In cel­e­bra­tion of its 75th an­niver­sary, The Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Arts-in-Ac­tion and Lord­street The­atre will present Mon­ster March, a play that ex­plores the his­to­ry of the OW­TU. It will pre­miere on June 29 at the his­toric Palms Club in San Fer­nan­do and con­tin­ue on June 30. The play was writ­ten by vet­er­an ac­tor, di­rec­tor, and play­wright Tony Hall, along with his broth­er Den­nis "Spran­galang" Hall and Er­rol Sita­hal, with mu­sic by An­dre Tanker and di­rec­tion by Arts-in-Ac­tion's Mar­vin George. It fea­tures a cast in­clud­ing Ly­lah Per­sad, Arnold Goind­han, Bren­don La­caille, Mark Not­ting­ham, Mar­cus Wal­dron, Noel Blandin and The Work­ers, a cho­rus led by Kur­tis Gross.

Orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed in 1987 to com­mem­o­rate 50 years of the his­to­ry of work­ers' strug­gle in T&T, Mon­ster March is set against the back­drop of The Fed­er­al Bar. The play presents, in graph­ic terms, the re­al­i­ties of its reg­u­lar pa­trons: Cus­toms Man, the com­fort­able pub­lic ser­vant; Miss Maraj, the helper; Un­em­ployed Man, the job-less labour­er; News, the rum-shop philoso­pher; and Mr Rag­bir, the bar own­er. The in-house ten­sions re­flect the un­easy rum­blings of the work­ers out­side led by Union Man and lo­cal work­ers' move­ments across time. It touch­es on crit­i­cal is­sues, like the mer­its of trade unions, race re­la­tions and the cit­i­zens' role in de­vel­op­ing our young na­tion.

Co-au­thor Tony Hall has a long ca­reer of doc­u­ment­ing lo­cal lives and cul­ture. He has worked with the Trinidad The­atre Work­shop and at the pi­o­neer­ing Banyan Ltd. In 1992 he co-di­rect­ed the award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary, And the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon. His re­cent ac­claimed tour-de-force, Miss Miles: the woman of the World, has played to sold-out au­di­ences for sev­er­al runs in Trinidad, while his ac­claimed Jean and Di­nah is be­ing adapt­ed in­to a fea­ture film. Hall's oth­er plays in­clude the pow­er­ful and provoca­tive Twi­light Caf&ea­cute;; and with David Rud­der, the ground break­ing ca­lyp­so mu­si­cal The Brand New Lucky Di­a­mond Horse­shoe Club. Hall's work has been cel­e­brat­ed by lo­cal au­di­ence, crit­ics and fel­low writ­ers as some of "the finest West In­di­an the­atre" (Derek Wal­cott,) a "tri­umph" (Earl Lovelace,) and "live­ly...touch­ing...pow­er­ful" (Judy Ray­mond.)

Arts-in-Ac­tion (AiA) is the pre­mier ap­plied cre­ative arts com­pa­ny in the Caribbean. As one of the out­reach pro­grammes of the Cen­tre for the Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, it has rev­o­lu­tionised the way in which the arts work. AiA spe­cialis­es in us­ing the cre­ative arts in the widest of de­vel­op­men­tal set­tings. From pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school in­ter­ven­tions to com­mu­ni­ty and cor­po­rate work­shops, AiA us­es arts based tech­niques to treat with is­sues rang­ing from change man­age­ment to HIV/Aids aware­ness to math­e­mat­ics.

• For more in­for­ma­tion about the pro­duc­tion and much more, vis­it Lord­street The­atre's Face­book page at http://www.face­book.com/lord­streetthe­atre, or call: 791-2193.