From Piparo to Hollywood and back
By Al Ramsawack (T&T Guardian)In spite of his many accomplishments, Errol Sitahal maintains his humility. Still the man from Gayelle, back in the 1980s he played an important role in the many TV presentations alongside Tony Hall, Sprangalang and Niala Rambachan. Today, he is viewed as a consummate artist, embracing the many art forms including drama, stage and film acting, play writing, poetry, music, painting, videography and film making. His endeavours took him to Canada, the USA, and of course, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Guyana. A check on the internet movie data base (IMDb) credited Sitahal for his inclusion in three Hollywood movies—A Little Princess, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle and Harold and Kumar escape from Guantanamo. Following the release of A Little Princess, Sitahal went international. The movie was an instant family hit. His agent was awakened to his talent, which prompted more attention to him. Theatre and television offers increased.
In between engagements, Sitahal returns to Trinidad to relax and socialise with his Trini friends and relatives. He complains: “Living in Canada is too impersonal and ‘metropolitan’. No community.” This was when we encountered this unusual actor, like a voluntary recluse. Shoulder-length silver hair, a large, bushy moustache and grizzly beard. And there he was, in the porch of his sister’s modest house, in the peaceful, laid-back village of Piparo, crouched over an old acoustic guitar, casually strumming away. This was one of the breaks between engagements, when he lives here alone.
“The fridge doesn’t work.” He offers to take us to the nearest rumshop. We graciously decline, preferring to talk in the quiet of his home. And that guitar; I seem to remember. Back in the eighties, didn’t he play Rodrigo’s Aranguez in his role as the defrocked priest in Raoul Pantin’s ‘Sanctuary’ at the Central Bank Auditorium? “You actually remember that?” he grins. “Nobody else does. Is nice to be remembered.”
He hugs the neck of his guitar. “Yuh doh want to take a picture of ah ol’ bush monkey, man!” He says he’s been wanting to shave for a while now. “Moustache getting in de food...hair keepin’ mih too warm.” But he can’t shave. He is contracted to continue shooting a TV series in Toronto in a few weeks. He plays Babaji, the quirky grandfather of an Indian family living in Toronto. The series, ‘How to be Indie’, is in the process of shooting a second season, the first season having successfully made it from Canada to Australia and England. How did he manage this from deep in southern, rural Trinidad? In the early eighties, Sitahal burst upon the Port-of-Spain theatre scene in a two-hander with the late Devindra Dookie sweeping the National Drama Festival and collecting awards for best actor, best production, best director (with Dookie), and a special award for excellence in theatre.
The play was Arrabal’s ‘The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria’ in which Sitahal had acted in Montreal a few years earlier, the French newspaper, Le Devoir, calling him ‘particulierement remarquable’.
Montreal? He was also nominated for a Best Actor Award in 1997, for his role in Nourbese Phillip’s, Coup and Calypso, acknowledging him as one of Toronto’s Best Actors. After an Island Scholarship from Naparima College in San Fernando, the young Errol Sitahal went to England to study Literature and Theatre Arts. Later, he was admitted to McGill University in Montreal, to do his PhD in English. He explained: “After three years completing my residence requirements, I really got fedup wit’ the cloistered stifling academia prison dat was university life. I was doin’ some acting with the university drama club meantime...so I decided to chock university an’ go professional.
“Jump in an’ take the risk. Well dat was exciting... but real hell. Acting jobs few and far between. Lots o’ warehouse work, garbage collecting, scrubbing floors in office buildings at nights. Finally, I found an agent. That helped. It was at that time when my picture in a union publication was spotted by a casting agent who auditioned me for the Hollywood feature ‘A Little Princess’. And there was no holding back thereafter.” Apart from his roles in foreign films and theatre, he acted in a major role as the overseer in a movie titled, ‘The ghost of Hing King Estate’, which was filmed in north Trinidad and projected at MovieTowne during last year’s Film Festival. It was awarded the ‘People’s Choice’. Sitahal also played an interesting role in a TV series titled, ‘The Reef’, which was filmed in Tobago and produced by Danielle Deffienthaler. It was viewed on local TV. Another local film, ‘Radica’, produced by Francis Escayg, in which Sitahal played a role, was shown at this year’s Film Festival.
