Tony Hall
 Agent: Lordstreet Theatre Company
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago Email: info@lordstreet.net
Home page: http://www.lordstreet.net
Tony Hall (b. Anthony Michael Hall on 16th July, 1948) writes and builds plays. Tony was born in Port of Spain, and attended Naparima College, San Fernando, Trinidad, West Indies. He studied drama in Edmonton, Canada at the University of Alberta (1969-73) and explored advanced television production at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (1978-80).
Tony is a pioneer in community television in the Caribbean. With the video production house Banyan Limited, in Trinidad, he was part of a group, of artists and activists, which pioneered indigenous soap operas and TV dramas in the 1970’s and 80’s. At Banyan he presented with Errol Sitahal, Dennis \'Sprangalang\' Hall and Niala Maharaj one of the most successful magazine programmes on TV in the Caribbean, Gayelle (1985-90), citation given at INPUT - International Public Televison Conference. This programme laid the foundation for the first community television station (24 hours of Caribbean programming) in the region, Gayelle TV (2004). In 1992 Christopher Laird and Tony Hall directed the award winning BBC/TVE/Banyan documentary film, And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon. Called \"An astonishingly searing look at TV\" by Starweek Magazine. This film won Best Video Documentary & Best Environmental Film, Images Caraibes (Martinique, 1992) 3rd Caribbean Film & Video Festival and also won 1st place in the Public Affairs Documentary Category at the 13th Annual International Film and Video Competition, Prized Pieces (Ohio, 1993) National Black Programming Consortium.
Between 1978 and 1984, Tony Hall as an actor, director and writer, broke new ground in Western Canada with a company of artists at Catalyst Theatre, under the mentor-ship of Professor David Barnet, promoting the use of theatre and video as tools for entertainment, social action and public education. He also apprenticed in the Caribbean with Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott in his flagship company, Trinidad Theatre Workshop, as an actor and a director (1973-1981).
In the early 1990s Errol Fabien and Tony Hall launched Lordstreet Theatre Company with a prize winning trilogy of jouvay masquerade carnival bands on the streets of Port of Spain: A Band On Drugs (1990), A Band On Violence (1991) and A Band On US (1992). This company promoted original work for street, stage and screen from its inception and since 2003 has done so mainly through a Playwrights Workshop.
Also in 1990, after years of participatory research into manifestations of popular culture in the Caribbean, Tony recognized and presented, at the University of Winchester (King Alfred Campus), JOUVAY PROCESS as a distinct and helpful New World perspective on drama practice. JOUVAY PROCESS may be an instinctive, continuous \'awakening\', in the one moment, to the mystical and transcendental energy of the emancipation traditions traveling from century to century. Tony has since launched the Jouvay Institute, as an on-line transparent platform, to facilitate others to observe and meditate on JOUVAY PROCESS. Out of this realization he has developed the JOUVAY POPULAR THEATRE PROCESS [JPTP], a performance/production model - the consolidation of the \'NOW-NESS\' or \'IS-NESS\' of the mythopoeic forces in the emancipation traditions into \'a green thicket of oblivion\' through drama. As a drama workshop, it involves free improvisation and storytelling inspired by the traditional masquerade characters of the Trinidad Carnival along with folk and religious characters, all as archetypes of human behaviour. One observer describes the approach as \"finding the interior\". It can be a means to discover \'reforms of the personal conscience\' and finding new ways of action to transform them into \'collective codifications of the public good\'. All of Tony\'s work, whether it is with professional artists or with students and community people as artists, is derived from using JPTP.
Tony has done JPTP derived talks and workshops in the Caribbean: Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Jamaica; in Europe: London, Leeds, Birmingham, Bradford, Isle of Wight, Hamburg; in South America: Bahia; in North America: Sydney, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia; Edmonton, Alberta; Scarborough and Toronto, Ontario, Canada and in Hartford, Connecticut and Terre Haute, Indiana, USA.
