This April, Idakeda will share Eintou Springer's interpretation of the Baby Doll Carnival character at the 2010 Conference of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars in Louisiana.
Eintou will present her philosophical perspective on the Baby Doll as part of a panel chaired by Carole Boyce Davies, a Trinidad and Tobago national and Professor at Cornell University. As an integral aspect of the presentation, dancer and actress Dara Healy will dramatise aspects of the critically acclaimed play by Eintou ‘Baby Doll meets Midnight Robber'.
As a Cultural Historian focused on the heritage of Trinidad and Tobago, Eintou has always been intrigued by the Baby Doll character. As she says "…within this portrayal lies a powerful female Traditional Carnival Character who, within the framework of our understanding of the Fanonesque notion of culture, fuses tradition with the now".
Idakeda has successfully used the play ‘Baby Doll meets Midnight Robber' to work with young people who are at risk in schools throughout Trinidad and Tobago and internationally.
This ability to make tradition relevant to current global challenges will be examined during the panel discussions. Further, we will explore how, despite the dehumanising experience of enslavement, our people found mechanisms for resistance and survival. This resistance was especially true of the poor and over-crowded barrack yards of Port of Spain at the turn of the last century. In sub-human conditions, many survival mechanisms were fuelled from within the culture.
The Carnival of Trinidad and Tobago is the foundation for many of the global Carnivals that we see today. The elements of resistance found in our Carnival have therefore transcended national boundaries to become less street theatre and more statements of personhood.
We invite you to come share with us in Louisiana:
Idakeda Panel Details:
April 23rd, Louisiana State University, Abell Room – 3.30pm
Click here for the Conference Programme
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