Playwrights Workshop reading Bacchanalia on July 3

THE July instalment of the Playwrights Workshop Trinbago (PWT) Monthly Readers Theatre Series (MRTS), held the first Wednesday of every month, will feature the reading of a new horror screenplay, Bacchanalia by Brendon Alekseii.

The reading will take place on July 3 at 7 pm online via Zoom only.

Bacchanalia revolves around Jessie, a young Trini-American woman coming home with her friends for Carnival, must now survive a violent J’Ouvert where revellers turn bloodthirsty.

Alekseii said in a news release on June 29, "Bacchanalia, was inspired by Trinbagonian Carnival, but also by how the horror genre has its roots in Caribbean resistance. The original 'zombie' was inspired by racist imaginations of the Haitian Revolution, of enslaved peoples finding their freedom through violence.

"It's also that kind of juxtaposition that gave us mas characters like the Midnight Robber and the Jab – colonial minds saw us as monstrous, and so we found our resistance by leaning into that imagination. This script is about how that spirit of resistance rejects colonialism, and how that can be violent but still beautiful, and how that can help us find ourselves and our community.

"My hope with the script, with all of my work, is that it challenges something that they previously never questioned before. With this particular script, I want to challenge our notions of what it means to be 'savage,' to be 'violent.' What is more violent; the ways that people express our rage, or the ways that we are exploited by others?"

Alekseii is a writer, director and teaching artist. He is a graduate of Goddard College’s MFA in Creative Writing (Dramatic Writing), and a 2019 Cropper Residential Writers Workshop Fellow.

“He aims to explore the multiplicity of Trinbagonian identity in his writing,” PWT said in a news release on June 28. “Brendon tells stories that reveal the comedies and horrors of our world, using his experiences as an Afro-Caribbean man, and imagine the multiplicities of the Caribbean experience.”

As a Spoken Word poet, Brendon has been a five-time finalist of the First Citizens National Poetry Slam (formerly Verses Poetry Slam), winner of the 2013 “No Ifs No Butts” Poetry Slam, and served as a coach of The Roots Foundation TT Youth Slam Team, which placed second at the Brave New Voices 2018.

As a theatrical director and playwright, Brendon sees the stage as community intervention, leading audiences to discoveries of empathy.

In 2010, he directed the Trinidad performance of the simultaneous worldwide staging of ASHTAR Theatre’s The Gaza Monologues. He’s collaborated with performing arts companies such as Powerhouse Entertainment for the Christian Community and The Baggasse Company, as well as nonprofit organisations like ParentingTT and The Cropper Foundation. His work has been featured in the 2013 TT National Drama Festival and the 2016 New Play Festival.

PWT is inviting actors, playwrights, directors, producers and the general public to join in to listen to the cold reading and participate in the discussion to assist the playwright with the further development of the script.

The PWT said there is a content warning as the screenplay contains drug use, alcoholism, vivid descriptions of violence, death, blood and gore, including the murders of women and children.

Plays read in 2024 for the Monthly Readers Theatre Series will qualify for workshopping, staging and award consideration at the New Play Festival 2025, the PWT said.

Join Zoom meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81687192302. Meeting ID: 816 8719 2302

For further information or to submit a script for reading in the MRTS, e-mail playwrightsworkshoptt@gmail.com; call/text/WhatsApp (868) 351-6293; find us on Facebook and Instagram @playwrightsworkshoptt; or on NDATT’s website https://iamndatt.org.tt /playwrightsworkshoptt/.