Veteran actor Ralph Campbell dies at 78

Actor and founding member of the Trinidad Theatre Workshop (TTW) Ralph Campbell died on Friday morning at 78.

Campbell was a playwright, actor and teacher who dedicated his life to theatre, both entertaining the audience and training younger actors to take the stage.

He was one of the first actors to play Corporal Lestrade in Derek Walcott's Dream on Monkey Mountain.

Crow was among the plays he wrote.

He read for an acting degree at New York University from 1969-1972, studying under Lloyd Richards, who was an original cast member of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun.

He was the director of the National Theatre Arts Company.

Campbell’s professional artist profile on the Ministry of Community Development, Culture and the Arts said he was an actor with the St George's College Drama Society under Sam Thornhill.

He worked in his community with the Morvant Literary and Cultural Group. Other acting groups and productions he worked with included the St George West Arts Festival champions, Christmas Pantomime with Dagmar Butt, Strolling Players with Freddie Kissoon, 1964 Dimanche Gras Whistling Charlie, directed by Errol Hill and Batai 65 and the 1965 Dimanche Gras show directed by Derek Walcott.

Music event promoter Nigel Campbell, his nephew, said in a Facebook post the actor helped build the indigenous theatre industry in TT with Nobel laureate Walcott, Beryl McBurnie at the Little Carib Theatre and Raymond Choo Kong's Space Theatre in Bretton Hall.

Campbell toured the Caribbean with the TTW and later moved to the US and Canada to put on Caribbean theatre productions abroad.

After that, “He came back home and never stopped with his dream of a local theatre for us, by us,” Nigel said.

His children Rwanda Campbell, Luanda Kibasa and Chamba Nkrumah all live either in the US or Canada and because of the closed borders wi be unable to come to Trinidad to bury their father.

Nigel Campbell said the funeral should be sometime next week.

Campbell taught theatre arts at UWI's St Augustine Campus in the Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA) in the late 80s.

Louis McWilliams, head of the DCFA, said Campbell was not only one of the first teachers in DCFA, but was his teacher.

He played Insp Barrow in the production of Ronald John’s play Dance Meh Lover, was the first play staged at the National Academy for the Performing Arts (Napa).

McWilliams was the director and joked with Campbell that their professional relationship had come full circle, as Campbell was his teacher, but now he was Campbell’s director.

“He was devoted to his craft and had a serious outlook on acting. There was a level of dedication to his craft Ralph had to his work.”