Tony Hall & Lordstreet Theatre Company 's Interests
General
World Theatre and Cinema
JPTP Part 1 [Tony talks about his early years in theatre training, cut with the participants taking part in the Jouvay Popular Theatre Process - learning how to use the 'bois'. Leeds, UK 2006.]
JPTP Part 2 [Camille Quamina, Marvin George and Tony Hall talking about social development in the Caribbean through mas. Leeds, UK 2006.]
JPTP Part 3 [Kuljit Bhamra and Colin Prescod at Tony Hall's Staging Mas Workshop and Seminar. Leeds, UK 2006.]
JPTP Part 4 [Ayo Jones, dancer and movement director, talking about her experience in the Jouvay Process Workshop - JPTP and her character, Baby Doll. Leeds, UK 2006.]
July 30th: A Reading & August 3rd: A Jouvay Process Talk and Panel Discussion - International Carnival Conference, York University, Toronto, Canada.
A Jouvay Process Workshop - JPTP: August 18th to September 5th, University of Bradford, Bradford, United Kingdom. Phone: 07969968236 Email: create.change@yahoo.co.uk
A Jouvay Process Workshop - JPTP: September 8th to December 18th, hosted by Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut at Trinity in Trinidad Global Learning Site, Curepe, Trinidad, West Indies. 1-868-645-4400
(Please contact individual locations or host organisations for confirmation of time, directions and other logistics.)
"I am bound to war
With the sun on my face again
Kiskadee singing 'way my pain . . ."
David Campbell
TONY HALL builds plays for street, stage and screen. He has campaigned extensively, as an actor, a director and a writer, in Western Canada with Catalyst Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta and in the West Indies with Derek Walcott's Trinidad Theatre Workshop. He has appeared in television dramas, documentaries and entertainment in Canada on CBC and ITV, in the UK on the BBC, in Australia on ABC (Australia Broadcasting Corperation) and in the USA on NBC. He has also worked with Banyan Limited developing community television and popular media in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean.
Mr. Hall has taught theatre at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and at King's Alfred College, Winchester, England. He has been Visiting Artist in Residence at Trinity College, Hartford, CT between 1998 and 2007, where he taught courses for playwrights and film/videomakers. Tony has also been on-site Academic Director and is Lecturer in Global Warning at the Trinity-in-Trinidad Global Learning Site. He divides his time between campaigning in North America and Europe and living with his family on the remote island of Tobago in the West Indies.
LORDSTREET THEATRE COMPANY [LTC]
" . . . vibrating not under the earth but in our raucous, demotic streets."
Derek Walcott
In the 1990s Tony Hall and Errol Fabien launched LTC, 'The Hummers', with the prize winning jouvay masquerade trilogy, A Band On Drugs (1990), A Band On Violence (1991), A Band On US (1992). The company takes its name from Lord Street, the seedy area in the city of San Fernando, Trinidad, where Tony grew up.
Musing on Jouvay Process, LTC produces performance projects through theatre for street and stage, and through other popular media alongside Black Market Films, Maitri Moving Pictures and Vengeance Media as Jouvay Digital.
http://www.myspace.com/jouvaydigital
A grant was recently received from the Production and Script Development Fund of the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company to facilitate the preparation of a screen play, YANKEES GONE, based on the original stage play, JEAN AND DINAH . . . . Stay tuned for more information on this project and when Jean and Dinah will be in cineMAS near you.
Jouvay Digital 2.30 [in cineMAS] is a meditation on Jouvay Process developed by Mr. Hall. It is used in cineMAS to allow unusual dimensions of images in sight and sound to manifest. Emphasis is on improvisation ‘extempore’ and documentary techniques. Two or more cameras with a preference for hand-held movement and getting into small corners [tight and personal, claustrophobic] are the order of the day. Jouvay Digital 2.30 [in cineMAS] moviemaking process is about finding the interior, ‘the interior monologue’, cinematic meditation on the 'MAS', the masquerade of everyday life, cinematic meditation behind the mask, revelation through the Emancipation Cycle of Creativity ‘to awaken’, ‘to jouvay’ ad infinitum in the moment through an exploration using all the new digital and inexpensive media technologies.
