He­len Shair-Singh

Car­o­line Tay­lor, 31, is a Per­for­mance Stud­ies schol­ar, ac­tor, singer and As­sis­tant Artis­tic Di­rec­tor of the award-win­ning Mar­i­onettes Chorale. She al­so holds a 'day job': On­line Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er at pub­lish­ing house Me­dia and Ed­i­to­r­i­al Projects (MEP) Ltd.She knows that many peo­ple might very well dis­miss all of that with a shrug, and she can un­der­stand why. Her moth­er is Gret­ta Tay­lor, high­ly ac­claimed Artis­tic & Mu­si­cal Di­rec­tor of the Mar­i­onettes, and her fa­ther is Je­re­my Tay­lor, British-born au­thor and jour­nal­ist (he was the BBC's on­ly source of in­for­ma­tion dur­ing the bloody in­sur­rec­tion of 1990) and co-founder of MEP. The oth­er co-founder in the busi­ness is her beloved god­moth­er, Joanne Mendes, who al­so hap­pens to be a found­ing mem­ber of the Mar­i­onettes.

To the on­look­er it would cer­tain­ly seem like she was born with the fig­u­ra­tive 'gold­en spoon', and sim­ply walked the path al­ready laid out for her by oth­ers.She her­self ques­tioned her choic­es many times but even­tu­al­ly could not ig­nore the fact that she was in­deed be­ing drawn there, of her own ac­cord. Per­haps it is the very 'ob­vi­ous­ness' of it that al­so brought an ob­sti­nate de­ter­mi­na­tion that she would be do­ing it her own way. She was blessed with op­por­tu­ni­ty, yes, and in­spi­ra­tion for sure, but her path would be forged by her, not by virtue of her birth or cir­cum­stances.She earned her­self a place at Williams Col­lege in Mass­a­chu­setts to pur­sue Per­for­mance Stud­ies, a com­bi­na­tion of dra­ma, mu­sic, dance and an­thro­pol­o­gy. When she first ar­rived, the stu­dents were told that if every sin­gle no­tion they'd ever had about 'per­for­mance art' wasn't turned on its head by the end of it all, then they had wast­ed their time there. Her time wasn't wast­ed there. By the time she left Williams, Car­o­line knew with­out a doubt that she had made the right choice for her life, no mat­ter how it came about.

Her 'art', go­ing be­yond just great tal­ent, be­came the voice that spoke of every­thing she be­lieves in and the medi­um by which she will achieve her pur­pose, which she says is to sim­ply 'bring light'. It seems she has al­ways known it... ac­cord­ing to her moth­er, the first word she ever spoke was "light", and her first pro­duc­tion re­flect­ed it too. It was called 'Pack Light', a satir­i­cal one-woman play that took a dig at the stereo­typ­i­cal treat­ment of 'less-than-white' peo­ple that she en­coun­tered first-hand in her trav­els, and which she wrote, pro­duced and per­formed.She has since added sev­er­al crit­i­cal achieve­ments to her re­sume, in­clud­ing sev­er­al schol­ar­ships and fel­low­ships. She's al­so the first Trinida­di­an to have tak­en part in the Fringe Fes­ti­val in NY."Pack Light', "Medea" (USA, 2002), "Sex, Lies & Mon­ey" (Trinidad, 2009) and most re­cent­ly "Lot­to Mad­ness" are all high­points in her stage ca­reer, as was meet­ing and work­ing with El­la An­dall. These all rep­re­sent huge break­throughs in her evo­lu­tion as an ac­tor, writer and pro­duc­er. She will ap­pear on film next, in the se­quel to 'A Sto­ry About Wendy', a part that was specif­i­cal­ly writ­ten with her in mind by writer/pro­duc­er/di­rec­tor Sean Hodgkin­son.

Her im­me­di­ate goal is the suc­cess­ful stag­ing of "Land­marks", the Mar­i­onettes' cel­e­bra­tion of 50 years of mag­nif­i­cent per­for­mances. She takes her role in the chorale very se­ri­ous­ly, keen­ly aware of the spe­cial lega­cy she car­ries and tak­ing im­mense pride in it.Found­ed in 1963 by Jo­ce­lyn Pierre and June Williams-Thorne to com­pete in the 1964 Mu­sic Fes­ti­val, the Mar­i­onettes were the first choir formed in the new­ly in­de­pen­dent re­pub­lic. They con­tin­ued to com­pete in­ter­mit­tent­ly, win­ning the ti­tle of Most Out­stand­ing Choir every time, un­til they re­tired un­de­feat­ed in 1980. With bpTT as their loy­al spon­sor since 1972, they went on to win ma­jor prizes com­pet­ing against some of the best choirs in the world. They were the first choir to blend voic­es with steel when they per­formed with the PanAm North Stars steel or­ches­tra. Car­o­line is a found­ing mem­ber of the Youth Chorale and is now the youngest ever mem­ber of the Se­nior Choir.

Al­though very much in­volved in 'giv­ing back' to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty from in­cep­tion, the Mar­i­onettes don't as yet have a home of their own. They are ac­tive­ly work­ing to change that, and Car­o­line is very pas­sion­ate about see­ing that through to ful­fill­ment. For most of the last 45 years, they have re­hearsed at All Saints' Church but now they aim to build a mul­ti-arts fa­cil­i­ty to sup­port not just their own fu­ture in the land­scape of the per­form­ing arts in T&T but oth­ers as well, in­clud­ing the Mar­i­onettes Arts Out­reach Pi­lot Pro­gramme which will pro­vide work­shops, schol­ar­ships and men­tor­ship schemes. Car­o­line calls it "their com­mu­ni­ty of light & love".

As the reins of lead­er­ship be­gin to be hand­ed over to a new gen­er­a­tion, Car­o­line is � by her own ef­forts - in the run­ning for the role of Artis­tic Di­rec­tor, and primed to en­sure that she car­ries on the lega­cy in a way that ho­n­ours the high stan­dards al­ready set by those that went be­fore her.She says that there have been times when she's been re­al­ly ter­ri­fied that she would fail, and times when she knew there were peo­ple who want­ed to see her fail - think­ing that she got things too eas­i­ly � but all that mat­ters is that she knows she has worked hard to get where she is, and earned it with her own 'blood, sweat and tears'. She worked the two jobs to pay the bills while at school and dur­ing her time in NY & Lon­don, and works about six now to pay the mort­gage on the home she just re­cent­ly pur­chased (a def­i­nite 'fix­er-up­per' but, as she says with a broad smile, "ALL MINE!").

Her dreams as a kid, the ones she once ques­tioned as be­ing 'too ob­vi­ous', have blos­somed in­to a very ful­fill­ing re­al­i­ty al­ready, but she still has a long way to go be­fore she be­lieves her life pur­pose is achieved. As she start­ed with 'Pack Light', she wants to con­tin­ue to chal­lenge stereo­types and sta­tus qu­os, and give peo­ple cause to ques­tion their be­liefs, and to have her work make an im­pact be­yond her im­me­di­ate sphere and life­time. And, hope­ful­ly, get to tell a great sto­ry on stage at Lon­don's Na­tion­al The­atre.

Land­marks runs from Ju­ly 12 -14 at Queen's Hall