Sitahal’s film MALINI, which he produced locally, was based on a story written by his friend and novelist, Rabindranath Maharaj. It attempts to deal with language and communication, with truth and fantasy. A Trinidadian returns home after many years to deal with his guilt at neglecting his family. He ‘sees’ things the way he wishes them to be rather than the way they actually are. The film features Kenneth Boodhu in a wonderfully restrained and sustained performance. Sitahal’s philosophy: “We need to pay more attention to the kind of films that explore more intimate and domestic situations than the mega-theatrical experiences that are nothing more than blown up video games. It is closer to the aesthetic we need to develop in film to examine our special situations. The directing styles of a Satyajit Ray, Winal Sen, the Italian neo-realists-Rosselini, de Sica-Iranian and African domestic dramas, the socially and politically committed films in Latin America...Caribbean films (sadly not represented by Trinidad)...where is our own international film library, for Christ sake?”
Sitahal views “the rum shop scene as a stage of true-life drama, where characters are uninhibited and communication seems easy and fluent in our Trini language....’ Bar man, look dem fellahs t’roat dry, bring ah roungs foh dem!’ Expletives fly without restraint or offense, as they ‘de-stress’ from everyday burdens. Free discussions and exchanges of views on sometimes personal problems... Friendship and camaraderie prevail in a manner not seen in many high social levels where hypocrisy seems normal.” Sitahal continues: “Well....it’s like this. Anyone wishing to be an actor should sensitise herself or himself to the various subtle ways that language operates. Actors should be avid readers, exposing themselves to the best in literature, to poetry, to the novel, to dramatic writing. They should even try writing a few lines of poetry now and then. “In this way, the imagination is activated and kept active. And that is where all artistic activity takes place.
Art is energised by the imagination....by the active imagination. We can’t allow the imagination to lapse, to get slothful...it must always look at the world, at nature and at mankind, and never cease to be in awe and to wonder. “So when you are confronted by a new character in a well-written play, this impressionable imagination, in awe and in wonder, embraces the entire world of the play and adopts it as its own. Every character in that play stimulates a part of you, and every voice in that play becomes your own voice. You become part of an integrated community of voices each indispensable to the whole. “I believe that within every human being is the germ of what every human being has ever been or ever will be in this life and the next. The nurtured imagination responds to a written role or dramatic situation by finding within itself, and developing, the germ necessary to create the role. So it is an internal process. I think that is what I mean by instinct.”
He looks down at his guitar as if looking at a faithful friend; his eyes turn to the lush bamboo patch on the opposite hill as he talks about his travels to Europe, India, the Far East, Africa, North and Central America... In spite of all he’s done, he still feels unaccomplished. “I am ready for Lear, and a repeat of Sookdeo in A Brighter Sun. Sookdeo has been my most beloved role....Lear will be my most challenging. Every actor worth his salt must take up this challenge. For me, the stage will always be the actor’s ultimate test.” The bamboos are gradually turning into silhouettes against the evening sky as the dusk of twilight brings out the nocturnal bats fluttering out of the ceiling. His eyes grow watery as he puts down his guitar. He gestures, “Aye boy Al, take up yuh camera and ley we go up by de rum shop to wet yuh t’roat. Yuh will experience real life drama wid colourful Piparo characters. In Piparo, t’eatre is free in Cap rumshop.” Because of his silence and modesty, we had lost track of his ins, outs and international roles in theatre and films; a humble son of the soil, from the desolate cocoa fields of Piparo to Hollywood, we must commend Errol Sitahal for his struggles and success, and for making us proud on the international scene; a true ambassador who genuinely loves his home and country, Trinidad and Tobago.