Some work by Tony Hall for Street and Stage using JPTP:
In 1994 Lordstreet gained Caribbean wide recognition for the presentation of Tony\'s play JEAN and DINAH . . . [Who Have Been Locked Away in a World Famous Calypso Since 1956 Speak Their Minds Publicly] (1994) - an award winning stage production based on The Mighty Sparrow’s seminal calypso, Yankees Gone, about the American occupation of Trinidad during World War II. This production, produced and directed by Hall himself, toured successfully all over Trinidad and the West Indies (Guyana, St. Lucia, Jamaica) to rave reviews. The play, which Derek Walcott called \'one of the finest pieces of West Indian theatre I have seen in years . . .\', was first performed in the US (Hartford, CT., Hamilton, NY., and New York, NY.) in 1998; in Toronto, Ontario in 2001 & 2002; in Scarborough, Ontario and Edmonton, Alberta in 2005; in Birmingham, Leicester, London, UK in 2003 and in Curacao, Netherland Antilles in 2010. 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. Jean and Dinah . . . won five 1994-1995 Cacique Awards for theatre in Trinidad and Tobago.
A grant was received from the Production and Script Development Fund of the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company to facilitate the preparation of a screenplay, YANKEES GONE, based on the original stage play, JEAN AND DINAH . . . . (1994). The screenplay, by Tony Hall with Mary Jane Gomes, is now ready and the project is moving into pre-production. Yankees Gone was part of the Caribbean Tales Worldwide Distribution Incubator and Market Development Program in Toronto, September 2010, initiated and facilitated by filmmaker Frances Anne Solomon.
In 1999 Tony Hall wrote and produced RED HOUSE [Fire! Fire!], an award winning, original and imaginative environmental/street dramatization of the history of The Water Riots of 1903 when the seat of parliament in Port of Spain, Trinidad, was burnt to the ground. These riots triggered a sequence of events that led to the eventual granting of universal adult suffrage to the people of the island in 1946. The play won four 1999-2000 Cacique Awards for theatre in Trinidad and Tobago.
MUD! \'a ritual in mud and percussion\' (2001), an innovative studio production, first composed and performed at Seabury Studio, Trinity College, Hartford, CT. On October 22nd 2001 Professor Milla C. Riggio commented on it as \" . . . the conviction of a lifetime of making sense of the world . . .\"
This work was followed in 2002 with his most powerful drama to date, TWILIGHT CAFÉ (The Last Breakfast) (2002). Toronto reviewer and novelist Ramabai Espinet called it “a brilliant and harrowing sexual embrace. The secularism of the post-post-modern, Orisha worship, soucouyants, hidden duennes and blue Carnival devils merge in a dance of no-death that cuts to the heart of the vast chasm of incomprehension between men and women.” This play received its successful North American premiere by Theatre Archipelago, Toronto, in May 2007. TWILIGHT CAFÉ [The Last Breakfast] won five 2002-2003 Cacique Awards including the award for the most outstanding original script.
FLAG WOMAN (2004), a LORDSTREET LiME written by Tony Hall and produced with Robin Foster for radio. It is the night before the carnival starts and Blind Miss B, an aging flag woman, is forced to confront, with reluctance, the life-long demons trapped in her head. [First broadcast by WACK RADIO 90.1 FM, San Fernando, Trinidad, W.I. on June 12th 2005]. Terry Joseph of the Trinidad Express (16th May, 2005) wrote, \"The work is faithful to Hall\'s trademark style of examining periods in our history through calypso.\"
MACQUERIPE [A Navel Operation] (2003), a site specific theatrical meditation installed at Macqueripe Beach, Chaguaramas, Trinidad. A Trinity-in-Trinidad/Lordstreet Theatre Project. This was an unprecedented and inspired environmental street theatre installation in the manner of the mas. In this navel gazing operation a \"military sailor\" becomes a \"celebratory sailor\" after wrestling with elements of the traditional mas/mask/masquerade of the Trinidad Carnival on the beach of the jungle warfare school that is Trinidad. This historic performance event was the final exercise for students in the Trinity in Trinidad Global Learning Site study program of Trinity College, Hartford, CT (Spring 2003). The course, \'Festival Arts as Cultural Performance\', stimulates the students to examine their own place in the world through an exploration of aspects of the Jouvay Popular Theatre Process [JPTP].
Tony’s latest work, THE BRAND NEW LUCKY DIAMOND HORSESHOE CLUB (2004), is a groundbreaking twist on musical theatre with lyrics and music by the calypso/soca star David Rudder. This Jouvay Opera, with book by Tony Hall, was premiered in Terre Haute, Indiana by Crossroads Repertory Theatre in 2004 and was presented by Lordstreet Theatre Company and David Rudder in the Trinidad Carnival 2006. This new and insightful work won the 2006-2007 Cacique Award for most outstanding original music. Joy Rudder in a review entitled \'God and Rum\' (the name of one of the numbers in the piece) commented, \"The music is fabulous, the dancing and dialogue provocative.\"
DIN SHURU [day breaks] (2005) - Another Jouvay Opera with story by Ali Pretty & Mary Anne Roberts, book & lyrics by Tony Hall with music by steel pan maestro, Jit Samaroo. An epic work in progress (based on theatrical formulations derived from a JPTP look at the Ramleela festival in Trinidad) for Kinetika Art Links International, UK.
