RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca­s­ookraj@guardian.co.tt

Whether she is bring­ing a fairy tale char­ac­ter to life on stage or prepar­ing a school project, 12-year-old Char­l­ize Ra­nia Ra­goonath con­tin­ues to show de­ter­mi­na­tion, tal­ent and dis­ci­pline.

She is bal­anc­ing life as a sec­ondary school stu­dent with an in­creas­ing­ly de­mand­ing sched­ule of re­hearsals, per­for­mances and vo­cal train­ing as she con­tin­ues to build a name for her­self in South Trinidad’s the­atre com­mu­ni­ty.

The St Joseph’s Con­vent, San Fer­nan­do stu­dent has spent the past four years hon­ing her craft, ap­pear­ing in stage pro­duc­tions while pur­su­ing vo­cal and act­ing train­ing, all with the sup­port of her par­ents, Guardian Me­dia se­nior pho­tog­ra­ph­er Rishi Ra­goonath and his wife, Si­mone Awardy.

Char­l­ize said her love for the­atre be­gan af­ter at­tend­ing a pro­duc­tion of Ra­pun­zel by Cin­don Pro­duc­tions when she was eight years old.

“My par­ents used to take me to plays and mu­si­cal pro­duc­tions since I was three. When I went to my first play by Cin­don Pro­duc­tions called Ra­pun­zel, they an­nounced that Learn to Act class­es were about to be­gin. I asked my par­ents if I could go and af­ter do­ing those first class­es, I re­alised how much I en­joyed and loved act­ing,” she said.

Among the pro­duc­tions she has per­formed in, Char­l­ize said The Sev­en Voy­agers of Sin­bad re­mains her favourite be­cause she por­trayed Princess Belle from Dis­ney’s Beau­ty and the Beast.

Bal­anc­ing school­work with re­hearsals re­quires care­ful plan­ning, she said.

Dur­ing week­ends, re­hearsals oc­cu­py much of both Sat­ur­day and Sun­day af­ter­noons and evenings, while week­days are ded­i­cat­ed to home­work, study­ing and vo­cal lessons.

“Some­times it is hard to bal­ance both, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing test time, be­cause the lit­tle time I have be­fore lunch on week­ends is spent study­ing, so I don’t get much free time,” she said.

Char­l­ize cred­its the­atre with help­ing her be­come more con­fi­dent and dis­ci­plined.

“In the be­gin­ning, I learned how to be brave and re­spon­si­ble. Now that I have been do­ing it for four years, I have learned to be more con­fi­dent and cre­ative when por­tray­ing a char­ac­ter be­cause I try to un­der­stand who I am sup­posed to be and fig­ure out ways to act it out.”

She said her vo­cal and act­ing train­ing have al­so pre­pared her to deal with un­ex­pect­ed sit­u­a­tions on stage.

“I do not get scared and be­cause I do a lot of train­ing, I do not freak out if some­thing goes wrong. I just ad­just and keep go­ing.”

Char­l­ize has al­so com­pet­ed in San­Fest and the Mu­sic Fes­ti­val, where she of­ten found her­self among old­er, more ex­pe­ri­enced per­form­ers.

“I al­ways end­ed up be­ing the youngest in the cat­e­gories I en­tered, so it was in­tim­i­dat­ing. I did not ex­pect to place be­cause it is so com­pet­i­tive, but when I did, I was shocked and then so hap­py and ex­cit­ed.”

She hopes to pur­sue per­form­ing arts at uni­ver­si­ty, study­ing singing, danc­ing and act­ing, with the long-term goal of work­ing in Broad­way pro­duc­tions.

Her biggest in­spi­ra­tion is Broad­way ac­tress Kristin Chenoweth, whose per­for­mances in Wicked and Dis­ney’s De­scen­dants have in­flu­enced her ap­proach to act­ing.

For young peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in the­atre, Char­l­ize en­cour­ages them to give it a try.

“The­atre is a re­al­ly great place to be your­self and have fun while do­ing it. Do not lim­it your­self by think­ing that you can­not play a cer­tain role be­cause you will get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come any­thing your mind can cre­ate.”

Her par­ents said that while they are proud of her achieve­ments, their fo­cus re­mains on en­sur­ing she de­vel­ops in­to a well-round­ed in­di­vid­ual.

“We want her to be­come some­one who can take charge of her life and be­come a per­son who can make a dif­fer­ence in the fu­ture,” her moth­er, Awardy, said, adding that they in­tend to sup­port whichev­er ca­reer path she even­tu­al­ly choos­es.

She de­scribed Char­l­ize as ma­ture, hard­work­ing and com­pas­sion­ate, say­ing she ap­proach­es both her stud­ies and per­for­mances with com­mit­ment while al­ways mak­ing time to help oth­ers.

Ra­goonath said one of the biggest chal­lenges has been main­tain­ing a healthy bal­ance be­tween act­ing, school­work and so­cial life.

“If she is prepar­ing for a pro­duc­tion or a com­pe­ti­tion, it is easy to let all your time be fo­cused on that, but we al­ways have school­work, stud­ies or a birth­day par­ty to fac­tor in. The chal­lenge comes in de­cid­ing when and where to fit every­thing in­to the week or month.”

Over time, Ra­goonath said they have ad­just­ed their sched­ules to ac­com­mo­date Char­l­ize’s grow­ing pas­sion for the per­form­ing arts.

Week­days are de­vot­ed to work and evening vo­cal lessons, while week­ends are spent at act­ing class­es and re­hearsals.

The proud par­ents said they are an­tic­i­pat­ing many more shows ahead for their tal­ent­ed daugh­ter.