ABSTRACT:
A woman’s story on stage, often reflects the voice and vision of male playwrights and male directors. Iconic Caribbean female characters tell the archetypal stories of the mammy, the servant, the jamette, the demoness – stories of struggle, servitude, violence and ever elusive autonomy. Important stories, but not the only stories. Within the last decade in Trinidad, there has been an increase in the work of female playwrights and female directors. Has this shaped the
autonomy of female characters? One of the ways in which a society can deconstruct its understanding of, and its
relationship to, autonomy, is analysing the representation of the female experience on stage. As Gilbert and Tomkins observe, “… women’s bodies often function in post-colonial theatre as the spaces on and through which larger territorial or cultural battles are being fought.” (215). My thesis entitled “Liberation in the liminal: Imagining the autonomous feminine on the Trinbagonian stage”, looks at the ways in which women psyches and bodies exist as communal battle grounds and suggests new ways to reclaim, re-name and re-imagine the autonomous feminine.
Utilising the theoretical concepts of black feminism, embodiment theory, decolonising and conjunctural analysis, this study aims to investigate the autonomous feminine, deploying various decolonial, feminist and practice-based methods. Part of this investigation, occurs in the liminal, which is the setting for the play accompanying this practice-based work, Magic Islands. Magic Islands, features Caribbean feminine archetypes interrogating the concept of autonomy, in
the liminal. A concept significant to post-colonial theory, the liminal is of thematic concern in Marcia Douglas’ The Marvellous Equations of the Dread: a novel in bass riddim, the work which inspired the theme and title of this conference.
I am deconstructing autonomy as it relates to these various representations of the feminine on stage, to test the hypothesis that an external manifestation of self-governance, requires an internal balance of instinct and intellect, art and science, equations and the marvellous. Ultimately, it is the intention of this work to be the catalyst for academic, literary and theatrical discussion of post-colonial gender dynamics, the analysis of autonomy and Caribbean feminine autonomy, both on stage and off stage. In so doing, this study seeks the integration of the intellectual marvels of academic thinking with the marvellous logic of creative endeavour, exemplifying the vital relationship of both and identifying how, in equal parts, they may yield new insights into the theoretical, the theatrical and the lived-experience, of autonomy.
'Tory Jump Out: An Examination of (Unspoken) Narrative Construction in the Cambridge Analytica Story'
This paper focuses on the importance of agency in story telling and narrative construction in accounts where collective memory and social (in)justice are intertwined. It examines the impact of Cambridge Analytica during the period 2010 to 2016 and unearths who controlled the subsequent tales in whistleblower and investigative journalism accounts and whose perspectives those accounts granted agency and justice to. The paper seeks to examine these narratives and how they have been constructed against the restorative functioning of the chantwell narrator.
Equations of the Marvelous situates the complexity of the Caribbean as a critical site of knowledge production. This research project investigates the “Equations of the Marvelous” from the perspective of how sustained exposure to spacio-cultural practices associated with river systems has influenced my curiosity toward material culture and nature informed the evolution of my contemporary artistic practice. The research aims to explore the relationship between cultural environments, spatial experiences, intergenerational and personal creative expression. Additionally, the objectives are: (1) to examine how interactions with cultural spaces and traditions influence my artistic concepts and themes, (2) to identify key spacio-cultural experiences that have informed my creative process, and (3) to analyse how these influences manifest in the materials, techniques, and visual language utilized in my creative work.
The study implements a qualitative, practice-based research methodology that integrates autoethnography, reflective analysis with art making. The methods include visual documentation of artworks, interviews and analysis of personal experiences within cultural spaces such as community events, heritage sites, and everyday social environments. These sources are examined to identify themes, and tangible findings that connect cultural exposure with artistic production. The research also incorporates contextual references to broader cultural practices that inform contemporary artistic expression. Preliminary findings indicate that interactions with spacio-cultural practices significantly influences both the conceptual and material aspects of my creative work. Community gatherings, and local traditions contribute to the formation of figurative imagery, spatial compositions, and narrative themes. The results suggest that these experiences encourage experimentation with natural form and medium involving the preparation of natural pigments expressing a sense of cultural identity and belonging within the artwork.