The World Premiere of TABLE 17 (2007) by American playwright and theatre scholar, Arthur Feinsod. This new play, which was a finalist in the 2004 Dorothy Silver Playwriting Competition, explores the relationship between African Americans and American Jews. It was directed by Tony Hall as part of the 2007 Summer Season of Crossroads Repertory Theatre, Terre Haute, Indiana.
Tony Hall\'s other work is published in The Drama Review [TDR], Special Edition, T159 (Fall 1998), Edited by Milla C. Riggio; CARNIVAL: Culture in Action - The Trinidad Experience (2004), Edited by Milla C. Riggio and Trinidad Carnival, Photographs by Jeffrey Chock (2005).
Some work by Tony Hall for Screen:
Lead actor – Obeah (dir. Hugh Robertson, a 1969 British Academy Award and an Oscar Nomination for editing work on Midnight Cowboy) – Feature film, Sharc (1975)
Lead actor/co-director/co-writer - Who The Cap Fits . . . - the first drama series for TV in Trinidad and Tobago, Banyan/TTT (1977)
Lead actor/director/writer – Epiphany - mini series for TV, Banyan/TTT (1982)
Supporting actor – Second City Television – An Emmy Award Winning Comedy Series for TV, NBC/ITV, USA/Canada (1981-1982)
Actor/Co-writer/Co-director – Stand Up for Your Rights - One Episode of Catalyst TV (Internationally Acclaimed Current Events Series, hosted by David Barnet) CBC-Canada (1982)
Co-director/co-writer – Too Young to Soca – 52 min. the first documentary on soca super-star Machel Montano, Banyan (1986)
Co-producer/co-writer – Santimanitay (A Mas by Minshall) - full video version of the first stadium show created by Peter Minshall, A National Stadium Performance, Banyan (1989)
Co-producer/co-writer/co-director – Caribbean Eye - Groundbreaking Documentary TV series, Banyan/UNESCO (1991)
Writer/Director – Walk Like A Dragon - 20 min. experimental dramatic film on the steel pan, Banyan/Pan Trinbago/UNESCO (1992)
Co-writer/co-director – Moksha – 15 min. a Hindu Trinidad influenced drama on AIDS, Banyan (1992)
Supporting Actor (St. Lucia, WI) - The Final Passage - (Caryl Phillips) – Feature film for TV on Phillips\' award winning novel directed by Sir Peter Hall, Channel 4, UK (1995)
Mr. Hall has led drama courses at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad, at University of Winchester (King Alfred campus), England and at University of Bradford, UK. He has been Artist in Residence at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA, between 1998 and 2007, where he directed plays and worked with student actors and playwrights and with young filmmakers at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Tony has also been on-site Academic Director at Trinity College\'s Trinity-in-Trinidad Global Learning Site and at present is exploring \'Festival Arts as Cultural Performance\' at the site. He divides his time between campaigning \'worldwide\' and living with his family on the \'remote island\' of Tobago (area - 116 sq. miles, pop. - 55,000), West Indies in the Caribbean Sea.
References:
1. http://www.wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/showme.cgi?keycode=1053
2. http://www.meppublishers.com/online/crb/past_issues/index.php?pid=3000&id=cb5-1-28&print=1
3. http://www.amazon.com/History-African-American-Theatre-Cambridge/dp/052162472X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290963765&sr=1-2
4. http://www.amazon.com/Sexing-Caribbean-Gender-Sexual-Labor/dp/0415935040
5. http://www.meppublishers.com/online/crb/past_issues/index.php?pid=3000&id=cb9-1-30
6. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cath/ahrc/events/2005/1103/abs/riggio.html
7. http://www.kinetikaonline.co.uk/?q=node/93
8. http://www.yankeesgone.lordstreet.net
9. http://www.pancaribbean.com/banyan/awards.htm#AWARDS
10. http://www.yankeesgone2.lordstreet.net
11. http://www.jouvayinstitute.lordstreet.net
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JOUVAY - a community awakening
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Interests: making plays for street, stage, screen, radio, etc.
Published writer: Yes
Freelance: Yes |
