Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Its rare shape and de­sign at­tract the at­ten­tion of many. Four hun­dred Chi­nese work­ers toil­ing from sun­rise to sun­set to en­sure that the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts in Port-of-Spain is com­plet­ed in time for the host­ing of the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) next month. Sur­round­ed by con­tro­ver­sy, the count­down to com­ple­tion of the acad­e­my is on. The sched­uled date for hand over to Gov­ern­ment is No­vem­ber 9, mere days be­fore the CHOGM cul­tur­al cer­e­mo­ny. The in­te­ri­or de­sign of the acad­e­my has been kept se­cret for sev­er­al months with a view to si­lenc­ing de­trac­tors when it is of­fi­cial­ly com­mis­sioned. How­ev­er, Sun­day Guardian had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to tour the premis­es last week while the Chi­nese work­ers were busy at work. The 429,093 sq ft fa­cil­i­ty com­pris­es an acad­e­my, the­atre and ho­tel. It was con­struct­ed to ac­com­mo­date 700 per­form­ers.

Work­ers were seen pol­ish­ing the floors of the four-storey build­ing while oth­ers were clean­ing mir­rors in the change and wash­rooms. Not a sin­gle per­son was seen sit­ting or emp­ty-hand­ed. They were all hard at work. Floor and wax pol­ish­ers lined the cor­ri­dors of the acad­e­my. At al­most every cor­ner of the acad­e­my a mop and a piece of cloth were seen, all in prepa­ra­tion for the gala cer­e­mo­ny planned for the open­ing of CHOGM. ?Tiles, bath­room doors, door knobs, wood and plumb­ing fix­tures were all be­ing in­stalled as the work­ers were putting on the fi­nal touch­es. Stand­ing out as a mag­nif­i­cent piece of art is the the­atre. The first of its kind in T&T, the the­atre is il­lu­mi­nat­ed by rays from 429 mul­ti coloured lights which cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $10 mil­lion. Three pro­jec­tors, es­ti­mat­ed at a cost of two mil­lion dol­lars, were seen draped across the stage.

LEFT: ?Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Michael Zhang, right, and Yu Zhang, the com­pa­ny's project di­rec­tor proud­ly view the main the­atre of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts, Port-of-Spain.

A state-of-the-art con­trol sys­tem es­ti­mat­ed at $500,000 is ex­pect­ed to func­tion with­out a glitch dur­ing per­for­mances. Fur­nished with 1,219 red plush chairs and out­fit­ted with slabs of rich pieces of ma­hogany wood, the the­atre looks sim­i­lar to what is seen in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Pa­trons will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to choose where they want to sit from among gen­er­al seat­ing, two bal­conies and five pri­vate box­es. To com­ple­ment the ex­quis­ite struc­ture is the wood­en mov­ing stage made up of five sec­tions. At the end of a per­for­mance the stage may slide hor­i­zon­tal­ly and ver­ti­cal­ly, al­low­ing the next per­for­mance to take the stage with­out any hic­cups. Im­pressed by the work of his com­pa­ny, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Michael Zhang says, "It is re­al­ly a mar­vel­lous stage. It was built es­pe­cial­ly for steel pan per­for­mances, al­low­ing the stages to slide back and forth at the end of per­for­mances. "It is al­so go­ing to work mag­nif­i­cent­ly with oth­er per­for­mances.

It is the on­ly one of its kind in T&T," Zhang boast­ed. The acad­e­my al­so in­cludes 13 class­rooms, two mul­ti func­tion­al rooms and four of­fices which may be used for con­fer­ences. Zhang said the class­rooms were built to ac­com­mo­date per­form­ers who want­ed to re­hearse their scripts. There are al­so nine large make-up rooms and change rooms as well as three prac­tice rooms, all cater­ing for the per­form­ers. Four­teen pub­lic bath­rooms are el­e­gant­ly de­signed and tiled in white, grey and black and adorned with Amer­i­can stan­dard bath­room fix­tures. "We want when peo­ple come to this acad­e­my they are very com­fort­able so we have in­stalled the high­est qual­i­ty in al­most every fix­ture," Zhang says. The acad­e­my, how­ev­er, does not con­sist of a 60-room ho­tel but, in fact, 53 su­pe­ri­or rooms which in­clude sin­gle, dou­ble oc­cu­pan­cy and mas­ter suites.

The rooms are shap­ing up to be lux­u­ri­ous. At the en­trance of the ho­tel are a lob­by and bar. En­hanc­ing both cor­ners of the ho­tel are two restau­rants–a West­ern Restau­rant and a Chi­nese Restau­rant. Each lux­u­ri­ous room is ful­ly air con­di­tioned, tiled and dec­o­rat­ed with glass etch­ings and fine fix­tures. "We want­ed this place to be first class and we are do­ing what it takes to make it that way. Per­form­ers are go­ing to pleased when they use this ho­tel. "This acad­e­my is the best in the en­tire Caribbean and it is go­ing to be ready for CHOGM. My work­ers know the im­por­tance of com­plet­ing the build­ing on sched­uled time and it will be hand­ed over to Gov­ern­ment on the due date," Zhang as­sures. Asked about main­te­nance of the acad­e­my up­on com­ple­tion, Zhang said his com­pa­ny was plan­ning to ap­ply for the job.

Mean­while, Zhang al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to point out that while his work­ers were re­spon­si­ble for the con­struc­tion of the acad­e­my, $96 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to lo­cal con­trac­tors via sub con­tracts. "I have a very good re­la­tion­ship with the lo­cal con­trac­tors and I cer­tain­ly look for­ward to do­ing more busi­ness with them when the acad­e­my is com­plet­ed," Zhang said.

Al­so ex­press­ing ex­cite­ment over the con­struc­tion of the acad­e­my was well-known opera singer John Thomas. The singer, who is list­ed to per­form at the cul­tur­al even said he was asked by Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart to vis­it the the­atre to test the acoustics.

"I am to­tal­ly im­pressed. This is to­tal­ly mind blow­ing. It is very acoustic and I am re­al­ly ex­cit­ed. I can hear my­self very clear and I am look­ing for­ward to per­form­ing here at the cul­tur­al cer­e­mo­ny...I am very ex­cit­ed."