UWI’s DCFA to stage The Crucible

SENIOR theatre arts lecturer Dani Lyndersay will takes her final bow from The University of the West Indies’ (UWI) Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA) with its annual Theatre Arts Unit production, The Crucible. The play will have an original score by musical arts degree student Alexander Evans of Belize and a full-cast performance by DCFA students and alumni.

The Crucible was completed by Arthur Miller in 1953 and is believed to be the faithful albeit dramatised account of the historic Salem trials in 1692. 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 peoples were convicted and subsequently hung for the alleged practice of witchcraft. Within this play Miller has developed a marvellous tragic hero for any period – a flawed figure who finds his moral centre just as everything is falling to pieces, said a media release. Lyndersay, a former theatre arts co-ordinator and overall head of department at the DCFA, is the founder of Arts-in-Action, a group on the cutting edge of the arts as a means of social change, the release said. 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 moved to TT in 1990 with her late husband. After serving for over two decades at the DCFA and retiring as a senior lecturer in 2011, 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, the release said.

The DCFA offers courses and a place for students 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.

The play will run on two weekends –April 6 to 8 and 13 to 15– at the Learning Resource Centre (LRC), UWI, from 8 pm on Fridays and Saturdays and 6 pm on Sundays. Tickets are available at the DCFA Administrative Office, Cheeseman Building, Gordon Street, St Augustine. For more info: visit the DCFA, UWI on Facebook or e-mail dcfa@sta.uwi.edu.