The research concludes that spacio-cultural exposure in river spaces plays an essential role in influencing an artistic practice. Through reflective engagement with cultural environments, artists can develop work that communicates personal experiences while also engaging with broader cultural narratives. Overall, this research demonstrates that artistic practice can function as a space of cultural interpretation, where spatial experiences and cultural traditions are translated into visual form, contributing to both personal creative development and wider cultural dialogue.
From its inception, Rastafari livity, which Barnett describes as a commitment to an organic, earth lifestyle (2022), was prefigurative of what is now known as ecocriticism and is a precursor to this philosophical approach. As indigenous practice, Rastafari livity offers cultural solutions for many of the current ecological challenges we face globally. Its equations prioritizes a harmonious relationship with the environment in reaction to the environmental degradation that began on the plantation during the colonial era. Ecocriticism can be defined as the process of analyzing the ways in which the environment is represented in culture and literature (Buell 2011). From its inception, the field of ecocriticism incorporated the Western dichotomized approach of separating nature from culture and separating the body from the environment (Heise 2006). Contrastingly, more modern approaches focus on nature not as something to be manipulated technologically or exploited economically, basically reducing it to a “material resource and commodity”, but as interwoven with human existence. Modern approaches challenge the nature/human divide. The field of Post-Colonial ecocriticism for example, examines the conjuncture formed by our colonial history, power dynamics, changes in our environment and cultural narratives. This approach ampliphies the idea that environmental issues are inseparable from our colonial history. It highlights the perspectives of groups who have been historically marginalised and their environmental epistemologies invalidated (“Post-Colonial Ecocriticism”). It does so by examining environmental cultural practices within the post-colonial context. As such, utilizing a postcolonial ecocriticism framework, I will explore the environmental cultural practices of Rastafari livity and its feasibility within contemporary society. Using an ethnographic approach, I will argue that Rastafari livity acts as a form of alternative resistance, as their everyday behaviours reflect a deep connection with the environment that challenges the ongoing exploitative approach of colonial and neo-colonial powers. I will explore the equations of this marvelous group and how according to Marcia Douglas, these equations “have the power to multiply and resound, igniting action and deep understanding (Adisa).
Film is one of the most dominant languages of our time, shaping culture, revisiting histories and imagining futures. Yet in the Caribbean, filmmakers are expected to produce our cultural imaginaries within systems that do not meaningfully invest in their own image-making. We are tasked with shaping how we see ourselves and how we are seen by the world, without sustained institutional commitment, without durable funding structures and without a national urgency around the importance and necessity of our stories.
If the structure does not hold us, what does? What sustains the Caribbean filmmaker in conditions of fragility and institutional indifference? I turn to equations—not mathematical formulas, but embodied calibrations. Equations are the subtle and deliberate moves we make between purpose and despondence, community and solitude, fervor and fatigue, sacrifice and survival. They are forms of inherited intelligence, ancestral ways of knowing carried in the body long before they are articulated. This embodied knowledge carry ritual memory, spiritual cognition and the instinct to persevere. And it is through this, we act, we create and we endure.
The marvellous, is what we create - the work, the offering - despite and because of, the weight. It emerges in relational, ancestral and generative ways, produced as if by magic. It appears in the gathering of hands, minds and imaginations, even when resources are few. Scarcity becomes possibility and burden becomes beauty. There is something marvellous in this act of making. These ideas are explored through the short film Love Jumbie, which positions the artist as ritual worker and considers ancestral, relational and spiritual forces and reconnection as necessary for survival.
In Caribbean folklore, the figure of the jumbie carries multiple meanings. Jumbies are understood as spirits or supernatural presences that exist alongside the world of the living—figures that haunt, possess and linger. Often unseen but deeply felt, the jumbie points to the ways memory, spirit and history remain present, moving through the body and everyday life. In this research, the jumbie offers a framework for thinking about embodiment and embodied knowledge in relation to the forces that sustain artistic practice and reveals that the Caribbean filmmaker persists, not through solitary resilience, but through ancestral knowledge enacted in relational ritual practice.
