Month: August 2018

The word for the night was “heat.” With that prompt, spoken word artists delivered poems about love, sex, gangs, street food, public transport and even a trip to the barbershop.

Sipping beer and rum, the fashionable 100-strong crowd in this open-air performance space just off Ariapita Avenue, the bustling heart of Trinidad’s capital, snapped, clapped and cheered on the verbal dexterity.

The monthly slam poetry event is one of several cultural offerings that have emerged in recent years to liven up the slack period between the annual Carnival celebrations that flood Port of Spain’s streets with costumed revelers.

Trinidad and Tobago’s cultural ecosystem still revolves around Carnival, hooked to Ash Wednesday in February or March.

But arts advocates, creative entrepreneurs and government officials are seeking ways to stimulate a year-round scene that could build an economic alternative for a country otherwise dependent on oil and natural gas.

“I see the creative sector as being key in diversifying our national economy,” said Calvin Bijou, chairman of state-owned cultural promotion enterprise CreativeTT.

Besides rich oil and gas reserves, the twin-island Caribbean country has a wealth of cultural talent.

It is the birthplace of steel pan, widely believed to be the only non-electric, acoustic instrument invented in the 20th century, and the origin of calypso.

Those musical traditions blend with folk crafts like wire-bending and costume design in Trinidad’s world-famous Carnival. Since 2014, it has brought an annual average of 36,000 visitors to the island, who spend some TTD 324 million ($48 million).

But spreading culturally driven economic activity throughout the year is a tough task, and has sparked debate over whether a small island state should focus on audiences at home or abroad.

Backyard Theatre

The spoken word event, “True Talk No Lie,” began in 2013 to capitalize on the Carnival off-season.

It runs from March through November, when the cultural calendar heats up again, with parties showcasing the latest soca hits ahead of the next Carnival.

Poets hit the stage at The Big Black Box, a re-purposed backyard in the former residence of a respected playwright.

Multimedia production outfit 3canal renovated the space in 2014 as a simple “black box” theater with a mango tree soaring through the roof.

In the off-season, the venue hosts weekly live shows and rehearsals for annual productions.

It has also become an incubator for taking Trinidadian arts abroad. Two of 3canal’s rising stars toured Pride and carnival events in Britain and the Netherlands this summer, and ensemble members will perform at the National Theatre of Scotland in November.

In the run-up to Carnival, there are nightly rehearsals for 3canal’s annual show, culminating in Friday night “backyard jams” where spectators can get a taste of the work in progress.

Inside the restored gingerbread house, 3canal maintains a recording studio, office and merchandise store. Having its own infrastructure has allowed the ensemble to escape the constraints of Trinidad’s seasonal cultural scene.

“The convenience of having your own base out of which to explore, express and experiment can’t be beat,” 3canal’s artistic director Wendell Manwarren told the Thomson Reuters Foundation as dancers rehearsed in the courtyard.

“With our new album, we could luxuriate and take our time – as opposed to that Carnival pressure cooker.”

The Big Black Box has joined a cluster of historic residences converted for cultural use within a few blocks of each other in the Woodbrook neighborhood.

A decade ago, a trio of creatives established an artist residency program called Alice Yard. In 2011, Medulla Art Gallery opened to showcase contemporary Caribbean art, while older establishments like the Little Carib Theatre, built in 1947, round out the scene.

Carnival remains the center of gravity for some activities like the #1000mokos project in Alice Yard, which teaches a new generation of stilt walkers – moko jumbies in Carnival parlance.

Visual art is less in thrall to the Carnival rhythm, finding a larger audience through the quiet season. In May, a show opening and talk by an up-and-coming painter packed out the subterranean Medulla gallery.

Global or Local?

But as Trinidad’s cultural scene grows, it faces a key question: should it prioritize local audiences or export abroad?

For Rubadiri Victor, president of the Artists’ Coalition of Trinidad and Tobago and a former advisor to the arts minister, the answer lies overseas.

When in government from 2013-2014, he fought unsuccessfully to expand the mission of Pan Trinbago, the world body for steel pan set up by Trinidad, to “make pan and rhythm sections the festival music of Planet Earth.”

