‘The Crucible’; DCFA Students and Alumni Unite for Dr. Lyndersay’s Final Curtain Call

As she prepares to take her final bow as  Senior Theatre Arts Lecturer of The University of the West Indies’ (UWI) Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA), Dr. Dani Lyndersay has united DCFA alumni with current students for DCFA’s annual Theatre Arts Unit production, The Crucible. Directed by Dr. Lyndersay and also featuring an original score by Musical Arts Degree student, Alexander Evans of Belize, The Crucible opened last week, continues this weekend; Friday 13th to Sunday 15th April 2018, at the Learning Resource Centre (LRC), UWI.

The Crucible, a 1953 play by Arthur Miller, is hailed to be a faithful, albeit dramatized account of the historic 1692 Salem trials. The play is a powerful and timeless depiction of how hysteria and intolerance can bisect a community and tear it apart when a large group of persons were convicted and subsequently hung for the alleged practice of witchcraft. Within this play, Miller has developed a marvellous tragic hero for any time period – a flawed figure who finds his moral centre just as everything is falling to pieces.

Dr. Lyndersay, a former Theatre Arts Coordinator and overall Head of Department at the DCFA, is the founder of Arts-in-Action, a Trinidad-based group on the cutting edge of the arts as a means of social change. Born in Australia of Dutch and Canadian parents, she received training at the University of Victoria. She created the Walket Puppets Theatre Troupe in Nigeria where she taught for over 20 years and later moved to Trinidad and Tobago in 1990 with her late husband. After serving for over two decades at the DCFA and retiring as a Senior Lecturer in 2011, Dr Lyndersay returned to active teaching until this academic year. With this production, she is whipping up an extraordinary production in her final curtain call as a teaching figure at the University.

Living on the legacy and enhancing the vision set in 1986 the Department continues to grow. The DCFA offers courses and a place for students of Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean to explore the cultural expressions of the West Indian diaspora through instruction in the creative arts at the highest level of academic, professional and technical accreditation.

All are invited to experience this Tony Award-winning play with a profound message in a timeless heroic tragedy, as a play, and as a piece of literature.

The Crucible continues this weekend, Friday 13th to Sunday 15th April 2018, at the Learning Resource Centre (LRC), UWI. Showtimes: 8PM on Fridays and Saturdays and 6PM on Sundays.

Tickets cost $100 (General Admission), $75 (Tertiary Institution Students with ID) and $50 (Secondary School students) and are available at the DCFA Administrative Office, Cheeseman Building, Gordon Street, St. Augustine.

For more information visit the Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA), UWI on Facebook or email dcfa@sta.uwi.edu.