Month: August 2018

The word for the night was “heat.” With that prompt, spoken word artists delivered poems about love, sex, gangs, street food, public transport and even a trip to the barbershop.

Sipping beer and rum, the fashionable 100-strong crowd in this open-air performance space just off Ariapita Avenue, the bustling heart of Trinidad’s capital, snapped, clapped and cheered on the verbal dexterity.

The monthly slam poetry event is one of several cultural offerings that have emerged in recent years to liven up the slack period between the annual Carnival celebrations that flood Port of Spain’s streets with costumed revelers.

Trinidad and Tobago’s cultural ecosystem still revolves around Carnival, hooked to Ash Wednesday in February or March.

But arts advocates, creative entrepreneurs and government officials are seeking ways to stimulate a year-round scene that could build an economic alternative for a country otherwise dependent on oil and natural gas.

“I see the creative sector as being key in diversifying our national economy,” said Calvin Bijou, chairman of state-owned cultural promotion enterprise CreativeTT.

Besides rich oil and gas reserves, the twin-island Caribbean country has a wealth of cultural talent.

It is the birthplace of steel pan, widely believed to be the only non-electric, acoustic instrument invented in the 20th century, and the origin of calypso.

Those musical traditions blend with folk crafts like wire-bending and costume design in Trinidad’s world-famous Carnival. Since 2014, it has brought an annual average of 36,000 visitors to the island, who spend some TTD 324 million ($48 million).

But spreading culturally driven economic activity throughout the year is a tough task, and has sparked debate over whether a small island state should focus on audiences at home or abroad.

Backyard Theatre

The spoken word event, “True Talk No Lie,” began in 2013 to capitalize on the Carnival off-season.

It runs from March through November, when the cultural calendar heats up again, with parties showcasing the latest soca hits ahead of the next Carnival.

Poets hit the stage at The Big Black Box, a re-purposed backyard in the former residence of a respected playwright.

Multimedia production outfit 3canal renovated the space in 2014 as a simple “black box” theater with a mango tree soaring through the roof.

In the off-season, the venue hosts weekly live shows and rehearsals for annual productions.

It has also become an incubator for taking Trinidadian arts abroad. Two of 3canal’s rising stars toured Pride and carnival events in Britain and the Netherlands this summer, and ensemble members will perform at the National Theatre of Scotland in November.

In the run-up to Carnival, there are nightly rehearsals for 3canal’s annual show, culminating in Friday night “backyard jams” where spectators can get a taste of the work in progress.

Inside the restored gingerbread house, 3canal maintains a recording studio, office and merchandise store. Having its own infrastructure has allowed the ensemble to escape the constraints of Trinidad’s seasonal cultural scene.

“The convenience of having your own base out of which to explore, express and experiment can’t be beat,” 3canal’s artistic director Wendell Manwarren told the Thomson Reuters Foundation as dancers rehearsed in the courtyard.

“With our new album, we could luxuriate and take our time – as opposed to that Carnival pressure cooker.”

The Big Black Box has joined a cluster of historic residences converted for cultural use within a few blocks of each other in the Woodbrook neighborhood.

A decade ago, a trio of creatives established an artist residency program called Alice Yard. In 2011, Medulla Art Gallery opened to showcase contemporary Caribbean art, while older establishments like the Little Carib Theatre, built in 1947, round out the scene.

Carnival remains the center of gravity for some activities like the #1000mokos project in Alice Yard, which teaches a new generation of stilt walkers – moko jumbies in Carnival parlance.

Visual art is less in thrall to the Carnival rhythm, finding a larger audience through the quiet season. In May, a show opening and talk by an up-and-coming painter packed out the subterranean Medulla gallery.

Global or Local?

But as Trinidad’s cultural scene grows, it faces a key question: should it prioritize local audiences or export abroad?

For Rubadiri Victor, president of the Artists’ Coalition of Trinidad and Tobago and a former advisor to the arts minister, the answer lies overseas.

When in government from 2013-2014, he fought unsuccessfully to expand the mission of Pan Trinbago, the world body for steel pan set up by Trinidad, to “make pan and rhythm sections the festival music of Planet Earth.”

He wanted the country’s best steel pan bands playing the world’s top festivals, including the dozens of Caribbean-style carnivals in cities globally, which he estimates generate some TTD 15 billion ($2.23 billion) in revenues per year.

He pointed to examples of Trinidadian cultural success abroad – from several Olympic opening ceremonies choreographed by Carnival artist Peter Minshall in the 1990s and early 2000s, to the popular steel pan band that accompanied fans to Germany for Trinidad’s first-ever World Cup appearance in 2006.