SELECTED WORK by Tony Hall for Screen:
Lead actor – Obeah (Hugh Robertson) – Feature film, Sharc (1975)
Lead actor/co-director/co-writer - Who The Cap Fits . . . - TV series, Banyan/TTT (1977)
Lead actor/co-director/co-writer– Morral - TV series, Banyan/TTT (1981)
Lead actor/director/writer – Epiphany - TV series, Banyan/TTT (1982)
Supporting actor – Second City TV – Comedy series, NBC/ITV, USA/Canada (1983-1984)
Actor/Co-writer/Co-director – Stand Up for Your Rights - Catalyst TV/CBC-Canada (1982)
Co-producer/Co-presenter – Gayelle (Cultural Magazine) - TV series, Banyan/TTT (1984-1990)
Co-director/co-writer – Too Young to Soca – 52 min. documentary on Machel Montano, Banyan (1986)
Co-producer/co-writer – Santimanitay (A Mas by Minshall) - video of the National Stadium performance, Banyan (1989)
Co-producer/co-writer/co-director – Caribbean Eye - Documentary TV series, Banyan/UNESCO (1991)
Fixer/1st Asst. Director – Bacardi (McCaan Erikson, UK) – Ad for European Cinema, Tobago/UK (1992)
Writer/Director – Walk Like A Dragon - 20 min. drama, Banyan/Pan Trinbago/UNESCO (1992)
Co-writer/co-director – Moksha – 15 min. drama on AIDS, Banyan (1992)
Co-writer/co-director/co-presenter - And The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon - 52 min. Documentary, BBC/Banyan/TVE (1992) (USA release 1994)
Supporting Actor/Location Manager (St. Lucia, WI) - The Final Passage - (Phillips) – TV series directed by Sir Peter Hall, Channel 4, UK (1995)
Writer – Yankees Gone - TV series in development, scripts completed, based on the stage play Jean & Dinah . . . (Hall) (2002/2003)
Co-writer with Mary Jane Gomes - Jean and Dinah: Working for the Yankee Dollar - full-length feature film in development, based on the stage play Jean and Dinah . . . (Hall) (2003-)
Co-writer with Mary Jane Gomes – Til Death Do Us Part (2003-) - TV series for Canadian TV in development
Writer – Riddum Rider (2003) - feature film script completed, based on an original story by Machel Montano and Peter C. Lewis
Co-writer with Mary Jane Gomes – The Will (2005-) - feature film script completed
All projects explore historical, political, social and contemporary issues in order to induce unconventional states of awareness and feeling, in search of new possibilities for understanding and sensitivity. This work seeks to inhabit the mysterious and aboriginal subterranean depths of the inter-cultural anarchist tendency of the 'jamette'.
LTC recently launched Lordstreet Foundation of the Arts to support artists and to encourage literary and fine arts projects in the idiom of traditional Caribbean culture.
"If yuh smart
Clear de way
But if yuh tink yuh bad
Make yuh play . . ."
Mighty Sparrow
JOUVAY INSTITUTE ran its first Playwrights Workshop in conjunction with the National Drama Association and Trinity College's Trinity-in-Trinidad Global Learning Site in the spring of 2003 and also initiated a Videomakers Workshop in selected secondary schools in 2002.
JEAN & DINAH . . . [Who Have Been Locked Away in a World Famous Calypso Since 1956 Speak Their Minds Publicly] (1994) - An award winning LORDSTREET LiME composed for the stage and successfully performed up and down the Caribbean. First performed in the US (Hartford, CT., Hamilton, NY. and New York, NY.) in 1998, in Toronto, Ontario in 2001 & 2002 and in London, UK. in 2003. A French version of the play was performed successfully at the University of the West Indies Inter-Campus 8th Annual Foreign Language Theatre Festival in 2007 on the St Augustine Campus, Trinidad.
RED HOUSE [Fire! Fire!] (1999) – An award winning LORDSTREET LiME written for the street and first performed Under The Trees, Normandie Hotel, St. Ann's, Trinidad.
MUD! 'a ritual in mud and percussion' (2001), first composed and performed at Trinity College, Hartford, CT.
TWILIGHT CAFE [The Last Breakfast] (2002), another LORDSTREET LiME written for the stage, premiered on June 20th, 2002 at the Central Bank Auditorium, Port of Spain, Trinidad and won the 2002 Cacique Award for The Most Outstanding Original Script. A public reading was given at Artwood Theatre in Toronto, Ontario on March 29th, 2005. The North American Premiere was successfully given on May 16th 2007 by Rhoma Spencer and Theatre Archipelago in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
FLAG WOMAN (2004), a LORDSTREET LiME written by Tony Hall and produced with Robin Foster for radio. Blind Miss B, an aging "Flag Woman", reluctantly faces her demons on the night before the carnival starts. [First broadcast by WACK RADIO 90.1 FM, San Fernando, Trinidad, W.I. on June 12th 2005].
MACQUERIPE [A Navel Operation] (2003), a site specific theatrical meditation installed at Macqueripe Beach, Chaguaramas, Trinidad, 2003. A Trinity-in-Trinidad/Lordstreet Theatre Project.
THE BRAND NEW LUCKY DIAMOND HORSESHOE CLUB (2004) – A Calypso Musical [Blues Kaiso in Jouvay Opera] with book by Tony Hall, lyrics and music by David Rudder, premiered in July 2004 at Crossroads Repertory Theatre (formerly Summer Stage), Indiana State University, Terre Haute and was performed at Queens Hall, Port of Spain, for Carnival 2006. Lucky Diamond won the 2005/2006 Cacique Award for The Most Outstanding Original Music in a theatre production.
DIN SHURU [day breaks] (2005) - A Jouvay Opera with story by Ali Pretty & Mary Anne Roberts, book & lyrics by Tony Hall with music by Jit Samaroo. A work in progress for Kinetika Art Links International, UK.
The World Premiere of TABLE 17 (2007) by Arthur Feinsod was directed by Tony Hall as part of the 2007 Summer Season of Crossroads Repertory Theatre, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana, USA.
NEW GENERATION Video - Jouvay Digital for KeKeRe
“I, like Doc Johnson, believe that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
A note from theatre33 Tony Hall & Lordstreet Theatre Company
Our souls as artists are enflamed with that heart felt desire, a quest to be that unclothed individual with whom my life is given meaning. We yearn for the touch of another day of simply wanting to take the stage. For when we do this day or any other day, when our hands, our hearts, our passions (everything we trained for) mold and fold into one right before you, we as artists and audience become one.
We strike a balance, life becomes an art form, each choice we make this evening is precious, and every chance for creativity is an opportunity. And we struggle with the meaning of it all, to varying degrees. We think the truly blessed people don't bother with the struggle and just have fun.
