From one island to another island.

The words of Nadia Batson’s calypso resonated through the more-than-a-century-old Guyana City Hall on Monday evening as traditional characters from Trinidad and Tobago Carnival and members of the very diverse audience took a joyful jump together to Batson’s music and Black Stalin’s ’Caribbean Man’.

The event was the finale of D’Masquerade, a play put on by members of the Trinidad and Tobago theatre contingent.

Children in the audience hid their faces as the blue devil spat his fire, the jab-jabs cracked their whips, and the midnight robber blew his shrill whistle.

The interactive play, written by Felix Edinborough and Happy O’Connor of Tobago, uses the traditional characters to make a statement about some basic problems common to Caribbean societies-illiteracy, irresponsible parenting, and the culture of violence. The character of the midnight robber took an unusual turn as he was used to represent the gun culture. Early in the presentation he rapes the baby doll character and she produces a child (a doll which she carried throughout the production) for which he denies paternity.

The audience really got into it when Pierrot Grenade (Felix Edinborough) walked around with the baby doll character trying to find the baby’s father, even among members of the audience, while the Midnight Robber stood in the shadows. ’Look him over there’, members of the audience took delight in shouting as the search continued with a crowded and fast-paced array of performances from wild and fancy Indians, a moko jumbie who took a tumble, fancy sailors, stick-fighters, burrokeets and other traditional characters.

The evening began with a ’journey’ to D’Masquerade and included performances from Digicel Rising Star 2007 Kay Alleyne; Tobago wedding dancers; extempo artiste Black Sage, who had Guyanese in the audience singing along to Guyanese calypsonian King Fighter’s ’Come Leh We Go Sukie’; rapso artiste Immortelle, ’when I say rap, you say so’; second-place Groovy Soca Monarch winner Chucky, who got a young lady from the audience to demonstrate how to ’Turnaround’, Guyanese style; Chutney Soca Monarch Rooplal Girdharrie, who sang ’Pagahallo, I’m Crazy for You’; and Tobago Soca Monarch Princess Adana, with a steamy version of Stalin’s ’Black Man Feeling To Party’.

Guyanese in the audience said they were happy to have seen D’Masquerade. ’Our mas is not like this, we have only one day on February 23 and it’s mostly floats, this was fantastic,’ was the verdict.

Trinidad and Tobago contingent member Norvan Fullerton said he felt the audience got the message. ’From one island to another island, we are sharing the same problems. We can’t depend on the politicians, it is we the people who have to make it happen,’ he said.