But exporting Trinidadian culture requires public funding and support, Victor noted. “If you don’t have those enablers, it’s just difficult,” he said.

3canal’s Manwarren is more interested in local audiences.

“We tend to focus too much on outside validation,” he said. “We need to break through to ourselves.”

The government, meanwhile, is trying to straddle both lines.

It runs youth programs to teach steel pan, maintains a national artist registry, and coordinates mentorship by master artists – including Manwarren, who teaches live show production.

It hopes to offer funding for artists to showcase their skills abroad, but lacks a national cultural policy that would streamline such opportunities, though public consultations are underway to develop one.

“The cultural has to be seen as a political tool and priority, alongside energy, trade and manufacturing,” said Ministry of Arts official Marlon De Bique.

($1 = 6.7070 Trinidad & Tobago dollars)
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Playwright Neil Simon, a master of comedy whose laugh-filled hits such as “The Odd Couple,” “Barefoot in the Park” and his “Brighton Beach” trilogy dominated Broadway for decades, has died. He was 91.

Simon died early Sunday of complications from pneumonia in New York, said Bill Evans, his longtime friend and the Shubert Organization director of media relations.

 

In the second half of the 20th century, Simon was the American theater’s most successful and prolific playwrights, often chronicling middle class issues and fears.

 

Starting with “Come Blow Your Horn” in 1961 and continuing into the next century, he rarely stopped working on a new play or musical.

 

The theater world mourned his death, with actor Josh Gad calling Simon “one of the primary influences on my life and career.” Playwright Kristoffer Diaz said simply: “This hurts.”

 

Simon’s stage successes included “The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” “Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” “The Sunshine Boys,” “Plaza Suite,” “Chapter Two,” “Sweet Charity” and “Promises, Promises,” but there were other plays and musicals, too, more than 30 in all. Many of his plays were adapted into movies and one, “The Odd Couple,” even became a popular television series.

 

For seven months in 1967, he had four productions running at the same time on Broadway: “Barefoot in the Park”; “The Odd Couple”; “Sweet Charity”; and “The Star-Spangled Girl.”

 

Simon was the recipient of four Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, the Kennedy Center honors (1995), four Writers Guild of America Awards, an American Comedy Awards Lifetime Achievement honor and, in 1983, he even had a Broadway theater named after him when the Alvin was rechristened the Neil Simon Theatre.

 

In 2006, he won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which honors work that draws from the American experience. The previous year had seen a popular revival of “The Odd Couple,” reuniting Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick after their enormous success in “The Producers” several years earlier.

Simon received his first Tony Award in 1965 as best author, a category now discontinued, for “The Odd Couple,” although the comedy lost the best-play prize to Frank D. Gilroy’s “The Subject Was Roses.” He won a best-play Tony 20 years later for “Biloxi Blues.” In 1991, “Lost in Yonkers” received both the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. And there was a special achievement Tony, too, in 1975.

 

Simon’s own life figured most prominently in what became known as his “Brighton Beach” trilogy: “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” “Biloxi Blues” and “Broadway Bound”, which many consider his finest works . In them, Simon’s alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome, makes his way from childhood to the U.S. Army to finally, on the verge of adulthood, a budding career as a writer.

 

Simon was born Marvin Neil Simon in New York and was raised in the Bronx and Washington Heights. He was a Depression-era child, his father, Irving, a garment-industry salesman. He was raised mostly by his strong-willed mother, Mamie, and mentored by his older brother, Danny, who nicknamed his younger sibling, Doc.

 

Simon attended New York University and the University of Colorado. After serving in the military in 1945-46, he began writing with his brother for radio in 1948 and then, for television, a period in their lives chronicled in Simon’s 1993 play, “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.”

 

 
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Musician Jamey Turner chose an unconventional career path by becoming a glass harpist. He plays music with glasses filled with water. He uses his fingertips to rub the rim of the glasses to create a range of musical tones. VOA’s Deborah Block watched Turner play the glass harp in Alexandria, Virginia, where people seemed to be awestruck by the sounds he created.
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Crazy Rich Asians, a romantic comedy by filmmaker Jon Chu, showcases lavish sets and beautiful, rich people. Set against the exotic and ultramodern backdrop of Singapore, the film rewards its audience with an uplifting modern day fairy tale. But what makes this Hollywood film stand out, is its all Asian cast and the clear message: Not all Asians are the same.

