"Samara is one of the most formidable actors we have produced in T&T."

Those words came from Dr Yao Ramesar, veteran director and Coordinator of The UWI Film Degree Programme in his interview with UWI Today earlier this year. In the 2023 Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, Lallo’s talent will be witnessed not only as she appears in Ramesar’s film, Fortune for All, but also in her own film, Vulnerable — written, produced by and starring this rising talent.

“Vulnerable is an experimental film that touches on a subject I was very passionate about - the in-between period of when we are going from being ok to not and then to being ok again. It asks the questions about how one fares through that in-between, that unseen part of life that we shy away from talking about, that vulnerable period of the void in-between.”

Lallo, a graduate of UWI's Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA) was always drawn to creative endeavours but in particular, she was drawn to the DCFA. As a child, she gravitated to a very particular building at the St Augustine Campus as if drawn by an unseen tether. Her father was a lecturer at the UWI and she would always tell him that she wanted to study at a particular building located near to the present Republic Bank, St Augustine branch building. As it turns out, that building was the DCFA.

She pursued a BA in Theatre Arts as she had already benefited from her immersion in the field via the Drama Club in UWI Sixth Form with Lincoln Douglas, and quickly found the place she was looking at all this time was exactly the place she needed to be.

“The Theatre Arts programme was pretty interesting in terms of having a fairly holistic approach that I appreciated. We got to experience festivals and events like stick-fighting, and participate in dance as part of our curriculum which covered everything from dances of African origin to traditional dance from the katchak and Indian influences. What I particularly appreciated was that we explored what it means to be Caribbean people and Trinbagonian from an objective and critical position and through critical thinking. There was immense power in those explorations.”

In addition to being a film-maker, she is also a voice talent, writer, acting and voice coach, producer and educator.

“I am very passionate about creating a sustainable creative economy in T&T by understanding the business about what we do - it is after all, not show fun, it’s show business. Working with agencies as a creative for TV and radio I also understand the importance of marrying the needs of the talent with that of the client too. So, I currently offer courses in voice acting and acting as well so that we can improve the quality of talent here overall.”

As Ramesar put it, there is likely no better person to be taught by.

There is much work to be continued in T&T in the sphere of where culture, creativity and even carnival collide with what her learnings of theatre at The UWI offered her. According to Lallo, there is an immense opportunity missed at Carnival in terms of the incredible folklore and stories that we developed over many years locally.

“At DCFA, we learned about the Carnival characters and the stories behind them. We learned about folklore that originated during slavery and we saw how those characters came to life to find creative and meaningful ways to share about societal ills that they had to deal with. But today we have reduced those characters into caricatures of their former selves. There is a lost opportunity to use theatre for healing and reconciliation. If we can leverage theatre arts for healing it can provide a space for transformation too.”

As an active participant in her secondary school’s drama club, Lallo is happy to see theatre arts being integrated into the curriculum, but encourages all schools and particularly at-risk schools to consider using theatre for transformation.

“I have seen instances where theatre helps to pull stories out of people, because they can detach from themselves and not feel shame as they express themselves as the character or role they play in training and not as themselves.”

Lallo is the Chief Amazement Officer at her company, Tiny Thunder Productions, where she works with creatives of all kinds - from authors to actors and voice talent. She is also a multidisciplinary freelancer who has edited a novel and is also voicing an upcoming audiobook. Most of all, she looks forward to the TT Film Festival which will allow her to share a piece of her soul projected to a cinema screen through the fragments of her writing, storytelling, and her raw talent and passion for acting.

For more info, visit samaralallo.com.