February 2014


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In December, Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott presented a $40,000 cheque to The UWI St Augustine Campus Principal, Professor Clement Sankat to go towards the establishment of a scholarship for students enrolled in the Theatre Arts programme at the university.

This was possible through the proceeds from the highly successful production of Walcott’s play 'O Starry Starry Night' which was staged in November 2013 at the Central Bank Auditorium in Trinidad. Each year for the next five years, a Theatre Arts student at the Department of Creative and Festival Arts will be awarded a scholarship to assist with studies tenable at The UWI.

A similar scholarship has been established at the University of Essex, England, where the play, which is written by Walcott, and features Wendell Manwarren, Brian Green and Martina Laird, premiered in May 2013.

In November, two members of the international cast, David Tarkenter assisted by Michael Prokopiou also held an Actor’s Workshop for 20 UWI and University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) students at the St Augustine Campus.

Derek Walcott was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. Born in Castries, St Lucia, on January 23, 1930, his first published poem, "1944" appeared in The Voice of St. Lucia when he was fourteen years old, and consisted of 44 lines of blank verse. By the age of nineteen, Walcott had self- published two volumes. He later attended The University of the West Indies, having received a Colonial Development and Welfare scholarship, and in 1951 published the volume Poems. Walcott's honors also include a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, and, in 1988, the Queen's Medal for Poetry presented by HRH Queen Elizabeth II. His latest works include White Egrets (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010), Selected Poems (2007), The Prodigal: A Poem (2004), and Tiepolo's Hound (2000). The founder of the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, Walcott has also written several plays produced throughout the United States and Europe including The Odyssey: A Stage Version (1992); The Isle is Full of Noises (1982); Remembrance and Pantomime (1980); The Joker of Seville and O Babylon! (1978). His play Dream on Monkey Mountain won the Obie Award for distinguished foreign play of 1971. He founded the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre at Boston University in 1981.