UWI Arts Theatre students at The UWI St. Augustine’s Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA) present their annual student production, the premiere of the Soca Musical – “Stick-ey Desires.” Director of the play and DCFA Lecturer, Mr Louis Mc Williams, challenged his students to dissect and creatively analyze the lyrical content of soca music, to explore the dynamic possibilities of combining the art form with theatre.
The play is set in the 1990’s in a village called Vwa Dey Memwa or ‘Memory Lane’ in Toco and in an apartment in Brooklyn, New York. The characters experience many emotions – envy, rage, love and tabanca – all vividly illustrated through soca music. Mr. Mc Williams notes “the soca music in the play is not limited to any specific era – current selections are also explored and help to tell the story of ‘Stick-ey Desires’.”
This will be the first soca musical written and performed in Caribbean. The aim of the Director is to have the audience sing-along to a nostalgic theatrical performance, and inspire a greater appreciation for soca as an artform in the Caribbean. Students of the Theatre Arts programme were immersed in all of the production elements of the play and challenged to assist in the development of the script, all of which constitute the assessment process for the programme.
The play will run from Friday March 31 to Sunday April 2, and Friday April 7 to Sunday April 9, at The Learning Resource Centre, UWI St. Augustine. Show times are 8pm daily, and 6pm on Sundays. General admission tickets are currently available for $100. Tertiary students with student ID pay $75, and secondary students pay $50. Tickets are available at the DCFA, Agostini Street, St. Augustine.
For further information and tickets contact the DCFA at 663-2222/ 645-1955 or email dcfa@sta.uwi.edu.
The Trinidad and Tobago Performing Arts Network 