Carnival Medea bacchanal opens at Little Carib

Wong Sang, who passed away on January 14, was the original co-ordinator of the competition which provided training in drama, acting and improvisation, and dance.

Director of the production Rhoma Spencer, who is a Best Village Alumni attached to the Barataria Community Council from 1980 to 1999, also benefited from that training.

Spencer said Wong Sang single-handedly mobilised the villages across Trinidad and Tobago to come together in the field of the performing arts, horticulture and the culinary arts.

It is for all these reasons Spencer said that she opened up Carnival Medea’s preview performance to Best Village practitioners and community groups. In a media release Spencer said she hopes that practitioners will see how “one can take and use original text and adapt it to some of the characteristics of what we know as best village, which is music, dance and drama, and how all this is incorporated in the staging of a production”.

Christopher Sheppard who is the choreographer of the production is also a Best Village Alumni, having worked with the Lower Morvant Best Village Group, and today still works as a tutor.

Carnival Medea – a bacchanal is a production of Lordstreet Theatre Company and is written by Dr Shirlene Holmes of Georgia State University and Spencer.

It retells the classic Greek tragedy of Medea and Jason using TT ’s traditional mas characters.

The Grenadian Medea, a Baby Doll, flees Carriacou with Jason, a Tobagonian stick fighter, to live in Trinidad.

After some years of marriage, he forsakes her to marry a younger woman. Distraught, she is determined to wreak havoc on the new bride and spite Jason where it hurts the most - by denying him access to his two sons. The production is set in TT circa 1950s when the Traditional Mas characters were at their zenith of existence.

Carnival Medea - a bacchanal will run up to Sunday, February 16 to 19 and March 2 to 5 at the Little Carib Theatre.

For mor info: www.carnivalmedea.wordpress.com, find them on on Facebook at “Carnival Medea - a bacchanal”.