Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Win­ston Pe­ters in­tends to pro­vide more op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple from Ma­yaro and en­vi­rons to get in­volved and ex­press them­selves in the field of dra­ma and the per­form­ing arts. The Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ma­yaro made this pledge when the lo­cal pro­duc­tion of the satir­i­cal com­e­dy Smile Or­ange end­ed its suc­cess­ful run with a youth the­atre work­shop, which was capped off with a spec­tac­u­lar clos­ing per­for­mance at the bpTT Ma­yaro Re­source Cen­tre re­cent­ly. Min­is­ter Pe­ters was high in praise for the stag­ing of the pop­u­lar play in his home com­mu­ni­ty. "The play was great and we all en­joyed the bril­liant per­for­mances of the ac­tors. How­ev­er, I'm most pleased with the work­shop and see­ing how our young peo­ple have been ex­posed to the per­form­ing arts. "I spoke to the kids, and I know that it has giv­en them ex­pe­ri­ence and added con­fi­dence. BPTT must be com­mend­ed for their ef­fort in bring­ing Smile Or­ange to us, and I will be look­ing in­to pro­vid­ing more of these op­por­tu­ni­ties for the young peo­ple of Ma­yaro. I know that one day soon, I'll be watch­ing a play writ­ten and pro­duced by them," he said.

Writ­ten al­most four decades ago by late Ja­maican play­wright, Trevor Rhone, Smile Or­ange was re-en­er­gised by the com­bi­na­tion of Front­line The­atre Pro­duc­tions and Scar­lett Project with the ma­jor spon­sor­ship of en­er­gy com­pa­ny BP Trinidad and To­ba­go. It was an in­tense week­end of the­atre for Ma­yaro with the Smile Or­ange en­sem­ble fa­cil­i­tat­ing a work­shop on Sat­ur­day with dra­ma stu­dents from the wider Ma­yaro com­mu­ni­ty. Ron­da Fran­cis, Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty Man­ag­er, bpTT, point­ed out that the work­shop was the most sig­nif­i­cant part of the over­all Smile Or­ange ex­pe­ri­ence. "Be­fore the pro­duc­tion even be­gan, we start­ed with a two-week the­atre work­shop for young peo­ple from Rain­bow Res­cue and the Tall­Man Foun­da­tion in Port of Spain. "This week­end, it was es­pe­cial­ly grat­i­fy­ing to see Ma­yaro's bright young tal­ent get­ting turn to be ex­posed to the per­form­ing arts at the high­est lev­el. bpTT ex­pects great things from our young peo­ple, and that is why we pro­vide them with every op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­cel and ful­fil their po­ten­tial," she said.

Fa­cil­i­tat­ed by mem­bers of the Smile Or­ange crew, in­clud­ing work­shop co-or­di­na­tor and as­sis­tant di­rec­tor, Tim­mia Hearn Feld­man, and lead ac­tor Paul Pryce, the in­ten­sive course catered to young peo­ple be­tween the ages of 14 and 18 who had ex­pe­ri­ence in dra­ma. Par­tic­i­pants were giv­en in­sights in­to the fun­da­men­tals of the­atre, in­clud­ing dic­tion, lan­guage, vo­cal­i­sa­tion and char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion. Ma­yaro Sec­ondary School dra­ma teacher, Jo-Ann Clement, had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of se­lect­ing the par­tic­i­pants.

"This ex­pe­ri­ence has giv­en our young peo­ple the per­spec­tive from pro­fes­sion­als in a fun and very in­ter­ac­tive en­vi­ron­ment. They have broad­ened their un­der­stand­ing of the­atre and they are more mo­ti­vat­ed to ful­fil their po­ten­tial in terms of dra­ma and the per­form­ing arts," she said.