De­siree See­baran

It's wide­ly ac­knowl­edged among those who know that try­ing to make a liv­ing lo­cal­ly in the arts is fi­nan­cial sui­cide. No­bel Lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott's years at the Trinidad The­atre Work­shop were re­port­ed­ly lean, and many of our artis­tic he­roes like Beryl McBurnie, Lord Kitch­en­er, George Bai­ley and Ras Shorty I, died at the top of their pro­fes­sion­al game but with­out the fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty that should have come as a re­sult of their tal­ent. But since the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies St Au­gus­tine cam­pus (UWI STA) De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts start­ed churn­ing out scores of tal­ent­ed per­form­ing arts grad­u­ates, the dearth of a lo­cal arts in­dus­try is be­com­ing more glar­ing. Those peo­ple who earn de­grees in mu­si­cal arts, or the­atre de­sign or film pro­duc­tion may have good rea­son to ask them­selves, "Where am I go­ing to work af­ter grad­u­a­tion?" Twen­ty-five-year-old Adafih Pad­more played Tra­cy Turn­blad in a pro­duc­tion of Hair­spray, staged by Must Come See Pro­duc­tions in Ju­ly at Queens Hall. But al­though cast and crew mem­bers re­ceive a small stipend for the show, the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny on­ly does shows an­nu­al­ly. And the tal­ent­ed so­pra­no's "re­al job" is as a tem­po­rary clerk with the Po­lice Band while she fin­ish­es her de­gree in Mu­si­cal Arts at UWI. "Some­times it feels that per­form­ers are aban­doned by the pow­ers that be af­ter they've gained their de­gree in the arts," Pad­more said. "There seems to be less and less de­vel­op­ment in pro­vid­ing fur­ther ed­u­ca­tion, per­for­mance op­por­tu­ni­ties and ca­reer op­tions for us."

For the 2011 to 2012 aca­d­e­m­ic year, UWI STA had 51 stu­dents reg­is­tered for dance; 67 for film, film pro­duc­tion or film stud­ies; 92 in the­atre stud­ies and over 100 stu­dents in both the mu­si­cal and vi­su­al arts pro­grammes. If UTT has sim­i­lar stu­dent sta­tis­tics in their per­form­ing arts pro­grammes, a small but steady stream of trained artists are be­ing re­leased in­to the work world with­out an es­tab­lished in­dus­try to ab­sorb them. An­drew Seep­er­sad is the founder of the near­ly two-year-old Prosce­ni­um The­atre Com­pa­ny, which pro­duced the comedic Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors (LSH) at Queen's Hall in June this year. The few pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies that do ex­ist lo­cal­ly tend to use the same peo­ple over and over again, he said, and up-and-com­ers don't al­ways have a chance to show their skills. "LSH, we had stu­dents from UTT come and work back­stage, and in our live band. But right now, with UTT, the stu­dents don't have many pro­duc­tions to work on. So I wor­ry for stu­dents com­ing out." Michael Cher­rie, an award-win­ning lo­cal ac­tor and full-time lec­tur­er in UTT's act­ing progamme, agrees that the lo­cal arts in­dus­try is not where he would like it to be. But it's not with­out hope, ei­ther.

"I think that we can and will get es­tab­lished. But a large part of get­ting there has to be due to the work of these grad­u­ates. What se­ri­ous stu­dents of the per­form­ing arts have to re­alise is that work­ing in the per­form­ing arts is in a large part en­tre­pre­neur­ial. You have to cre­ate your own work," Cher­rie said. Many re­cent grad­u­ates are tak­ing Cher­rie's ad­vice. Inge Schlüer works at the In­ter­na­tion­al School of Port of Spain but she's al­so a suc­cess­ful free­lance mu­si­cian who mar­kets her­self well on Face­book and is in de­mand as a vi­o­lin­ist at wed­dings and cor­po­rate events. "I joined both the Na­tion­al Sin­fo­nia Or­ches­tra and St Au­gust Cham­ber Or­ches­tra six years ago. Af­ter get­ting ex­po­sure through the or­ches­tras, I would be asked to play so­lo vi­o­lin at events and my 'free­lance' ca­reer took off.," she ex­plained.

But Schlüer is al­so very con­cerned with the lack of a for­mal in­dus­try for mu­si­cians to tap in­to. A dearth of prop­er sound en­gi­neer­ing, and the lack of lo­cal ac­cess to qual­i­ty mu­sic equip­ment are some of the chal­lenges mu­si­cians face. "There are a few spots where mu­si­cians try to show­case what they do, like La Casa de Ibiza, Wood­ford Cafe and Drink Wine Bar, but there needs to be more," she said. "There should al­so be reg­u­lar in­for­ma­tion on the busi­ness of the in­dus­try avail­able. Of­ten, artists op­er­ate in an ad-hoc way with­out prop­er guid­ance. And we need some more sup­port from the pri­vate sec­tor." Seep­er­sad agreed that the in­dus­try needs cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship. Big com­mu­ni­ty the­atres in the US are usu­al­ly un­der­writ­ten by in­di­vid­ual and cor­po­rate spon­sors, they pro­vide the fi­nan­cial buffer while the pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies build an au­di­ence base. He said mu­si­cals can cost be­tween TT$350,000 to $500,000 to pro­duce and just break­ing even through tick­et sales is not guar­an­teed. "My frus­tra­tion is that big com­pa­nies will spon­sor a fete. Are you spon­sor­ing for brand­ing or are you spon­sor­ing for com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment?" Seep­er­sad asked. Gov­ern­ment sup­port al­so counts for a lot. Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Com­pa­ny (TTFC) mar­ket­ing man­ag­er Rudolph Hanamji said that since the TTFC's es­tab­lish­ment in 2006, the lo­cal film in­dus­try moved from a frag­ment­ed en­vi­ron­ment to a sys­tem­at­ic in­dus­try with process­es, rules and reg­u­la­tions to help it grow.

The TTFC pro­vides fund­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal pro­duc­tions and is in­stru­men­tal is get­ting in­ter­na­tion­al pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies to come here to film medi­um and large-scale pro­duc­tions, like the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed, Home Again, star­ring Tatyana Ali. These in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal pro­duc­tions usu­al­ly have job op­por­tu­ni­ties for film stu­dents and grad­u­ates, Hanamji said. "And what we've ob­served is that per­sons not on­ly re­main here but have been able to work abroad," he added. Lo­cal­ly trained film­mak­er Shaun Es­cayg worked on the an­i­ma­tion for the char­ac­ter Bum­ble­bee in Trans­form­ers 3: Dark of the Moon, and al­so pro­duced an ex­cel­lent short film called, Fish, which has been en­tered in in­ter­na­tion­al film fes­ti­vals. "We've al­ready re­ceived re­quests to as­sist with the place­ment of in­terns and full-fledged crew. So more op­por­tu­ni­ties will be com­ing short­ly," Hanamji said. A ca­reer in the arts should be able to sus­tain its devo­tees, Cher­rie said: help them pay the rent and bills and send their chil­dren to school. So the so­lu­tion to T&T's lack of a per­form­ing arts in­dus­try isn't to down­play the uni­ver­si­ty per­form­ing arts pro­grammes, but to cre­ate more spaces in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor grad­u­ates to fu­el a more vi­brant and set­tled in­dus­try. "There are young peo­ple here who are ready; they are start­ing to pro­duce their own work. And young peo­ple who are se­ri­ous about their tal­ent need a space to learn, hone their craft. Be­cause any­where in the world, whether or not there is an in­dus­try to ab­sorb your work, you have to be good," Cher­rie said mus­ing­ly.