Si­mon Lee

For­get the al­ready de­com­pos­ing Na­pa, say farewell to the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um and wel­come to the Big Black Box, 33 Mur­ray Street, Wood­brook. Port-of- Spain fi­nal­ly has its own ded­i­cat­ed ex­per­i­men­tal per­form­ing arts space and it's not a hand-me-down from a state min­istry mum­bling in­co­her­ent­ly about "ex­ca­vat­ing cul­ture" or some cor­po­rate PR ven­ture but the man­i­fest vi­sion of Rap­so War­riors 3canal. Messrs Wen­dell Man­war­ren, Roger Roberts and Stan­ton Kew­ley pre­sent­ed the in­au­gur­al per­for­mance More Love (More Life, More Liv­ing) at a venue "in the heart of the Red Light Dis­trict" old­er thes­pi­ans would re­mem­ber as the re­hearsal space of the late God­frey Sealy, play­wright and Aids ac­tivist. Man­war­ren in­voked the spir­its of both Sealy and 3Canal found­ing mem­ber John Isaacs, when wel­com­ing the first-night au­di­ence, ei­ther perched on func­tion­al black box­es or propped against the walls of a yard, one end of which is now a well-lit func­tion­al stage.

The More Love "per­for­mance ex­pe­ri­ence" de­liv­ered by The Big Love Squad and The Pap­pyshow Posse, who per­formed dra­mat­ic nar­ra­tives, danced with all the dy­namism we've come to as­so­ciate with the an­nu­al 3Canal Car­ni­val show. They sang as back-up/cho­rus to the Rap­so War­riors, func­tioned as a peo­ple's re­sponse to state pap­pyshow Eman­ci­pa­tion and In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions; crit­i­cal, cre­ative, com­pas­sion­ate, satir­i­cal so­cial com­men­tary, as we all used to know it. Mar­tin Carter's fa­mous po­et­ic in­dict­ment of po­lit­i­cal tyran­ny, This is the Dark Time my Love ("the fes­ti­val of guns, the car­ni­val of mis­ery"), was tagged ear­ly on to re­mind us that many of the is­sues faced by con­flict­ed con­tem­po­rary T&T so­ci­ety, are in­deed glob­al. The show opened with a brief skit set­ting the tenor for what fol­lowed, a head-on, in­y­our- face de­con­struc­tion of life as we know in T&T: a group of youths faced with the dilem­ma of ban­dit­ry or self-ful­fil­ment in a so­ci­ety, where the odds are in­vari­ably stacked against the stig­ma­tised denizens of such crime hot spots as Laven­tille. Bling Boy in town, all gold chains and "Waz­zup dawg" lyrics was sound­ly re­buffed by his peers be­fore 3Canal burst on­stage to dis­pel gloom and doom with the wake-up call: "Stop liv­ing the life you liv­ing." If it sounds trite ("Let me give you some more love, more light...love is in­fec­tious, it's easy to spread'), one on­ly has to re­mem­ber the Bea­t­les' an­them, or the ba­sic Bud­dhist tenet. But there's far more of the con­fronta­tion­al "punk bois" spir­it rather than the lais­sez-faire hip­py style to 3Canal (think The Clash meets Stick­man).

A young fe­male mem­ber of The Big Love Squad voiced the frus­tra­tion of "those peo­ple" from ghet­tos across the coun­try, stig­ma­tised by their ad­dress­es ("a promi­nent at­tor­ney told me he was hes­i­tant about em­ploy­ing me...was sur­prised I spoke so well...") be­fore hard­hit­ting songs I Doh Give a Damn (what peo­ple say) and This Place Have Too Much Guns, the poignant el­e­gy for a 13-year-old boy, "an­oth­er vic­tim of a sense­less killing," shot on a Mor­vant bas­ket­ball court. An­oth­er skit took us to the "mil­i­tarised" zone of Laven­tille, re­call­ing the 2011 State of Emer­gency and pos­ing a fun­da­men­tal is­sue of civ­il rights and se­cu­ri­ty our knee-jerk politi­cians have missed: "You can't be break­ing the law to en­force the law." Shift­ing from the depths of the heights above town to the Holy Mis­sion Taber­na­cle on Mur­ray Street, the au­di­ence was in­tro­duced to Pas­tor Love, aka Mar­vin Dowridge, whose cameo role stole the spot­light when­ev­er he launched in­to one of his ac­ro­bat­ic, eye­rolling, to­tal­ly over-the-top camp ser­mons like Know Your Rights ("Equal rights and jus­tice for every­one re­gard­less of race, re­li­gion, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, phys­i­cal abil­i­ty etc") or Pow­er to the Peo­ple.

The brief in­ter­mis­sion was fol­lowed by the Pap­pyshow Posse's hys­ter­i­cal skit, fea­tur­ing Ce­cil­ia Salazar as a worse-for-wear po­lit­i­cal leader and her ag­gres­sive­ly syco­phan­tic AG, pos­tur­ing pop­ulist style and bat­ting down er­rant re­porters, as they in­tro­duced con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments. This was po­lit­i­cal pi­cong par ex­cel­lence ("Stop piss­ing on the peo­ple's heads and call­ing it rain") and nar­rowed the show's fo­cus to elec­tion time and mil­i­tant songs like The Peo­ple Ain't Tak­ing That, Watch Them ("They play­ing with your mind tak­ing we for imps") and the cli­mac­tic Mock­ing Pre­tender. In the ab­sence of con­cert­ed po­lit­i­cal ca­lyp­so, More Love ad­dress­es a young gen­er­a­tion at risk, in modes they can re­late to. 3Canal, with their track record for so­cial con­scious­ness and cre­ative ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, are en­abling and em­pow­er­ing many whom the State fails to reach. As Pas­tor Love put it: "We're sav­ing lives." Both the show it­self and the Big Black Box are signs that amid our gener­ic help­less­ness and hope­less­ness, there is hope and a new gen­er­a­tion who ain't tak­ing that. Pow­er to the peo­ple and hats off to the Big Black Box.