ROBERTS’ SCHOOL

Mr Arthur Reginald Roberts was not only the headmaster but the playwright, producer and director of local plays presented by his school in the 1930s at the Empire Theatre on St Vincent Street. A car park and apartments now occupy that spot.

The first play I ever saw was entitled That Hospital which Mr Roberts wrote after he was a patient at the Colonial Hospital. There was a scene with three old women and a young maid that had everybody in stitches of laughter except me.

My sister, Dolly had told me that the "lady" in the blue dress on stage was my teacher — Mr Cecil Gray and the one in the brown dress was Mr Leo Bennett. I could not laugh because the metamorphosis had me mesmerised. The next day some of the boys in Standard Two, appointed me as spokesman to ask Mr Gray if he really was the ‘lady’ on stage. His reply was something like this, "Yes. That is what acting is all about. You have to believe that you are "Aunty Maisy" or a "bad-John" or what ever role you are playing."

All the female characters were portrayed by male teachers and boys attending the school. Like Shakespeare, Mr Roberts lived and died without seeing women play the roles he had created for them. Many years later, The Strolling Players wanted to stage one of his plays. Frank Thompson actually got permission to search through cardboard boxes with miscellaneous stationery but cockroaches had devoured and regurgitated the manuscripts. Sadly, nothing of the remnants could have been salvaged.

Mr Roberts was one of those early playwrights who dared to have his characters speak in "broken English" on the stage. That was tantamount to a "mortal sin" at that time.

One day, Mr Roberts rode to the school on a new Raleigh bicycle, lifted it up the front steps, parked it on the platform and left it there to be admired by the whole school. That afternoon, as he took his departure, he was given a guard of honour send off plus a spontaneous burst of applause. He also wrote "Obeah" and "Romance Without Sanitation’ which he took to Scarborough in Tobago. Two school boy actors who went on to make contributions to theatre in writing and acting are Andrew "Sonne" Hill and Winston Gaye.

Mr Cecil Gaye became one of Trinidad’s best actors and a really first class director. His English books — Language For Living — Parts 1 to 5 are used in most secondary schools. As a poet he has published four books of poetry that have been ranked among the best by any West Indian. These masterpieces are among my prized possessions.

In Roberts’ School, there were no individual classrooms but on all the walls, throughout the wooden building were charts and diagrams made by the teachers themselves. Proverbs and adages were everywhere. "Cleanliness is next to Godliness," "Honesty is the best policy," "The devil finds work for idle hands to do." A chart with ‘stickmen’ illustrations had this little gem — "The more you slouch/The more you crouch/The weaker you will be/from many ills/That don’t need pills/Good posture keeps you free."

There was a pupil who was a habitual latecomer. His mother was sent for and after that he was always on time. Then he came late again and when the teacher asked, "Why are you late?" The boy replied, "Sir, I left home right on time but a policeman put a big sign on the road mark ‘Go Slow."