Thirty-one-year-old Kevon Brooks, a part-time actor for more than ten years, wants to win an Oscar.
He also has the less ambitious but still elusive goal of studying at the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts. He was accepted since 2011 to its three-year programme, but is still trying to raise $500,000 for fees. He wants to make acting his sole occupation.
Brooks may have gotten just a little closer to his dream as he and 24 other local actors get a chance to raise their profile locally and internationally.
They play roles in the US movie Girlfriends' Getaway, shot within one month earlier this year entirely on location in Trinidad.
The comedy premiered on the US network TV One last Saturday and ran again on Sunday. It opened to the T&T public yesterday at multiple locations across the country and will run for the next four weeks.
It stars a quartet of actresses well known in T&T for their roles in popular TV shows and movies–Essence Atkins (Smart Guy), Malinda Williams (Soul Food; Moesha), Terri J Vaughn (The Steve Harvey Show), and Garcelle Beauvais (The Jamie Foxx Show)–as friends who fall into misadventures while on vacation in Trinidad.
"It is a great opportunity for myself and for the other actors involved," said Brooks, in the audience at a press Q&A the day before the movie's red-carpet premiere at MovieTowne Port of Spain.
Brooks also had a role in the 2012 Canadian film Home Again, which was shot and screened in T&T.
In Girlfriends' Getaway he plays a drug-dealer who kidnaps Vaughn's character.
"We hope it opens the door for more international producers and directors to use Trinidad for a location. Once casting calls go out, hopefully I'm cast," he said.
Girlfriends' Getaway was directed by Roger Bobb, an assistant director on many Tyler Perry films.
Bobb spoke glowingly of the acting talent in T&T.
"I'm so ecstatic about the local talent we've been able to tap in this film," he said.
"Everybody comments about how they kind of steal the movie a little bit," he added, laughing and playfully putting up a hand in front of Atkins' face to hide her reaction.
Bobb thought about using Trinidad to shoot Girlfriends' Getaway after meeting film and television producer Lisa Wickham and Carla Foderingham, head of the T&T Film Company, at a location convention in LA last March.
Bobb's parents Marie and Edward, in the audience at the Q&A, are Guyanese. Bobb describes his father as "an honorary Trinidadian" who had come to the island for every Carnival for 20 years. Bobb had also previously visited the island.
He paid a scouting visit earlier this year and was satisfied with what he found.
Some adjustments had to be made to the script to suit the locale. A reference to basketball was changed to cricket and a doubles-eating contest was included.
"The fact that we used so many local actors, some the dialogue got changed," said Cas Sigers-Beedles, the film's writer, sharing other ways shooting in Trinidad affected the film.
"There were so many funny local colloquialisms that weren't originally in the film that a lot of the actors contributed to the project. So it feels very Trinidadian," she said.
Unusual for American films shot in the Caribbean, the majority of the cast and crew were from T&T. And some well-known T&T personalities had cameos in the film, including Destra Garcia, Daren Ganga and Olatunji Yearwood.
There were no concerns about American audiences being put off by the preponderance of Trini accents. In fact, the Americans' occasional struggle to understand Trinidadians was used for comedic effect.
"I grew up in a Caribbean household around Trinidadians. It wasn't an issue because they speak English the way I speak English–or so I thought," said Bobb. "However, what you'll see in the film is that our cast might have had some trouble understanding what they were saying, and we played it up in the film.
"It's some of the biggest jokes," he said.
Overall Atkins, the only one of the film's US actresses at the Q&A, raved about the experience of working in T&T.
"Scenery is great and accoutrements are great and aesthetics are great, but I don't have a good experience unless great people are involved," she said. "And that's how it was behind the camera, and that's how it was in front of the camera, and that's how it was everywhere we went in Trinidad.
"It was a great experience," she said.
�2 Girlfriends' Getaway will be showing for an initial run of four weeks at MovieTowne (Port-of-Spain, Chaguanas and Tobago), Cinemas 8 in Trincity and Hobosco in San Fernando.