Paula Lin­do

Trinidad The­atre Work­shop (TTW) found­ing mem­ber, ac­tress Eu­nice Al­leyne be­gan her the­atre ca­reer in high school. She told a cap­ti­vat­ed au­di­ence at the Mon­day Night The­atre Fo­rum at the TTW that while at St Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, she was drawn in­to the choral group be­cause of the qual­i­ty of her voice.

Dur­ing A-lev­els, Al­leyne joined the Bara­juan (Barataria/San Juan) Lit­er­ary and Cul­tur­al Club, where she par­tic­i­pat­ed in de­bates, choral speak­ing, as well as do­ing choral speak­ing at the Catholic Youth Or­gan­i­sa­tion. Af­ter leav­ing school, she con­tin­ued train­ing and won the Is­land­wide Prose and Verse Com­pe­ti­tion.

In ad­di­tion to work­ing at the Gov­ern­ment Broad­cast­ing Unit and the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, she worked with var­i­ous groups to ed­u­cate peo­ple about the­atre and pub­lic speak­ing. These in­clud­ed Ho­race James and Joy Ryan in a group called Three's a Crowd, which went around to com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres do­ing prose and verse and ed­u­cat­ing peo­ple about cul­ture, and Syd­ney Hill to do read­ings of Shake­speare at the pub­lic li­braries. Both ven­tures were short-lived.

Al­leyne lat­er joined the Com­pa­ny of Play­ers, where her per­fo­mance in The Rose Slip got favourable re­views from Derek Wal­cott, which in­spired her to con­tin­ue work in the the­atre. Al­leyne said her small roles in The In­sects, Drums and Colours, and Dream on Mon­key Moun­tain helped to build her in­tegri­ty as an ac­tor be­cause she moved right on to Derek Wal­cott's Re­mem­brance.

"This shows you that you have to take small steps, and this res­onat­ed with me: there are no small parts, just small ac­tors." Her first and last ef­forts as a di­rec­tor were the plays B Wordsworth and Tes­ti­mo­ny.

Fol­low­ing this, Al­leyne helped found TTW, where the mem­bers spent two years work­shop­ping and do­ing im­pro­vi­sa­tion be­fore they put on their first pro­duc­tions. The group lat­er moved to Bret­ton Hall, where "the­atre was alive and there was a lot of so­cial and in­tel­lec­tu­al con­nec­tion with the au­di­ence."

Al­leyne did a se­ries of ra­dio plays for the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, and then went away to Boston to study. When she came back she did the TV dra­ma Who the Cap Fits with Tony Hall.

"TV dra­mas are re­al train­ing pro­grammes, be­cause you have to cre­ate the di­a­logue and every­thing your­self. It re­al­ly stretched you, you just had to cre­ate."

Al­lyne act­ed in The Maids, De­par­ture in the Dark, Marie Laveau and oth­ers. She was ap­pre­cia­tive of the trav­el and work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties work­ing with Derek Wal­cott opened up. She al­so got to work with oth­er di­rec­tors and to ex­pe­ri­ence dif­fer­ent styles of di­rect­ing. Al­leyne said her most dif­fi­cult and most re­ward­ing role was as Lena in Boes­man and Lena, a South African play by Athol Fu­gard, due to the dif­fer­ences in the rhythm of the lan­guage.

Al­leyne was award­ed a life­time achieve­ment award by the Na­tion­al Dra­ma As­so­ci­a­tion in 2003. She al­so played Dr Cuffie in West­wood Park. Al­leyne co-au­thored Three Women, which won four Cacique Awards, and re­cent­ly played a Yoru­ba el­der, Ma San­drin, in Ein­tou Pearl Springer's short play Free­dom Morn­ing Come. Al­leyne al­so had a star­ring role in the film Sal­ly's Way, which won Best Fam­i­ly Film at the 2015 T&T Film Fes­ti­val.

"I rather like film," Al­leyne said. "When you're on stage, you have but­ter­flies in your stom­ach, adren­a­line is pump­ing and you have to get it right, but it's bet­ter in film, there are more takes and more time to learn lines."

She said be­ing an ac­tress, pub­lic ser­vant, wife and moth­er re­quired a lot of jug­gling and bal­anc­ing each one to fit it in­to the scheme of things. "It's a lot of work but if you're com­mit­ted, you man­age to do it. I have no re­grets."

Al­leyne said she con­stant­ly up­dates her skills as an ac­tress by go­ing to work­shops, do­ing train­ing and read­ing about act­ing be­cause there's al­ways some­thing to learn. She puts a lot of time and work in­to in­di­vid­ual roles and said there are a lot of bril­liant ac­tors in T&T, but they are in too much of a hur­ry to get on stage, and need to de­vel­op their craft. Al­leyne said the­atre was very ac­tive in T&T and there's a tremen­dous amount of tal­ent present, which needs to be har­nessed and show­cased.

"There's a place for every­body in T&T the­atre. It's very rich and di­verse al­though it could be more so. The prob­lem is mon­ey is need­ed be­cause you can't do any­thing with­out a bud­get. It doesn't have to be much, but it has to be there."

Al­leyne next ap­pears in Springer's piece Shades of I-She, which opens month end at the Big Black Box in Wood­brook.