Ray Funk

Trinida­di­an Rhoma Spencer, based in Toron­to, is an ac­tor, di­rec­tor, pro­duc­er, di­alect coach, ra­dio broad­cast jour­nal­ist, co­me­di­an and pop­up chef! With the pan­dem­ic, she has been su­per busy and seems to on­ly add more skills and ac­tiv­i­ties.

Short­ly be­fore pan­dem­ic lock­down in 2020, she ap­peared in the play Soli­tudes, in­spired by the women in Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez’s One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude in Toron­to, then came to Trinidad for Car­ni­val dur­ing which she did two com­e­dy shows and TV com­men­tary for both the Ex­tem­po Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion and the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion.

Soli­tudes, which was the re­sult of two years of work­shop­ping, was very well re­ceived in Toron­to with plans for tour­ing in­ter­na­tion­al the­atre fes­ti­vals, but the virus shut that down. But that hasn’t stopped Rhoma and she is amazed at all the new di­rec­tions she has gone in the past year, in­clud­ing her docu-film, My Ex­e­cu­tion will be Tele­vised.

Arts grant ap­pli­ca­tions hit her in­bas­ket and she re­sponds and sud­den­ly there are more things in the works! She ap­plied to be part of Bud­dies in Bad Times The­atre Ana­logue Pride in Place Fes­ti­val, with a phys­i­cal the­atre in­stal­la­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with dancers Nickeshia Gar­rick and Jil­lia Cato.

For Con­ver­gence The­atre, she re­cent­ly cre­at­ed a mono­logue, Home Wreck, based on a se­ries of pan­dem­ic con­fes­sions of lock­down stress and de­pres­sion from the gen­er­al pub­lic. She has re­cent­ly even been a pop­up chef with her Sweet­hand De­lights, fea­tur­ing food from Trinidad and Bar­ba­dos, as a ven­dor at the Re­gent Park Cul­tur­al Bazaar in Toron­to last sum­mer.

Right now she is al­so await­ing re­lease of ma­jor pro­duc­tions she act­ed in, she has two fea­ture films and a Cana­di­an TV movie of the week, all in post-pro­duc­tion, and she can’t wait for them to drop! The first is Deep Blue, filmed in An­tigua in 2019 by Hama Films An­tigua. She stars as Ma­ma She­ba, a vil­lage ma­tri­arch em­broiled in a strug­gle with a plan for re­sort de­vel­op­ment.

As Ma­ma She­ba pro­claims in the film’s teas­er: “When did par­adise be­come mer­chan­dise?”

Next up is Jab, a short film shot in Nevis in 2018 where she ap­pears as an old jilt­ed lover who turns to the oc­cult to heap hate and dis­dain for men.

Last­ly, Scar­bor­ough is the made for tele­vi­sion film based on a nov­el by Toron­to res­i­dent, Cather­ine Her­nan­dez. She loves her role in this one!

“I am the own­er of a West­ern In­di­an restau­rant in Toron­to that re­al­ly ser­vices the com­mu­ni­ty, a hub for a di­verse pop­u­la­tion. In it, I have a fierce con­fronta­tion with a First Na­tions man.”

Rhoma Spencer grew up in To­ba­go where her fam­i­ly moved when she was an in­fant and re­turned to Tu­na­puna and lat­er Ari­ma, Trinidad, as a teenag­er. She loved the arts and got her start in play­ing in the Barataria Best Vil­lage the­atre group in 1980 for Ronald Amoroso’s first play about pan, Blood and Steel. She went on to ap­pear in Ein­tou Springer’s adap­ta­tion of CLR James’ nov­el Minty Al­ley for Caribbean The­atre Guild.

She act­ed in sev­er­al oth­er pro­duc­tions. She is best known in Trinidad as be­ing one of the two stars in Tony Hall’s Jean and Di­nah and was part of the cre­ative process in de­vel­op­ing it. It has had nu­mer­ous re­vivals in Trinidad, Cana­da and the Unit­ed States.

Spencer moved to Cana­da to con­tin­ue her the­atre ed­u­ca­tion and is a grad­u­ate of York Uni­ver­si­ty with an MFA in Di­rect­ing and has been very ac­tive in the Toron­to com­mu­ni­ty with reg­u­lar for­ays home to Trinidad for Car­ni­val.

She has act­ed and di­rect­ed in many dif­fer­ent plays and Cana­di­an tele­vi­sion, in­clud­ing four episodes of the pop­u­lar TV sit­com Da Kink in My Hair (2007-09). In 2017, Spencer di­rect­ed a play she co-wrote with Shir­lene Holmes Car­ni­val Medea for an ex­tend­ed run at the Lit­tle Carib af­ter be­ing pre­miered at Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty in At­lanta and fea­tured in 2015 Ed­in­burgh Fringe Fes­ti­val. But now there are many oth­er the­atre pieces she is work­ing on.

She got a res­i­den­cy with Alu­na The­atre to de­vel­op a play called Danse Macabre about “a Mas De­sign­er whose cos­tume is an in­vo­ca­tion/re­cu­per­a­tion of key his­tor­i­cal events in the Black Di­as­po­ra.”

She has oth­er plays in de­vel­op­ment. One of them, Lo­gin, Pass­word and Lo­gout, just got picked up for Alu­na The­atre’s Caminos Fes­ti­val in Oc­to­ber and she was re­cent­ly cast in a pro­duc­tion of The House of Bernar­da Al­ba by Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lor­ca.

Be­sides the re­cent the­atre and film ap­pear­ances, Spencer has al­so been a co­me­di­an in sev­er­al set­tings, be­ing one of the pi­o­neer­ing women in Paul Keens Dou­glas’ Talk Tent, per­formed as a rap­so artist and in re­cent years act­ed as the Artis­tic Di­rec­tor for the panora­ma fi­nals held at Carib­ana each sum­mer.

The pan­dem­ic has not been all bad.

“I tell peo­ple that COVID has been good to me. So good that it could stick around from the amount of op­por­tu­ni­ties that has come my way be­cause of the pan­dem­ic. A lot of these weren’t com­ing my way, pre-pan­dem­ic.

“As a cre­ative, there are lots of things just thrown in my lap with­out even ask­ing for it. There are lots of op­por­tu­ni­ties open to artists here in Toron­to. I ap­ply for them and am cho­sen! The pan­dem­ic has in­ten­si­fied my cre­ativ­i­ty and my writ­ing skills,” she said.