ABSTRACT :
Ritornellos of Rosie is an interdisciplinary, practice-as-research project analyzing the Kalinda song ‘Rosie’ within the martial tradition of Kalinda in Trinidad and Tobago. Kalinda songs (kalindas or lavways) constitute coded, call and response, war chants between the chantwell and community that negotiate percussion, combat engagement and communal memory. Existing scholarship focuses on kalindas as folklore and Carnival-derived, reducing their autonomy and complexity while overlooking their ability to reorganize time and form relational worlds. This gap is addressed by engaging Kalinda and its songs, namely ‘Rosie’ as a living, epistemic, and generative system where African diasporic performance constitutes knowledge, worlds and alternate times.
Grounded in the African diasporic performance frameworks of Leda Maria Martins, Fred Moten and Katherine McKittrick, this project asks:
How does the Kalinda song 'Rosie' reveal relational worlds?
How does the reordering of time emerge in the Kalinda song Rosie?
To address the limitations of previous frameworks, I argue that ‘Rosie’ operates as a ritornello that reconfigures power relations and embodies knowledge. Rather than reading ritornello through the European intellectual canon, the project reworks ritornello as a conceptual-methodological framework in African diasporic performance. It analyses how ‘Rosie’ produces knowledge as a (rebellious) relational and recurrent accumulation that spirals to make spatial inscriptions. Through the structured tension of repetition as both an imposition of dominant systems and an interruption to it, ‘Rosie’ appears repeatedly and differently across time, geographies and archives.
These sites instantiate how temporality, nomenclature and narrative activate relational worlds, demonstrating how ‘Rosie’ assembles meanings that critique repetition itself and the linear logics of colonial time. This project culminates in a multi modal performance-installation that visually maps Rosie’s pattern through time.
My positionality as an African diasporic Kalinda woman stick fighter and performing artist situates me in the recurrence of ‘Rosie’. My embodied participation establishes a methodological site through which recurrence becomes legible. Through this embodied inquiry, Ritornellos of Rosie proposes alternate temporal cartographies shaped by the appearance of Kalinda. In doing so, this project intersects with Black Studies, Black feminist thought, Caribbean cultural studies and performance studies to rearticulate the relationship between power, repetition and embodied practice.
We grew up playing sailor mas, unafraid of power, saving our change, only to pay the devil, and wincing at the threatening ballad of a jab jab’s whip. Now, grown, we cinch our waists into narrow corsets forgetting it’s the Dame Lorraine that taught us how to do that. We don heels that oust our bodily frames toward the heavens dreaming of the poise mokos walk with, and curate accessories in a way only the lineage of a people who made sailors fancy could. Traditional Carnival characters have long been considered cultural and aesthetic stalwarts of Trinbagonian identity. These characters, however, have become stagnant, often relegated to historicised ornaments that fail to generate novel interactions and representations in the contemporary space. Can the aesthetics and sentiments of traditional Carnival artforms inform costume design and garment construction in the contemporary popular culture space? This piece seeks to embark on a critical investigation into the semiotic and aesthetic underpinnings of two traditional characters: The Pierrot Grenade and The Fancy Sailor. Using the theoretical framework of Material Culture, the selected repository of traditional artforms will be enmeshed into storied prose.
These stories will further be used to generate costume designs and construct garments that reflect possible legacies of these characters. Inspired by Douglas’ “bass side,” 1 iterations of the traditional characters that adhere more closely to orthodox representations will first be rendered in 2D sketches and used to inform the generation of contemporary designs and 3D garments. This work hopes to shed new light on the creative possibilities availed by the interaction, reimagination and re- presentation of traditional Carnival artforms. It aims to improve access to heritage by extending the limbs of the “costume” outside of the carnival space and translate cultural memory to younger generations in order to stimulate deeper historical connections.