Car­ol Quash

When Ozzie Stew­art en­tered the world of dance at age six, lit­tle did she know it would be a por­tal lead­ing to one cre­ative ad­ven­ture af­ter an­oth­er.

For over 40 years, the T&T-born dancer, ac­tress, au­thor and fash­ion maven has strad­dled dif­fer­ent as­pects of the cre­ative in­dus­try, re­sult­ing in quite an in­trigu­ing life ex­pe­ri­ence, and cre­at­ing a de­sire to give back, us­ing the same el­e­ments that have sus­tained her for decades.

Stew­art launched her non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion, Be­yond the Call (BTC) 24-7 in 2023, through which she rais­es funds to sup­port or­gan­i­sa­tions that are do­ing the heavy lift­ing in pro­mot­ing heal­ing to vic­tims of abuse, ad­dic­tion, traf­fick­ing, home­less­ness, as well as those that as­sist with an­i­mal wel­fare and cli­mate change is­sues. BTC is the phil­an­thropic arm of her pod­cast, On the Call with Ozzie, which she start­ed in 2019 as a way of reach­ing out to peo­ple and al­low­ing them to have se­ri­ous dis­cus­sions about their own life is­sues.

“Car­ol La Chapelle was like my main men­tor, even though I did some work with No­ble Dou­glas,” Stew­art re­called. She al­so stud­ied un­der As­tor John­son, No­bel lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott and Amer­i­can com­pos­er and pi­anist Gault Mc­Der­mott, who wrote the mu­si­cal scores for the Broad­way mu­si­cal Hair.

“In 1976 I got a note from a friend to au­di­tion for Alvin Ai­ley in New York. I got a schol­ar­ship. And be­cause my back­ground was bal­let as well, I au­di­tioned at Jof­frey Bal­let School, and got the schol­ar­ship there,” she told WE.

Still, that wasn’t enough for the young dancer for whom move­ment was life at the time.

“Alvin Ai­ley’s school was a cou­ple of blocks around the cor­ner from Martha Gra­ham Dance Com­pa­ny. And I want­ed to study with her, so I went and I did an au­di­tion for a schol­ar­ship and got it,” she said with a laugh.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, her dance era came to a halt when the same friend who had en­cour­aged her to au­di­tion for Alvin Ai­ley got in­to a se­ri­ous bus ac­ci­dent, and she de­cid­ed to take time to help care for him. Her cre­ative spir­it, though, re­mained ac­tive and led her in an­oth­er di­rec­tion – the world of fash­ion, which she en­tered as a re­cep­tion­ist for fash­ion sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive and show­room own­er There­sa Matthew.

“She was, at the time, con­sid­ered the $7 mil­lion woman. And she taught me every­thing.”

So much so that Stew­art went on to be­come the first black woman to open her own show­room in the heart of Times Square, at 42nd and Broad­way.

“When I start­ed work­ing for my­self, af­ter I learned the trade, I formed my own show­room…It was a won­der­ful time, over 13 years in that in­dus­try, and I loved every sin­gle sec­ond of it…I al­ways trav­elled with my head up, de­mand­ing the re­spect that is need­ed be­cause that in­dus­try could kill a woman.”

But as she ex­it­ed the fash­ion world, she dared to ven­ture in­to an­oth­er male-dom­i­nat­ed in­dus­try, al­beit she claimed she was “ tricked” in­to it by a friend. She had ca­su­al­ly ac­cept­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to go to a club, un­aware that it was a cast­ing call.

“The cast­ing di­rec­tor said to me, ‘What you don’t know is that be­cause you would not come see me, I had her bring you to my cast par­ty…I have a role for you, and af­ter look­ing at you, I want you to read some­thing right now,’ and he pulled out a script,” and a whole new life opened up.

Among the roles she’s had were on the Day­dream Be­liev­er episode of Law and Or­der: Spe­cial Vic­tims Unit, the Man­i­fest se­ries, Born Again Re­ject, Last Call, and Chica­go Med. She has al­so ap­peared in sev­er­al com­mer­cials. Af­ter a ful­fill­ing act­ing ca­reer, she be­gan wean­ing her­self off it, but not to­tal­ly.

