Naparima College debuts ‘Alpha’ at Toronto Fringe Festival

By Rhoma Spencer

Naparima College of San Fernando, Trinidad has long been a bastion of Drama and Theatre in Trinidad and Tobago. With the likes of the late James Leewah, Ralph Maharaj, Tony Hall, Dennis Sprangalang Hall, Errol Sitahal, Devindra Dookie, theatre elders and ancestors coming out of these hallowed halls of drama and theatre education.

This institution, a product of the Canadian Missionary Schools started by the Presbyterian Church has been responsible for not just the Christianization of the East Indian Indentured labourers brought to Trinidad post emancipation, but also the education of their offspring. I was reminded of this when I looked at the ethnic makeup of the cast of actors in their Toronto Fringe play, Alpha. There was only one AfroTrinidadian student among the cast of players on stage at the Toronto Fringe Festival.

Making their international debut, Naparima College Drama Club presented Alpha, a Collective Creation by the students themselves. Playcreators are Syre Hutton, Pranav Persad- Maharaj, Gabriel Rahman, Devan Ramoutar and the Naparima College Drama Club. The play is Directed and animated by their Drama Teacher, Jeanelle Archer- Chan.

This Ensemble creation takes inspiration from the play “Ritual” by Trinidadian playwright and former Secondary School Teacher, Zeno Constance. However, in this iteration, the Ritual becomes the device to understand the psychology of their classmate, Alpha, who is accused of rape. His classmates have to “possess” Alpha to enquire into his own socialization as a boy and how this manifests into manhood /warriorhood.  Monkey see monkey do perhaps?

The play is set in a classroom of an all-boys prestigious high school. The boys play various characters through the simple addition or removal of costume pieces. Their uniform neck tie becomes the bois(stick) in stick fighting or in another it becomes the long tresses of a girl’s hair, played with precision, full embodiment and confidence (no caricature here by the boys). Gabriel Rahman stood out with class.

Director, Chan- Archer uses a theatre of Ritualism as her directing style to tell a story of today’s boy child. The peer pressure of drug culture, cyberexotica (my word), parental pressure to succeed at school and witnessing domestic violence at home are all themes explored in Alpha. The ritual motif became predictable though and I would have loved to see various other devices used to get into a ritual.

dThe music under the Direction of Nirvan Mahabir served as accompaniment to the musical offerings but, without the use of mics, the boys’ lyrics were lost to the ear. I know the use of mics in a fringe production is a very costly commodity so I am not going to hold this detail against them. The production’s direction, picturization, movement and choreography speak volumes. Gabriel Rahman and Syre Hutton have the it factor and my lens is focused on these two youths as  thespians of note in the next few years.

The movement and choreography by Tristan Wallace and Simeon Moodoo was the pièce de resistance of this storytelling. The Director did well to include Kalinda as a rite of passage for Alpha.

While this is fictional, as we in the Caribbean do not practice any form of coming of age ceremony for our boys, reclaiming the martial art form of Kalinda and Gatka (Lathi), the Indian form of Stick Fighting as practised by the Indentured Punjab was a welcome ritual to enquire and justify the habits of manhood from childhood. Perhaps if we had retained such rites of passage for our boy children, just perchance their coming of age to being a man will have currency and, who knows, inspire the choices they make in the intimate relationships with their partners.

Alpha is on at Soulpepper Theatre’s Michael Young Theatre in the Distillery District. For schedule and times visit www.fringetoronto.com.

Rhoma Spencer is an actor, director, playwright and comedian who moonlights as a chef when not doing all of the above.

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