A Christmas comedy with a lesson

ANA-LISSA JACK

The Phoenix Performance Company set out to get students into the Christmas spirit with its comedic and educational play titled, A Clowny Christmas.

Phoenix began a school tour on Monday to teach young children important values in a manner they will enjoy.

“This company came into being in October, and this is going to be our first production. It is a clown show that aims to make children learn, while also having fun,” said Levee Rodriguez, Phoenix’s chief executive officer.

He said the clown is a hilarious character, so it will be a great tool in capturing the audience’s attention.

Phoenix was started by University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) graduates who wanted to produce their own creative outlet. Rodriguez said the work they may get presently is sub-par and not in alignment with the actors’ degrees. “We started this company not just to earn money but to be able to fully express and challenge ourselves,” he said.

Rodriguez said Phoenix intends to continue producing plays and other forms of entertainment, but they would like performance arts to be implemented as an extra-curricular subject in schools.

“We want to make performance a full-time career. Apart from acting, we would like to also get children involved in the arts and go on to teach acting in schools.” He hopes the school tour will be a step in creating relationships with schools, to make this a reality.

A Clowny Christmas is a show which follows four clowns whose personalities both blend and clash with each other. Rodriguez said, “One lesson that children will observe is stealing is bad and it should not be done. One clown who had a personality that was not well received by the others, began stealing to get attention. When the other clowns realise this, they band together to teach the clown that stealing is wrong.” Other lessons pupils will learn include, sharing is caring, teamwork, friendship and the importance of forgiveness among others.

Phoenix took the show to at least three schools every day before ending the tour yesterday. Among those were Belmont Government Primary School, Belmont Boys’ and Girls’ RC, Melville Memorial Boys’ and Girls’ AC, Rosemand Performance Academy and St Jude’s Home for Girls.

“When we contacted schools, they were really interested in the idea, however, the school term is very busy therefore we could not have done our tour on a larger scale,” Rodriguez said.

He said the show is an attempt to bring back the old practice of using theatre to teach and developing theatre talent. “Many of our training at university was done on an international basis so we did not acquire much cultural training in theatre. Therefore, we plan to increase our cultural aspect of theatre through our company,” he said.