Play Log : Do yuh hear de riddim? Performing in a musical. #caribbean #indian #trinidad #boston

I have just begun rehearsing for an original musical in Boston, "Once Upon A Carnival". 
(In the spirit of being more committed to documenting, considering I had made this sort of a goal for this decade 2020s ... "to document more", I hope to log moments, learnings, quotes, anecdotes from rehearsals are they progress.)

I am elated to be part of a show that is based on a place and portrays a diaspora I rarely hear about. The show based in Trinidad & Tobago, and many characters have Indian heritage. My recent solo play Fontwala sheds light on indentured laborers from India who were displaced by the Europeans (British & Dutch) to Suriname, similarly there were people who were brought to the Caribbean.  

I am overwhelmed by references to  names / prayers that are Indian in origin, that can be identified in the world of this musical's story. The heritage has endured and been kept alive. I have a growing list of glossary that I intend to inquire about. 

So let it begin, this journey into the Caribbean : 

"Rehearsal rooms are a sanctuary"  - spoken by our director Regine Vital as she suggested we begin each rehearsal with a check in. A reminder I much appreciate.  

I really love this line spoken by a character : "I feel eyes on me." It immediately makes me think of magic and mystery on the island. It is spoken by a character who is quite mysterious themselves. 

Since this is a work in progress and the creative team has placeholders in the script, during the reading we ran into dialogue and a little note like "[insert some attribute here]", it made me laugh out loud, knowing the feeling of hunting for attributes/adjectives/similies when writing dialogue.

I will be putting in some work to learn Trini slang and phrases because my character is from Trinidad and has spent significant part of adult life in New York which means vacillating between two different ways of speaking English. 

This is a channel I find helpful : 

Do you hear de riddim? 

The videos are made by Yohan Pratap, that last name is an Indian name! In fact it is the last name of a great hero of India : Maharana Pratap! 

My good friend Ekene, a theater artist herself, has asked me to watch Bazodee to get a feel of Trinidadian culture. I'm on it! 

Thanks to her I just learned that VS Naipaul / Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was a Trinidad born! Booker, Nobel in Literature, he won both of those. Quotes of his that I've kept logged in my quotes collection : 

“To be a writer you have to be out in the world, you have to risk yourself in the world, you have to be immersed in the world, you have to go out looking for it. This becomes harder as you get older because there's less energy, the days are shorter for older people and it's not so easy to go out and immerse oneself in the world outside.” 

“The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves”

“If a writer knows everything that is going to happen, then his book is dead before he begins it.”