WORK and PLAY - The Trinidad Experience
Syllabus: Fall Semester
A Short Description:
Trinidad, a cosmopolitan Caribbean island with an oil and gas producing economy,
privileges both work and play. One of the most racially and ethnically diverse nations in
the world, Trinidad is poised between its industrialized modernity and its pre-industrial
festive culture. This combination has created a unique intercultural sensibility. This
course will explore the network of festivals that underlie this cultural matrix, focusing on
the history of emancipation as a way of seeing, thinking, creating, and adapting. The
readings will include poetry, calypsoes, novels, and plays by such authors as V.S.
Naipaul, Derek Walcott, Earl Lovelace, Merle Hodge and others. The course will also
include visiting lecturers and performers, and will provide students the opportunity to
explore performance traditions as observers and participants.
An Approach:
Popular Culture as a 'Jouvay Process' - waking up to 'a world' (1840-48)
Introduction to a concept of popular culture as an unfolding spontaneous awakening, a
response: Jouvay Process.
This includes recognition of the varied manifestations of ancestral memory and the
subliminal aboriginal secrets of time and space embedded in the psychic and physical
environment.
Systems (Strategies) of Survival: The Gatkha Calinda School Academies of Gatkha and Calinda [East Indian (1845 arrival) and African stick fight],
inter-cultural foundations of warrior-hood – ‘Dance and Fight’.
Intercultural Rituals of Survival: Camboulay Riots (1881) and Hosay Riots (1884) Manifestations of ‘Dance and Fight’ in the late 19th century inter-cultural time corridor
for the creation of space in which to breathe and live.
Cultural Performance: Theatre, Religion and Collectivity Carnival (kaiso, mas, pan), Ramleela, Hosay and Shango.
Making the space human through festivals, collaborative community performance and
artistic formulations/theoretical models.
American 'Occupation' (World War II 1941-46) and The Oil Industry (La Brea
1857/Industrial Production 1902).
'Play' as 'Work' - Spontaneity and Discipline/Time and Space/the Senses and
Emancipation (1838/1917)/Liberation through Play.
Building Societal Institutions through Cultural Industries - The Mas band as a 'business
model' and Schools in Pan as an overall 'theoretical model'.
'WORK and PLAY' PATH – Fall 2012
Overall reading for the semester:
The Dragon Can't Dance by Earl Lovelace
Mimic Men by V.S. Naipaul
Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon by Johan Huizinga (Humo
Ludens)
Time Out or Time In? The Urban Dialectic of Carnival by Milla Cozart Riggio (Carnival:
Culture in Action - The Trinidad Experience)
The Caribbean: Culture or Mimicry? by Derek Walcott
Making Mas with Possibility - Five Hundred Years Later by Lloyd Best (Enterprise of
the Indies)
Indian Presence in Carnival by Burton Sankerali - TDR 1
Chinese in Trinidad Carnival by Carlisle Chang - TDR 1
Reading for next day:
1. The Carnival Story - Then and Now: Introduction to Part I by Milla Cozart Riggio
(Carnival: Culture in Action - The Trinidad Experience)
2. Carnival in 19th Century Trinidad (course pack)
3. Hosay Trinidad (course pack)
4. JPTP Version 2/Jouvay Digital 2.30 – a performance model (course pack)
5. The Shape of Smell by Diane Ackerman (The Natural History of the Senses)
September 13th - Week 1 – Jouvay Process and JPTP: The Gatkha Calinda School. The
story of Camboulay and Hosay, the late 19th century inter-cultural time corridor and
carnival (kaiso, mas, pan). In search of Religious, Folk and Traditional Mas Characters as
individual ‘guides and guardians’ in everyday life. (Republic Day 24th September, 2012.)
Introduce Projects: Final Projects and written work.
Reading for next day:
1. Rise of the Steel Band: Carnival Music (course pack)
2. The Calypso Form and Function (course pack)
3. Introduction: Literature to Carnival by Antonio Benitez-Rojo (The Repeating Island)
4. Appendix III - Lecture on West Indian Folk Music (1943) (Horizons - The Life and
Times of Edric Connor)
September 20th - Week 2 - The story of kaiso [Professor Gordon Rohlehr]. The story of
pan & Panorama [Daisy McLean].
Reading for next day:
1. The Traditional Masques of Carnival (course pack)
2. Pierrot Grenade (course pack)
3. Midnight Robber - TDR 1
September 27th - Week 3 – Traditional Mas Character Workshop 1: Midnight Robber,
King Sailor and Jab Jab [Three informants]. Exploration of characters and analogues.
Reading for next day:
1. The Traditional Masques of Carnival (course pack)
October 4th - Week 4 – Traditional Mas Character Workshop 2: Black Indian, Moko
Jumbie [Two informants]. Exploration of characters and analogues.
Reading for next day:
1. Jean and Dinah . . . by Tony Hall (book)
2. The Jouvay Popular Theatre Process - from the street to the stage [The Jean and Dinah
Story] (course pack)
3. Jouvay Popular Theatre Process - finding the interior (essay)
4. "Play Mas" - play me, play we: Introduction to Part II by Milla Cozart Riggio
(Carnival: Culture in Action - The Trinidad Experience)
5. Images and Reflections: Ritual, Drama, Carnival, Film, and Spectacle in Cultural
Performance by Victor Turner (The Anthropology of Performance)
October 11th - Week 5 – Jouvay Popular Theatre Process: A Theoretical Model. Discuss
'masquerade' and 'mimicry' around Lovelace, Naipaul, Best and Walcott.
