On March 23 last, Lloyd N De Arts Productions, in partnership with students of the Tutorial High School in Georgetown, staged a production titled “The Chosen” at the Theatre Guild Playhouse. This was a public dramatic performance of mostly dance theatre and was significant in the context of recent developments in a number of areas; namely, a modest degree of advancement in theatre driven by CXC drama and theatre arts, drama in secondary schools, attempts at promoting community theatre, and the outreach programme of the National School of theatre Arts and Drama (NSTAD).
All are interrelated, and the NSTAD outreach was tied in with the extension activities of the National Drama Festival (NDF) before it was discontinued in 2017. A programme was developing to ignite theatre in outlying communities, and small groups who entered the NDF as well as secondary schools were involved in it.
Of course, it was all put on pause during the COVID-19 restrictions, but the school most prominent in these efforts since the 2022 restoration has been Tutorial High.