 which is going to be done by the students of the St. Joseph's Convent School representing St. Lucia. We have amongst us our esteemed judges, so I'd just like to introduce you to them before we see the performance. We have firstly, Mr. Marvin George. Mr. Marvin George is the Dean at the School of Drama at Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. Let's give Mr. Marvin a round of applause. We also have Dr. Paloma Mohamed. She is the senior lecturer in the Facility of Health Sciences at the University of Miami. Let's welcome her this evening. And lastly, we have Ms. Catherine Atkinson, who is a local writer and playwright. She has a MFA in Creative Writing, and one of her plays was also featured for Arts Reach. Let's give her a round of applause, please. OK, so like I said, we are going to view our performance by St. Joseph's Convent. It is entitled, Culture Shock. We are representing St. Lucia. And after the performance, there will be a segment where we will go through a question and answer section, so the audience will be given an opportunity to ask the cast and the crew questions about the production. So ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, let me introduce to you Culture Shock by the St. Joseph's Convent students representing St. Lucia. It has to be the chest collector. Can't believe that's again. She would need a husband. Respecting women in society. What would that say about the only masquerade door with real holes? Let's examine it. Without me, how are we going to do the ritual? My leaves have more action than you want to. You are all pathetic and chicken. To waste your last moments, we could have a dance competition and choose who we're saving. But Papa, I'm pregnant. You know I can't have back pains on my feet last year. Well, now we know for sure you're going to be birthed. But I just only collect money. How will I compete? Y'all will have to make up a dance. But that don't matter. My test, well, be good. I know between my dance is going to be tricky. So y'all are really, really going to have a dance competition? Well, some of us have stated that we would not like to participate. So Papa and Papa and I will compete. For who judge? Me? I don't think you're putting that. I will judge. Papa, not all. What's your problem, teacher? Ladies and gentlemen, what a performance. Let us give them another round of applause. Wonderful. So ladies and gentlemen, you are seeing in front of you here the cast of the St. Joseph's Convent Secondary School representing St. Lucia in the Caribbean's Drama Festival 2019. OK, I know that we have seen many elements of our St. Lucia culture displayed in this production this evening. And I also know that many of us here today understand that it takes a lot of hard work, dedication, discipline, time and effort to put together a production like this from the cast to the production crew. So at this point, I'm going to open up the floor to you to ask them questions about the elements of theater that you have seen, about the characters, about their costumes, their set, and also the process that they have been through to get to what we have seen here today. So I'm going to open the floor now. Anybody can begin? Any? OK, I can see. OK, I can see now. Right. Hello, good evening. I must say, I have thoroughly enjoyed your performance, job well done. Now seeing you have come, I mean, St. Joseph's Convent Drama Group, what was it like for you in preparing? I know this didn't happen overnight. So what was the process like for you? How did you feel? What did you see happening? Did you feel what you saw happening? How was the process for you? OK, good night, everybody. My name is Peter Brown. And to answer your question, it was a really tough process for us because as young students who have tried CXC next year, we had to learn to balance everything that was going on. And especially, we had Mariusette, our original Mariusette, who was not able to continue with us. So we had to get a new Mariusette and we are very proud of her for fulfilling that role. And the challenges were, they were sustainable. So we basically had to go deeper into masquerade as we know the young children of our, our young San Ocean children don't really know masquerade as the older generation would know it. So we wanted to show them that this is exactly what it is and this is exactly how it's supposed to be. And each person puts enough work into their characters. So everybody did some research. Everybody went deep into themselves, introspection, a lot of that. So we can all perform tonight to show you all what we have made. I wanted to find out what do you think is the most beneficial aspect of being involved in theater arts? I'm Shannon. The most beneficial part for me doing theater arts, I would say is getting to know where I'm from. What my ancestors did, how I came down to where we are today and how it changed and how it developed people, older people and how I can develop from this. I learned so many traditions that I didn't even know existed or I didn't know things that masquerade did. I didn't know how the moves were done properly and doing this I understood how this became and how what the moves meant, what the chance meant, what everything has a role to play in things. Okay, thank you. Hi, good night. I'm Ashley and I'm new. So theater arts is a very new thing for me and I got a lot from it. It's been very beneficial. I really learned who I was, who I really was and I had to dig deep in myself to accept myself and become someone else and not get lost in that character. So that's something I learned was control and acceptance for who I was so I could be someone else. So yeah, that's it. Thank you, that is so beautiful and I think I just want to say that that is the wonderful thing about the arts. Okay, that it allows us to express ourselves and to really find out who we are and I know that the cast really have to go through that to get to where they are with their characters. Hi, good night. I really loved it. I love learning about different folklore. I'm not as versed in St. Lucian mythology though but I am so curious to know the backstory. She looks like she already knows what I'm gonna ask. For example, I have a play that I did and when I was