“I still do some act­ing,” she mused.

In 2019, she had a call­ing that would lead her to the next phase of her life. Hav­ing gone through some dif­fi­cult times with her mom, who died in 2016, fol­lowed by a med­ical is­sue with her son, Stew­art her­self ex­pe­ri­enced some health chal­lenges. On the way home from see­ing a doc­tor, she said, she had a thought that stuck with her – how would you let the peo­ple who have sup­port­ed you through life know that you re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate them?

“The idea that I had to call some­body who I ap­pre­ci­ate, ask them if I could come spend some time with them, and go to meet them, with a cam­era. I would sit with them and have them speak in­to the cam­era about their chal­lenges, about their lives, about their hopes, their dreams, their dis­ap­point­ments; things that peo­ple could learn from.”

And it was from there that her pod­cast jour­ney be­gan. But when the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic ground al­most every­thing to a halt, Stew­art de­lib­er­at­ed on how she could con­tin­ue the work. She suc­cess­ful­ly piv­ot­ed, host­ing vir­tu­al shows.

“I start­ed call­ing peo­ple and say­ing, ‘Lis­ten, I have this idea. I know things are hap­pen­ing around us, but let’s reach out. Let me reach out to you and you reach out to me and let’s have a con­ver­sa­tion. And one per­son, then an­oth­er, then an­oth­er did. Those con­ver­sa­tions helped me through too be­cause by the end of 2020, I had lost 25 peo­ple to COVID.”

In 2023, she was en­cour­aged to go back to do­ing video pod­casts and ex­tend­ed the scope of the con­ver­sa­tions. Then or­gan­i­cal­ly, she ex­plained, the pod­cast was or­gan­ised in­to seg­ments, with one be­ing called Tri­ni Cor­ner dur­ing which she spoke to Trin­bag­o­ni­ans liv­ing out­side of T&T whose ca­reers and lives are im­pact­ing the coun­try.

“Last year, we trav­elled to four coun­tries in three weeks get­ting footage need­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent; try­ing to find Trinida­di­ans liv­ing in oth­er coun­tries who are do­ing great things. Then I re­alised I need­ed to open it up to the en­tire West In­di­an basin. And so I cre­at­ed a seg­ment called W.I.N.E - West In­di­an Net­work Ex­pe­ri­ence.”

Her first guest was Bar­ba­dos’ Sir George Al­leyne, for­mer di­rec­tor of the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion and Chan­cel­lor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

“He was he was thrilled, at 94 years old, to speak with me.”

Among her oth­er guests were for­mer UN spe­cial en­voy and Cari­com deputy sec­re­tary gen­er­al Dr John Ed­ward Green from Guyana, and Alan Sher­man, promi­nent labour or­gan­is­er and com­mu­ni­ty leader from St Vin­cent.

“But be­cause I’m talk­ing to peo­ple about the hard is­sues, I need to give peo­ple a place to go; some sort of so­lu­tions. So it’s a lot more ex­pen­sive, and I cre­at­ed BTC,” the non-prof­it and the call-to-ac­tion arm.

BTC host­ed a fundrais­er last year at TD Bank in New York, and Stew­art said she de­lib­er­ate­ly chose to use spe­cif­ic el­e­ments as a form of heal­ing.

“Through sto­ry­telling, cul­ture, art, mu­sic, and com­mu­ni­ty, I feel sight, sound, smell, taste and touch helps to heal bet­ter, faster, and I’m look­ing for heal­ing to the core.”

The New York-based Amen to Sweet SPOTS au­thor said on Sep­tem­ber 24, the sec­ond in­stal­ment of the fundrais­ing event, Heal & Rise: Youth & Women’s Men­tal Health, will be held at the same venue, but this time will be simul­cast at watch par­ties in Trinidad and Toron­to, Cana­da.

“These are sto­ries of so many who are strug­gling be­hind smiles, be­hind ca­reers, be­hind closed doors. No one should have to nav­i­gate those mo­ments alone. Some­times heal­ing be­gins when some­one sim­ply lis­tens.”