Based on Kevin Kwan’s book of the same title, the film starts with a young Asian couple in New York. Rachel Chu, played by Constance Wu, an Asian American economics professor at New York University. Nick Young is from Singapore. Having dated for over a year, the couple is starting to get serious about each other but have yet to take the next step. NIck, played by Henry Golding, invites Rachel to his best friend’s wedding in Singapore. Nick’s idea is to introduce Rachel to his family.

As the couple sets out for Singapore, what Rachel does not know is that Nick is the scion of one of the city-state’s wealthiest families and one of its most eligible bachelors. Before she even gets there, her picture has gone viral on social media, and as soon as she arrives, she becomes the target of many wealthy young women who aspire to marry Nick.

Nick’s formidable mother Eleanor Young, played by Michelle Yeoh, feels that American-born Rachel, played by Constance Wu, is not suitable for her son. She rejects the young woman’s American values of independence and self-determination as an affront to Singapore’s traditionalist values.

Rachel’s and Nick’s relationship unfolds against the sophisticated backdrop of the Asian island’s exotic landscape, and mouthwatering culinary creations. Their relationship is tested but grows despite the antagonism and cruelty Rachel faces from Nick’s mother and her snobbish friends.

Throughout the bitter sweet roller coaster, the cast features funny, quirky, and serious characters, among them, Hip Hop artist Awkwafina. She plays Peik Lin Goh, Rachel’s former roomate and friend from the States now living in Singapore. Peik Lin helps navigate Rachel through various cultural hurdles and provides comic relief. The cast is impeccably dressed, impossibly rich, and all of them, Asian.

Lead actress Constance Wu touts the all Asian international cast of the film. “I love the fact that we have Asians from Australia, from England, from Costa Rica, from America, from Singapore, from Malaysia, we have Asians from all over.”

Wu says the film moves away from the clichéd image of the Asian as a disenfranchised minority in the US. “So frequently Hollywood thinks that Asians are this one monolith. Like there isn’t a difference between Asian Asians and Asian-Americans. Or British Asian, or Australian Asians. And there is a difference! Because there is a cultural difference. The fact that this movie really differentiates that, it’s something that doesn’t happen a lot.”

The film’s message and its lavish cinematography appears to have paid off. Crazy Rich Asians has become a box office hit – elevating the hopes of cast and fans that Asian actors are finally becoming part of Hollywood’s mainstream. A day after the film’s premiere in Singapore, Victoria Loke, who plays wealthy socialite Fiona Cheng, spoke to VOA about the film’s success.

“During filming,” she said, “we never really thought about how big an impact that was going to make. So many Asian-American audiences have messaged us separately as actors, our director, our producers, thanking us for having a stake and being a part of this representation of the Asian American community.”

Despite the film’s box office success, Loke said it also has had its share of criticism.

“There has been a lot of conversation in Singapore and Asia about how this film only represents the 1 percent of Singapore: she said. “There are a lot of people who don’t relate to that. This is about Crazy Rich Asians, it’s about a very small niche, and of course there will be lot of fair criticism about the fact that it doesn’t represent fully the entire population. ”

Representative or not, the film has played to sold out theaters in Asia and the U.S. And Victoria Loke confirmed that the film has already been green-lighted for a sequel.
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Robin Leach, whose voice crystallized the opulent 1980s on TV’s “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” died Friday. He was 76 

Leach’s family said through a public relations firm that he died in Las Vegas, where he made his home.

Leach had a stroke in November while on vacation in Mexico that led to a months-long recovery, much of which he spent at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio before returning to Las Vegas in June. 

The Las Vegas Review-Journal, which ran Leach’s columns before he became ill, said he suffered another stroke Monday. 

“Champagne wishes and caviar dreams” was Leach’s sign-off at the end of every episode of his syndicated show’s decade-long run that began in 1984.

The catchphrase captured excesses and sometimes gaudy style of the 1980s, a time before oil billionaires, titans of industry and Wall Street traders gave way to sneaker-wearing tech execs as the world’s richest people.  

Leach appeared occasionally on the show, but he and his unmistakable English-accent narrated throughout, taking wishful viewers on tours of mansions with diamond-crusted chandeliers, yachts with Jacuzzis, and champagne that ran to four figures. It was much like rap videos would do in future decades. 

Leach and producer Al Masini coined the catchphrase and conceived of the show. 

“He asked me if I could get magnates T. Boone Pickens or Sam Walton to do the show,” Leach told The Huffington Post in 2016. “In my naivete, I said, ‘Of course.’ And thus, ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.’” 