doing research, different islands had different tales about it and turned out that in one island, Papa Boa was married to Jabless but Mama Glo was also his lover. So in the play, there was a little hint that your baby might not be for Papa Jab but I don't know if it's Acrobat. So I'd love to know a little bit of the folklore behind that. This is not my baby. Okay, well it is but it's not. So this is Acrobat's baby, not Papa Jab's and I don't really know how that happened. I don't know. Yeah. So hi, goodnight, my name is Denisha. So in the original culture form Papa Jab is married to Mariusette and he really dislikes Acrobat because he always goes against his rules and like his commands. So in this play, we decided that it would like help strengthen that idea by making the baby Acrobat. So that is why she's now carrying Acrobat's child. Well, not really, as she said. Oh and also to add on to what she said, this play was not really based of the true culture form as it is because in the play, I myself as T-Jab, T-Jabs don't really speak. In the ritual, we just followed Papa Jab around and we respond to the chance. So we tried to show a different aspect of that. So everything was different in this play. Just try to add a little tweak to the actual cultural form itself. I'm sorry, this was choking me by the whole play, my voice is kinda not good. Good night everybody, my name is Anna and I play Pybanon. Now in our culture, Pybanons are quite stupid. I'm not gonna lie, very stupid. So me, I, this, the Pybanon I'm playing is intelligent, rude, confrontational and very seductive. In this play, I have, I really and truly don't, I hate Mariusette, period. Why, because Pybanon is an actual female and she's not getting any attention or any power, but Mariusette is and she's male. Well, she's supposed to be male, but yeah. So with this, we added a bigger impact, a bigger factor to why Mariusette and I have a lot of problems because throughout the play, we both go in at each other's throats, yeah. So these characters were divided among us by our past teacher based on our strengths and weaknesses so that we could work on them and become more confident individuals. So we got totally different characters which did not match our personal, our personalities. So yeah, that's how the rules were divided. Thank you very much. Any more questions? Well, right at the back, okay, you're sending me, right? Yeah. Okay, they don't need the mic. Good night, my name is Zeta. The masqueraders, the backstory is like, I can't remember exactly, but my teacher, my teacher told me that there were some poor people, I don't know if I'm correct, some poor people who masked up themselves, masked up themselves to go around and ask for money. But as you see, it's not supposed to be like that about the money. It's supposed to be about the culture, the experience. Yeah. Hello. So the masqueraders were introduced to kind of soften up the cultural form because the toes go around scaring everyone. So since that chases away people, the masqueraders were brought in to add a bit of fun, add a bit of lightness to it, a bit of joy that the toes don't really bring to masquerade. And also what she forgot to add was what a lot of people don't know is that this cultural form was usually held around Christmas time. So masqueraders are really there to lighten it up because Christmas is a joyful time. So we needed them around to really lighten up the mood. Okay, thank you. So we are quickly coming to the end of our question and answer session. I just want to quickly, is it possible to bring the director out on stage? I think it's important that we see this who's behind. Okay, good night, everybody. Like I said, my name is Monica Giz. I actually came into this project late. I just started teaching at St. Joseph's Convent. I took over for Miss Chanel Justin, who I would, all the way in Canada, just wanted to say thank you. I don't think she'll see me, but you know. I wanted to say thank you. And to applaud her for having faith in these wonderful ladies who have worked extremely hard to get where they are now. I was lucky enough to come into a group of young ladies who had a fire, who had a passion, who wanted to make their school proud, and their country proud, who understood the weight of this production and what it meant. And I want to congratulate you ladies for doing a good job, especially Ashley. Like we said, our Maria said, she kind of left us. And Ashley came in very late in the game and learned the lines and stayed back. She slept in the school like this. Oh, no, she didn't. They slept in the school. But she came in and she pushed. And I want to thank her and I want to thank my form fours as well who took on this challenge. And thank you all for coming. And I also want to thank Miss, Mrs. Lewis, who wrote the play and who helped these young ladies. Like I said, I met them. I'm not sure if she wants to come and take a bow, but I met them. And the short amount of time I was with them, I really tried to make a difference, yeah. Just want to say thank you once again and enjoy your night. Okay, I would just like to say something as well on our behalf. I believe as a theater group, we went through a lot together as a team. And we really pushed. And for Miss to come and fulfill the role of director and taking it upon herself to really push with us and take up all the things that we had wrong and try to fix it and really go all the way out with us. We would really like to say thank you all the way from our hearts to Miss. And also to our principal sister, Irfina, for taking on all our noise during our rehearsals and making us use the stage and props. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we have come to the end of our question and answer segment. Let us just give our cast and production crew a final round of applause. And also again, I would like to say a big thank you to the San Juan North Secondary School for their cultural presentation this evening. Okay, thank you to you audience. We are back here tomorrow evening, same time for a cultural presentation from Guyana. And also we will be entertained by Antigua. Okay, so we hope to see you back here tomorrow. Once again, thank you. Good night. Have a safe drive home.