Kalypso Revue recasts

The Kalypso Revue tent will be seeking to have more humorous calypsoes among others when the tent opens for Carnival 2019.

The tent held its Carnival 2019 auditions yesterday at Kaiso Blues Cafe, Wrightson Road, Port of Spain.

Anne Procope-Garcia, the tent’s marketing manager, told Newsday the process was then going well.

“Today is going very well. We have a lot more than we would have had in the past years. At this time we would have had less people. So it is a good sign,” she said.

She also said that the tent was rebranding and recasting. The auditions began at about 10.30 am and saw Chrystal “Buffy” Bellille-Cuffy take the stage with her song Fix It.

Procope-Garcia said the tent will cut the number of people in its cast to about 20. She also said it reduced the number of days the show will run for Carnival 2019.

“So we are no longer going everyday for the week. We have cut down. So we are now going Thursday, Friday Saturday or Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday or Thursday, Friday, Saturday and a matinee on Sunday for the older people who really enjoy calypso but who won’t come out because the thing goes too late.”

The tent hopes to end it show by 11 pm each night.

Procope-Garcia said the process of choosing the final 20 is “very hard” as “there are a lot of good tunes/songs.”

“What we find is a lot of social commentary and that is where we have to be careful because people who come to the tent really come for a lot of humour or political bacchanal.

“We have to be honest. A few social commentary yes but they can read that in the newspaper. So we have to be very careful how we are choosing the cast and how we put the programme together so that it will flow and it does not have too many of the same thing back to back,” she added.

She said in the past years, the tent suffered “a little bit from lack of comedy and humour and that is one of the major things we are looking at this year. It is to increase the humour.”

When asked whether or not entertainment needed to return to the tents, as was suggested in the January 3 Newsday article called Tents: Waiting on Government, Procope-Garcia agreed. She said that was why the tent was “recasting and rebranding” and reintroducing “more humour and harsher political commentary.”

She said admittedly tents have an aging audience and to combat this, she said, they hope to “embark on a programme” where they go to both secondary and primary schools. The tent was unable to do it this year but hopes to be able to do it next year.

The tent also hopes to be able to “embark on foreign tours up the Caribbean islands at the Carnival times in those islands...”

The tent she added was still waiting on Government funding “which usually comes in the tent’s first or second week. But that it was “blessed” to have someone like Kalypso Revue’s chairman Michael Osuna “because he would do what is necessary until we get funding. Our sponsors have been kind to us in the past but as things get harder, they also have declined.”

She said the tent lost a few sponsors but hopes to meet with it main sponsors next week.

“We also are exploring a few new sponsors because calypso is something we have to keep alive. It is our tradition. It is our culture and if we let it go by the wayside, it is going be a waste.”