He wanted the country’s best steel pan bands playing the world’s top festivals, including the dozens of Caribbean-style carnivals in cities globally, which he estimates generate some TTD 15 billion ($2.23 billion) in revenues per year.

He pointed to examples of Trinidadian cultural success abroad – from several Olympic opening ceremonies choreographed by Carnival artist Peter Minshall in the 1990s and early 2000s, to the popular steel pan band that accompanied fans to Germany for Trinidad’s first-ever World Cup appearance in 2006.

But exporting Trinidadian culture requires public funding and support, Victor noted. “If you don’t have those enablers, it’s just difficult,” he said.

3canal’s Manwarren is more interested in local audiences.

“We tend to focus too much on outside validation,” he said. “We need to break through to ourselves.”

The government, meanwhile, is trying to straddle both lines.

It runs youth programs to teach steel pan, maintains a national artist registry, and coordinates mentorship by master artists – including Manwarren, who teaches live show production.

It hopes to offer funding for artists to showcase their skills abroad, but lacks a national cultural policy that would streamline such opportunities, though public consultations are underway to develop one.

“The cultural has to be seen as a political tool and priority, alongside energy, trade and manufacturing,” said Ministry of Arts official Marlon De Bique.

($1 = 6.7070 Trinidad & Tobago dollars)
…

An auction of Disneyland theme park vehicles, props and artifacts that turned into a Los Angeles attraction in its own right raised more than $8.3 million, organizers said Monday.

An original Dumbo the Flying Elephant ride car sold for $483,000 — more than four times the pre-sale estimate — while magician David Copperfield nabbed a neon letter D from the Disneyland hotel for $86,250, auctioneers Van Eaton Galleries said.

The 900-item collection was so vast that organizers and collector Richard Kraft staged a “That’s From Disneyland” public exhibit for the month of August in a former sporting goods store in suburban Los Angeles that was visited by tens of thousands of people. One couple even got married there.

Kraft, a Hollywood agent, began collecting 25 years ago spurred by nostalgia for his visits with his late brother to Disneyland in southern California. He kept many of the items, including the Dumbo car, in his own home.

“When I finally decided to let it go it became much more about throwing a grand Bon Voyage party to those magical artifacts than about making projections about their worth,” Kraft said in a statement after the two-day sale at the weekend.

“I’m still in a state of shock that Dumbo, Jose the talking parrot and trash cans from Disneyland could make me feel as if I won the lottery,” he added.

Jose, an animatronic bird from the Tiki Room, sold for $425,000 and the auction shattered several records for Disneyland posters and theme park signs. A Skyway gondola original vehicle from the 1950s, which sold for $621,000, set a new auction record for a Disneyland ride, Van Eaton Galleries said.

Kraft said he will donate a portion of the proceeds to two organizations benefiting children who, like his 4-year-old daughter Daisy, suffer from the rare genetic disorder Coffin-Siris Syndrome, and other special needs.
…

The American Latino Media Arts Awards, or ALMAs, will be back this fall after a three-year hiatus in time for the 50th anniversary of UnidosUS, previously known as National Council of La Raza. 

Fuse Media has entered into a multi-year agreement to become the exclusive multiplatform media home of the ALMAs, which has had Jennifer Lopez and Eva Longoria among its hosts. 

Organizers said Monday they will present a re-envisioned show celebrating Latino heritage and leading entertainment and media personalities through an engaging, inclusive format, with more details and a specific date to be announced.

“We are proud to have the ALMA Awards back as part of our organization’s 50th anniversary, and to host the first ALMAs under our new name,” said Janet Murguia, UnidosUS President and CEO. “Now more than ever, Latinos must reclaim the narrative of our place in U.S. society, and as always, ALMAs is an opportunity to recognize and celebrate everything our community contributes to American culture.”

UnidosUS is the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization. In 1995 it created the ALMA Awards as a way to promote fair, accurate, and balanced portrayals of Latinos in the entertainment industry. The ceremony, previously aired by Fox, ABC and NBC, was canceled in 2015.

“Fuse Media (and its predecessor SiTV), since day one, has been committed to building a unique entertainment platform to lift the voices of Latinos and other underserved communities and in so doing, celebrate our diverse, multicultural nation. I cannot think of a better way, especially today, to embrace this mission than by partnering with UnidosUS to reimagine the ALMA Awards,” Fuse Media CEO Michael Schwimmer said.  