Reading for next day:
Performing in the Lap and at the Feet of God: Ramleela in Trinidad (2006-2008) by Milla
Cozart Riggio - TDR 2
October 18th - Week 6 – A Discourse on National Culture re: Ramleela (Ramdilla) and
Divali with Ravi Ji.
Reading for next day: Excerpts from The Fragrance of Gold - Trinidad in the Age of
Discovery by Kim Johnson.
October 25th - Week 7 – A lecture on parang music - Los Amigos Cantadores.
Reading for next day: Trinidad and Tobago Economy to Nov. 1987, Source: The Library
of Congress Country Studies (Essay)
November 1st – Week 8 – Discuss American presence, economy and industrial
development.
Reading for next day:
1. How to Watch The Sky by Diane Ackerman (The Natural History of the Senses)
2. A Voice to Add to the Song of the Universe by Peter Minshall (course pack)
3. Carnival by Antonio Benitez-Rojo (The Repeating Island)
Re-Introduce: Final Projects.
November 8th – Week 9 - Discuss performance and 'changes of personal conscious'.
(Performance and Transformation).
Reading for next day: For the Life of Laetitia by Merle Hodge
November 15th – Week 10 – JPTP and Growing Up. (Divali: November 14th 2012)
Reading for next day:
November 22nd – Week 11 – Preparing the final projects.
Reading for next day:
November 29th – Week 12 – Final projects due.
Reading for next day:
December 5th – Week 13 – Written work due.
Grading System:
Attendance and participation - 10%
Reflections on B/Board – 30%
Research Paper – 30%
Final Project (with written work) - 30%
Tony Hall
Trinity in Trinidad Global Learning Site
13 Harris Street
Curepe
Tel: 1-868-645-4400
Mobile: 1-868-681-7475
email: tony@lordstreet.net
September 4th, 2012
Readings:
The course pack is created with essays etc. from the following collection and the
additional listings are also here:
1. The Trinidad Carnival: Mandate for a National Theatre by Errol Hill
University of Texas Press (Austin), 1972
2. Caribbean Quarterly
Volume 4, Nos. 3-4 (1956)
Issue on The Trinidad Carnival
3. The Drama Review - TDR 1
Volume 42, Issue 3 - T159, Fall 1998
Special Issue edited by Milla C. Riggio
MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1998
4. Carnival: Culture in Action - The Trinidad Experience by Milla C. Riggio,
Edited by Milla C. Riggio
Routledge (New York, NY), 2004
- Time Out or Time In? The Urban Dialectic of Carnival
Pages 13 to 30
- The Carnival Story - Then and Now: Introduction to Part I
Pages 39 to 47
- Indian Presence in Carnival by Burton Sankerali
Pages 76 to 84
- Chinese in Trinidad Carnival by Carlisle Chang
Pages 85 to 90
- "Play Mas" - play me, play we: Introduction to Part II
Pages 93 to 108
5. The Repeating Island by Antonio Benitez-Rojo
Duke University Press (Durham and London, England), 1996
- Introduction: Literature to Carnival
Pages 22 to 29
- Carnival
Pages 295 to 311
6. Enterprise of the Indies
Edited by George Lamming with Afterword by Lloyd Best
The Trinidad and Tobago Institute of the West Indies, 1999
7. Jean and Dinah: Who Have Been Locked Away in a World Famous Calypso Since
1959 Speak Their Minds Publicly by Tony Hall
AuthorHouse (Bloomington, IN), 2002
8. The Dragon Can't Dance by Earl Lovelace
Andre Deutsch (London, England), 1979; Three Continents (Washington, DC), 1981
9. Mimic Men by V.S. Naipaul
Penguin (Non-Classics) (August 26, 1976)
10. The Caribbean: Culture or Mimicry? by Derek Walcott
Essay in Journal of Inter-american Studies and World Affairs,
Vol. 16, No. 1, Feb, 1974
11. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga
The Beacon Press (Boston) 1950
- Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon
Pages 1 to 27
12. The Anthropology of Performance by Victor Turner
PAJ Publications (New York) 1987, 1988
- Images and Reflections: Ritual, Drama, Carnival, Film, and Spectacle in Cultural
Performance
Pages 21 to 32
13. A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
Vantage Books (New York) 1990
- The Shape of Smell
Pages 11 to 15
- How to Watch The Sky
Pages 235 to 248
14. The Drama Review - TDR 2
Volume 54, Issue 1 - T205, Spring 2010
Special Issue edited by Milla C. Riggio
MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 2010
- Performing in the Lap and at the Feet of God: Ramleela in Trinidad 2006-2008
by Milla Cozart Riggio, Pages 106 to 149
15. For the Life of Laetitia by Merle Hodge
Farrar Straus Giroux (USA) 1985
16. The Fragrance of Gold - Trinidad in the Age of Discovery by Kim Johnson
School of Continuing Studies, UWI (Trinidad) 1997
17. Horizons - The Life and Times of Edric Connor by Edric E. Connor
- Appendix III - Lecture on West Indian Folk Music (1943)
Pages 157 to 164
Ian Randle (Kingston and Miami) 2007