Mount D'or Cultural Performers

Mount D'or Cultural Performers is a leading community arts company from Trinidad and Tobago. Mt. D'or is dedicated to the use of the rich local and Caribbean cultural heritage in performance making, youth development and community regeneration.

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To team Mount D'or Cultural Performers winners of:

Best Set Design - Chadd Cumberbatch, OBE;

Best Nation Building Play - Euripides; and

4th Place overall in the Folk Theatre category of the PM's Best Village Trophy Competition

This is a note of CONGRATULATIONS and GRATITUDE on your work on 'The Bacchae'!  Yet to realize how phenomenal the achievement is... Bacchus Evohe!

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'culture | performance | community'

‘culture | performance | community’ is a community arts internship programme, set up as a vacation camp, that utilizes the occasion of Mount D’or Cultural Performers’ participation in the annual Best Village festival, as an opportunity for offering mentoring and training in various arts disciplines. These include participation in Trinidad folk dance, drumming, music, folklore and rituals, theatrical performance, and production. 

The programme targets young persons from the Mt. D’or community and its environs, who may be between the ages of 16 and 30, and who - although having an interest in the arts or community work - may not be members of the Mount D’or Cultural Performers' senior performing company. The aim, as per the title of the project, is to use community arts, as these relate to performance making, as the basis for community regeneration and trans/formation.

‘culture | performance | community’, which is supported by the Ministry of the Arts and Multiculturalism's Cultural Camps Scheme, will offer 15 internship placements; and these interns will be offered 72 contact hours of work with the company. The programme will commence on Monday 28th July 2014, and run on evenings at the Mount D'or Community Centre, where the company is based. Interested persons are asked to contact Marvin George at 320-0041 or email [email protected]. 

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… in rehearsal last night Marvin Dowridge as the Dionysus energy moves the chorus of ‘The Bacchae’ into a frenzy with his wine; sacred and sacrilegious. We just start. It lil sketchy. But we moving. As the Bacchae say: You on the streets! You on the roads! Make way… Giving thanks to the company for every second of work!

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...in rehearsal last night

[interculturecaribbean]

From ever since, I’ve been impressed with these lines in the classic Greek play, ‘The Bacchae’ by Euripides. It reminded me of Lord Kitchener’s ‘The Road’, when he sang: “The road make to walk on carnival day Constable I don’t want to talk, but I have to say Any steelband man only venture to break this band Is a long funeral To the Royal Hospital”

The call to make room felt like mas, and like Eyo masquerade from Lagos that clears the road with sticks (bois) for Egungun to pass.

I have been fascinated by this God, Dionysus aka Bacchus aka Bromius, who the Greeks believed came from Asia, and the band of women who follow him; like mas (now) in Trinidad and Tobago. But I have been interested too in how S/He gives us the concept ‘bacchanal’, which WE OWN because S/He lives here, even though S/He came - given our understanding of ancient civilization - via the Greeks from Egypt through an understanding of the older God/myth of Osiris.

The play therefore is as much about mas, as it is about mass. And the tragedy is the tragedy of the leader who refuses to play mas; to attend to the mass, which is where the God energy exists in both its virtue and violence. The Greeks say that this Dionysus, God of wine and revelry dances with the war God Aries; just like Shango, in battle, dances with Ogun. So pong pan, bend wire, pull knife, pull trigger, is same Ogun we dealing with. We kill bout 5,000 of we own people in 15 years, had 5 election in the same period, even though constituionally we shoulda only have 3. And we cyar stop play mas… religiously. And the mas(s) keep telling we…

If all goes well we will do that play with Mount D’or Cultural Performers for the Prime Minister’s Best Village Trophy Competition 2014. And if we do it, we welcome your support. Indeed, old as it is, it is a play of our time; this time…

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'The Bacchae' by Euripides Mount D'or Cultural Performers' proposed Folk Theatre offering for the Prime Minister's Best Village Trophy Competition 2014

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'The Bacchae' by Euripides

So Mount D'or Cultural Performers hopes to do 'The Bacchae' by Euripides (translation by Ian Johnston) for Best Village this year. The research start. And of course, Osiris jump up in the mas yes!

Stay tuned. If we pull this off...

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So we're fixing up the new website. It should be ready soon... 

More importantly though for 2014, we're plotting to present 'The Bacchae' by Euripides, a Greek classic, for the Prime Minister's Best Village Trophy Competition.

Looking forward to seeing how this will happen!