History of TTW

TTW maintains its commitment to its founding principles and objectives: Research, Training, Development and Exposition of all performing and artistic disciplines considered to be integral to the advancement of the performing arts in Trinidad and Tobago.

Theatre in Trinidad and Tobago has developed in a fragmented manner with several groups of performers producing separate works. These groups have grown from an indeterminate reservoir of natural talent and artistic energy. One group that sprang from this pool of talent and has since withstood the test of time is the Trinidad Theatre Workshop.

Founded in 1959 by distinguished West Indian poet and Nobel Laureate for Literature 1992, Derek Walcott, the company introduced the first theatre season in Trinidad and Tobago with three plays: Jean Genet's The Blacks, Eric Roach's Belle Fanto, and Wole Soyinka's The Road. Since that time the Workshop has produced Trinidad's foremost actors, and indeed has been a source of theatre skills for the entire Caribbean.

The TTW Resident Company has made several tours throughout the Caribbean and North America.  They were also invited to perform at the first Caribana Festival in Canada, as well as at the prestigious Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference in 1969. Later, such acclaimed Walcott works as The Joker of Seville, commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1974, O Babylon and Pantomime were premiered at the Little Carib Theatre in Woodbrook, Trinidad and more recently were taken on tour to the Huntington Theatre in Boston, the Afro Caribe Festival in Rotterdam, Holland and the Singapore Festival of Arts.

Acting upon the recognition that there was no avenue that can be depended upon to offer continuously, the full spectrum of creative arts training that will develop and encourage improvement of artistic standards in people of all ages, the Trinidad Theatre Workshop set about to create the country's first School for the Arts.

In 1989 a dynamic opportunity for the realization of this dream was offered by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago in the form of a building eminently suitable for this purpose, The Old Fire Station Building in Trinidad's capital city, Port of Spain. Being uniquely poised to fulfill this comprehensive requirement of arts training, The TTW launched the School for the Arts in July 1991 and has not looked back since. Methods and techniques developed over the years have proven to be sound enough to turn its early enthusiasts into a highly professional artistic ensemble, which has continued to cull existing talent and train potential talent for excellence.The time that the TrinidadTheatre Workshop spent at this venue was crucial to TTW's development, both as a performing company and an educational institution, with its Theatre-in-Education, Outreach and School for the Arts programmes being the primary source for arts training at the community level in Trinidad and Tobago.

However, in 1999 (the year of our 40^th Anniversary) TTW was forced to bid a sad farewell to the Old Fire Station Building. Since that time the TTW has occupied offices at the now defunct Kiskadee Cultural Laboratory in St. Clair, and currently occupies the childhood home of renowned publisher and politician, Albert Gomes in Belmont. It is in this new space that the TTW has established its Playwrights' Theatre; the only space where audiences can expect year-round theatre in Port of Spain. Although these changes in venue have created a change in the methods used to achieve our goals, the vision remains constant in our efforts to remain the flagship of the theatre movement in the Caribbean.

View a list of TTW's Past Productions here.