Leach said in later years that someone still shouted “champagne wishes and caviar dreams” at him almost daily. He was constantly parodied, and like other distinctive voices of the age like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Howard Cosell, everyone had a Leach impression. 

“Saturday Night Live” consistently satirized him through the years, with Harry Shearer as a subdued Leach hosting “Lifestyles of the Relatives of the Rich and Famous” in the 1980s, and Dana Carvey as a brash, shouting Leach on “Weekend Update” in the 1990s. 

Even decades later, in 2011, Snoop Dogg spotted Leach at a news conference in Las Vegas and was thrilled, rushing to grab the mic and breaking out his impression, touting his career earnings in an over-the-top English accent. 

“Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” was the core of Leach’s career that spanned six decades and included stints with CNN, People magazine, Entertainment Tonight and the Daily Mail, where he began as a writer in Britain at 18. 

In the mid-1970s, he tried out TV as a regular contributor to “AM Los Angeles” with hosts Regis Philbin and Sarah Purcell, and found his calling. He became a regular on television’s morning news and entertainment shows, practicing a sort of tabloid journalism that was more celebratory and light-hearted than tawdry. He often became friends with the celebrities he covered. 

Then, in 1984, he landed “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and gained his own fame. The gaudy show became wildly popular, but never with critics. 

“They wrote that television had reached an all-time-low,” Leach told The Huffington Post. “But I looked at the ratings every Monday morning, and I was rubbing my hands with glee.”

He was also an executive producer and occasional writer on the show, and hosted a brief spinoff, “Runaway with the Rich and Famous.” 

For the show’s final year, with producers looking to liven up the aging property, he had a younger co-host, actress Shari Belafonte. The show was retitled “Lifestyles with Robin Leach and Shari Belafonte” but the new look didn’t save it. 

In 1999, Leach went to Las Vegas to work with celebrity chefs at the Venetian casino-resort, and made the move permanent, becoming a fixture in the city as he covered the destination’s entertainment and lifestyles for America Online and his own website. He also wrote for the Las Vegas Sun and, most recently, for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. 

He made frequent appearances on the celebrity reality TV circuit, hosting VH-1’s “The Surreal Life: Fame Games” and appearing on the celebrity editions of “Wife Swap” and “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” 

He was among the founders of the Food Network, selling his equity for a big payday when the channel took off. 

Married once and divorced, Leach spent much of his later years in the company of his three sons, Steven, Rick and Greg, and several grandchildren. 

“There is this image of a guy in a hot tub, drinking champagne with two buxom blondes,” Leach told the Las Vegas Sun in 2011. “But that is not the real me. I am a father, and I am a grandfather, too.” 
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Jon Chu’s romantic comedy “Crazy Rich Asians” showcases lavish sets and beautiful people. Set against the exotic and ultramodern backdrop of Singapore, the film rewards its audience with an uplifting modern day fairy tale. But what makes this Hollywood film stand out is its all Asian cast. VOA’s Penelope Poulou looks at the movie’s box office success and the significance it has on the Asian community.
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John Lennon’s killer has been denied parole for a 10th time and will remain behind bars for at least two more years.

Mark David Chapman appeared before New York’s parole board on Wednesday. In a denial decision obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, the board said it had determined Chapman’s release “would be incompatible with the welfare and safety of society and would so deprecate the serious nature of the crime as to undermine respect for the law.”

Chapman, 63, shot and killed the former Beatle outside Lennon’s Manhattan apartment on Dec. 8, 1980. He is serving 20-years-to-life in the Wende Correctional Facility in western New York.

“You admittedly carefully planned and executed the murder of a world-famous person for no reason other than to gain notoriety,” the parole panel wrote in its denial decision. “While no one person’s life is any more valuable than another’s life, the fact that you chose someone who was not only a world renown person and beloved by millions, regardless of the pain and suffering you would cause to his family, friends and so many others, you demonstrated a callous disregard for the sanctity of human life and the pain and suffering of others.”

It said releasing Chapman would not only “tend to mitigate the seriousness of your crime,” but also would endanger public safety because someone might try to harm him out of anger or revenge or to gain similar notoriety.

As Chapman faced the parole panel Wednesday, politicians and fans called for his release to be denied during a rally at Strawberry Fields, Lennon’s memorial in Central Park across from his former home.

Jonas Herbsman, the attorney for Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press.

A transcript of the parole hearing wasn’t immediately released. At previous hearings, Chapman has said he still gets letters about the pain he caused and was sorry for choosing the wrong path to fame.

Chapman will be up for parole again in August 2020.
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