thea: the new angle

As Haben mentioned below, we have some new ideas going on. Our separate projects have been slowly edging together and now we are beginning to think in a truly collaborative manner. Drawing on what we have learned in Trinidad and upon our own personal capabilities we are now leaning toward "playing mas" as a way to convey what it is we are trying to say. By creating a traditional masquerade costume (in the style of kings and queens rather than beads and bikini) and making this mas out of the found objects, it gives life to sculpture and provides a costume for performance. By embracing the actual space of Alice Yard, we have been playing with ideas of stage vs audience and concepts of emergence and rebirth. Mas is all about identity, bringing out some part of yourself, long hidden by lack of self awarness or simple constraints of society. As students we play one role, that of observer and absorber, but our time in Trinidad and the other places around the world in which we have chosen to study, have forced us to bring something else to the table, forced us to participate in things that we otherwise would simply have studied and whether we were expecting it or not, these experiences have changed us and we have been forced to look at ourselves and our own identities in the same studious way in which we usually look at the identities of others. This project has always been about our perspective on Trinidad, bringing ourselves into a new place and seeing what we can get out of it but now it seems as though we will be entwineing even more of ourselves into it. It's a risk but one that will no doubt be fun and interesting. Stay tuned.