The ALMAs 2018 will be produced by Done + Dusted, which were the organizers of Stand Up To Cancer and the iHeartRadio Music Awards as well as co-producers of the 2018 Emmy Awards.

 
…

Playwright Neil Simon, a master of comedy whose laugh-filled hits such as “The Odd Couple,” “Barefoot in the Park” and his “Brighton Beach” trilogy dominated Broadway for decades, has died. He was 91.

Simon died early Sunday of complications from pneumonia in New York, said Bill Evans, his longtime friend and the Shubert Organization director of media relations.

In the second half of the 20th century, Simon was the American theater’s most successful and prolific playwrights, often chronicling middle class issues and fears.

Starting with “Come Blow Your Horn” in 1961 and continuing into the next century, he rarely stopped working on a new play or musical.

The theater world mourned his death, with actor Josh Gad calling Simon “one of the primary influences on my life and career.” Playwright Kristoffer Diaz said simply: “This hurts.”

Simon’s stage successes included “The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” “Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” “The Sunshine Boys,” “Plaza Suite,” “Chapter Two,” “Sweet Charity” and “Promises, Promises,” but there were other plays and musicals, too, more than 30 in all. Many of his plays were adapted into movies and one, “The Odd Couple,” even became a popular television series.

For seven months in 1967, he had four productions running at the same time on Broadway: “Barefoot in the Park”; “The Odd Couple”; “Sweet Charity”; and “The Star-Spangled Girl.”

Simon was the recipient of four Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, the Kennedy Center honors (1995), four Writers Guild of America Awards, an American Comedy Awards Lifetime Achievement honor and, in 1983, he even had a Broadway theater named after him when the Alvin was rechristened the Neil Simon Theatre.

In 2006, he won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which honors work that draws from the American experience. The previous year had seen a popular revival of “The Odd Couple,” reuniting Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick after their enormous success in “The Producers” several years earlier.

Simon received his first Tony Award in 1965 as best author, a category now discontinued, for “The Odd Couple,” although the comedy lost the best-play prize to Frank D. Gilroy’s “The Subject Was Roses.” He won a best-play Tony 20 years later for “Biloxi Blues.” In 1991, “Lost in Yonkers” received both the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. And there was a special achievement Tony, too, in 1975.

Simon’s own life figured most prominently in what became known as his “Brighton Beach” trilogy: “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” “Biloxi Blues” and “Broadway Bound”, which many consider his finest works . In them, Simon’s alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome, makes his way from childhood to the U.S. Army to finally, on the verge of adulthood, a budding career as a writer.

Simon was born Marvin Neil Simon in New York and was raised in the Bronx and Washington Heights. He was a Depression-era child, his father, Irving, a garment-industry salesman. He was raised mostly by his strong-willed mother, Mamie, and mentored by his older brother, Danny, who nicknamed his younger sibling, Doc.

Simon attended New York University and the University of Colorado. After serving in the military in 1945-46, he began writing with his brother for radio in 1948 and then, for television, a period in their lives chronicled in Simon’s 1993 play, “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.”

 
…

The metalcore band We Came as Romans says vocalist Kyle Pavone has died at 28.

The Troy, Michigan, group tweeted about the death Saturday, saying: “Kyle’s tragic loss came too early in his life and those of his bandmates. All are devastated by his passing.” The death was confirmed by a band publicist, Amy Sciarretto. No further details about the cause were released.

A group of friends founded the band under another name in 2005. Pavone joined in 2008. The group’s 2013 album,”Tracing Back Roots” hit No. 8 on the Billboard 200 album chart and No. 1 on Billboard’s independent album chart.

A week ago, Pavone tweeted a line from the band’s song “Promise Me”: “Will i be remembered or will i be lost in loving eyes.”
…

Musician Jamey Turner chose an unconventional career path by becoming a glass harpist. He plays music with glasses filled with water. He uses his fingertips to rub the rim of the glasses to create a range of musical tones. VOA’s Deborah Block watched Turner play the glass harp in Alexandria, Virginia, where people seemed to be awestruck by the sounds he created.
…