Ralph Maraj will star in the Mon­day Night The­atre Fo­rum on Jan­u­ary 18 at Trinidad The­atre Work­shop.

It is the first edi­tion for 2016 and the third in an on­go­ing se­ries which start­ed last No­vem­ber, a re­lease said.

Ac­tor, play­wright, di­rec­tor, teacher and broad­cast­er, Maraj is al­so a politi­cian. He served as Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs un­der a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion; Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy un­der a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion; and, was a found­ing mem­ber of Na­tion­al Team Uni­ty be­fore re­turn­ing to the PNM to work as a speech writer for PM Patrick Man­ning. Pri­or to en­ter­ing pol­i­tics in 1991, Maraj worked as a teacher at Na­pari­ma Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do. He al­so at­tend­ed the school.

Maraj has writ­ten sev­er­al plays, the most suc­cess­ful be­ing Cyn­thia Sweet­ness. He al­so starred in the crit­i­cal­ly ac­claimed movie Bim, de­scribed by Bruce Padding­ton in Caribbean Beat Mag­a­zine as "one of the most im­por­tant films to be pro­duced in T&T."

Mon­day Night The­atre Fo­rum is host­ed by Tony Hall and Ray­mond Choo Kong and is pre­sent­ed by Play­wrights Work­shop Trin­ba­go, Ray­mond Choo Kong Pro­duc­tions and Trin­i­ty-in-Trinidad Glob­al Learn­ing Site in as­so­ci­a­tion with Trinidad The­atre Work­shop (TTW) and Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um.

This pro­duc­tion is a new se­ries for open and frank dis­cus­sions with renowned the­atre artists, some of whom have achieved very high ac­claim at home and abroad. In the fo­rum our many amaz­ing the­atre artists give some in­di­ca­tions as to how they ap­proach the cre­ative process and how they over­come the many ob­sta­cles that life of­ten throws at all of us. Our en­coun­ters with them, their work and play, make a great deal of dif­fer­ence to our lives and in the fo­rum we learn more of the sig­nif­i­cance of their pres­ence among us and get an inkling as to the val­ue of be­ing in­volved in the­atre.

Episode One of the fo­rum opened at TTW on No­vem­ber 30, 2015 with the ven­er­a­ble and ever­green Alvert Laveau. He re­flect­ed on his long and event­ful life of over­com­ing some of the most in­cred­i­ble ob­sta­cles. Be­gin­ning in Point-a-Pierre, Laveau mapped his colour­ful the­atri­cal jour­ney then tak­ing his au­di­ence to the wilds of an op­ti­mistic time in Port-of-Spain, cir­ca the 1950's, and then on to trou­ble-shoot­ing man­age­ment with Lever Broth­ers in Kin­shasa, Con­go, and Cana­da.

Laveau sub­se­quent­ly worked in the the­atre with dance icon Joyce Kir­ton and with No­bel Lau­re­ate in Lit­er­a­ture Derek Wal­cott which even­tu­al­ly got him in­to the thick of Joe Papp's main­stream pro­fes­sion­al the­atre in New York in the late six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties and lots more.

Episode Two of the fo­rum fea­tured Nik­ki Cros­by on De­cem­ber 14, 2015. Cros­by, a co­me­di­an, ac­tress and broad­cast­er, shared her sto­ry, first hail­ing from her child­hood in St James, to at­tend­ing uni­ver­si­ty in Cana­da, then to The Apol­lo The­atre in New York. She al­so ex­pound­ed on the va­garies of sur­viv­ing in a ca­lyp­so tent in Port-of-Spain, com­e­dy stages all over the Caribbean and North Amer­i­ca, the the­atre stages around T&T, to work, and skills train­ing, in Los An­ge­les and, of course, the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tions.

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Mon­day Night The­atre Fo­rum takes place at the TTW, cor­ner Jern­ing­ham Av­enue and Nor­folk Street, Bel­mont from 7pm.

For more in­for­ma­tion about the event and the TTW's ac­tiv­i­ties, vis­it the Face­book page: Trinidad The­atre Work­shop.