dick of Queen's Roy­al Col­lege added to Asia's state­ment say­ing that "We are all Anan­si's in our own spe­cial way!"

Com­ment­ing fur­ther, this time on so­cial me­dia, Asia ad­mit­ted that she was pres­sured a bit to join web­sites such as face­book, but she nev­er got the point of it and rarely checks her ac­counts for any up­dates. Fif­teen-year-old Kenya Solane-Seale ad­mit­ted that she pro­cras­ti­nates a lot on­line, how­ev­er sites such as face­book helps her quite a bit with re­spect to peer re­views of class work in on­line groups. Sher­marke Thomas, a 19-year-old, shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments stat­ing that it is a waste of time and hin­ders one's pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Christo­pher, Asia, Kenya and Sher­marke all em­bod­ied dif­fer­ent ver­sions of Anan­si which ex­ist in our so­ci­ety. It is in­ter­est­ing to note that of the four, the least ex­pres­sive off stage had a re­mark­able pres­ence on stage. Christo­pher played the role of 'Wet Man Anan­si' who was very con­cerned about his swag. He boast­ed of his on­line con­tacts and that the Web should be all about him! Asia al­so made her pres­ence with her 'Dut­ty­ness Anan­si', mak­ing her com­ments on how women are viewed in to­day's so­ci­ety. Asia was quite ex­cit­ed to ex­press her thoughts on the 50 years of In­de­pen­dence that Trinidad and To­ba­go is about to cel­e­brate. "Like Piper Man Anan­si said, "we're in­de­pen­dent, but we are still trapped! It's 50 years; we could have reached fur­ther; the men­tal­i­ty of to­day's peo­ple is quite dif­fer­ent"" she stat­ed. So what ad­vice do these young­sters have to of­fer to you folks in the­atre arts? Kenya said "Take every op­por­tu­ni­ty and al­ways be con­fi­dent!" Christo­pher al­so added to nev­er judge the­atre arts by its cov­er and to re­mem­ber that prac­tice is your friend.