{"id":2698,"date":"2010-03-15T15:51:18","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T19:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=2698"},"modified":"2010-03-15T15:54:13","modified_gmt":"2010-03-15T19:54:13","slug":"national-academy-for-the-performing-arts-tragedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=2698","title":{"rendered":"National Academy for the Performing Arts tragedy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"National<\/a>
National Academy for the Performing Arts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Andre Bagoo
\nMarch 14, 2010 – newsday.co.tt<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

IT COULD TAKE as much as $80 million to correct flaws in the design of the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA), Port-of-Spain, the interim President of the Artists Coalition of Trinidad and Tobago (ACTT) Rubadiri Victor, estimated yesterday.<\/p>\n

While Prime Minister Patrick Manning last week praised the NAPA as being \u201cworld class,\u201d Victor yesterday begged to differ, saying the facility is plagued with technical problems and argued that it does not compare in any form with Queen\u2019s Hall, St Ann\u2019s.
\n
\nDiscussing a dossier on the NAPA prepared by the ACTT which has been circulating on the internet this month, Victor, a multi-media artist, said, \u201c$80 million is a realistic estimate of the costs that would be involved to correct the defects.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt appears as though the firm which built and designed the facility (Shanghai Construction Group) may not have been experienced in building facilities of this kind,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The ACTT in their dossier, entitled, \u201cThe Tragedy and Hidden History of the NAPA\u201d, the coalition of artists also estimate that maintenance of the building like the NAPA, which has an estimated budget of about $500 million, can approach as much as ten per cent of building cost. Architects, though, noted that maintenance costs are difficult to estimate due to the variables involved, such as the quality of original materials used.<\/p>\n

Among the defects noted in the ACTT dossier are:<\/p>\n

There is no loading area for the main stage;<\/p>\n

The stage is \u201cill-matched\u201d to the 1,500 seating capacity of the hall;<\/p>\n

The orchestra pit is defective;<\/p>\n

The light and sound boards are analogue and not digital (the industry standard for the last decade);<\/p>\n

There are \u201chundreds of problems with lighting and sound fixtures and equipment\u201d The stage floor is \u201cribbed and is not a sprung floor so is ill-suited for dancing and thus will damage dancers\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dance studios are flawed;<\/p>\n

There are \u201cno costume rooms, no set construction rooms and no warehousing rooms\u201d;<\/p>\n

One architect not involved in the ACTT report, who has been inside the NAPA yesterday confirmed the flaws identified in the report and added, \u201cthe floors are laminated and they have begun to chip already. Because of materials used, there are also creases on the stage, which will be a challenge for dancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA loading area\u2019s dimensions are normally about 16 feet x 10 feet- NAPA has a normal door! This means that sets, costumes of a certain size, certain musical instruments (hint- one of them is our national one) cannot fit through NAPA\u2019s doors to get backstage!\u201d the report, compiled from a site visit and other sources, notes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe two rooms that have been trumpeted as the two smaller theatres are in fact just two rooms. Flat rooms with no seats. It would cost tens of millions of dollars to convert these rooms into theatres.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the light and sound boards are analogue not digital. They are also mid-standard and not high-end,\u201d the report continues. \u201cMost of the fixtures are completely wrong: There are literally hundreds of problems with lighting and sound fixtures and equipment. Some may sound small to laypeople but they mean everything to the technicians entrusted to make sure shows go on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor instance: the bars that the hundreds of light fixtures are on are square and not round. This means that lights can only be pointed in four directions (two of them up to the roof!) and not in gradated choice as on a round bar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tellingly, signage for technical parts of the building is in Chinese, an indication that the design\u2014heavily trumped as being inspired by the Chaconia flower\u2014may not have been original to Trinidad and Tobago.<\/p>\n

Additionally, \u201cThere are no dressing rooms within reach of the backstage, and no clothing racks, showers and a host of other amenities in the dressing rooms that do exist. This probably can be rectified but it will cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no monitors for backstage and for the stage manager. This probably too can be rectified \u2014 but it will cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stage-floor is ribbed and is not a sprung floor so is ill-suited for dancing and thus will damage dancers. Theatrical floors are \u2018rigged\u2019 so that dancers can dance on then \u2014 they have a bounce to absorb and cushion dancers \u2014 otherwise it\u2019s like you are dancing on concrete.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dance studios are completely unsuited for dance. The dance-rooms have concrete and terrazzo floors; have dance bars too high; and have mirrors on both walls creating a circus infinite-mirror effect. This means there are effectively no dance studio spaces in NAPA. New properly constructed dance floors will have to be built, one mirrored wall will have to come down and all the dance bars taken down and re-hung.<\/p>\n

To add to the litany of complaints, \u201cthere are no costume rooms, no set construction rooms and no warehousing rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Members of the ACTT include Fabien Alphonso, president of the Recording Industry Association of Trinidad and Tobago (RIATT) and Andre Reyes, president of the Artist Teachers Association.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how it could be that the firm that got the contract has a competency in building a performing arts centre,\u201d Victor, who appeared before the Uff Commission of Inquiry into Udecott, the state corporation that built the facility, said. \u201cThis is a tragedy of an immense proportion.\u201d<\/p>\n

President of the Joint Consultative Council of the local construction industry Winston Riley yesterday noted that aside from functional problems, there have been concerns about the construction materials used for the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are serious concerns about it as an academy,\u201d he noted, \u201cbut we have been concerned about the use of mild steel in the building which we believe would put the building under risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NAPA was reportedly built pursuant to a Government to Government agreement between Trinidad and Tobago and China, at an estimated budget of about $500 million. There was no competitive tender for the project which was handed to the Shanghai Construction Group, the same company that built the Prime Minister\u2019s Residence and Diplomatic Centre. Efforts to contact SCG were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

When Manning, who had come under fire for his constant defence of Udecott in the face of compelling evidence of corruption at the state enterprise, opened the building last November, he called it, \u201ca masterpiece owned by the people of Trinidad and Tobago.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a press briefing last week in London for Commonwealth observances, Manning, the chairman of the Commonwealth, noted that the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) took place at NAPA. \u201cAll in all my dear friends, I think that we were pleased with the outcome. Of course, we were able to expose to the international community a new facility in Port-of-Spain: a National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA) which as everybody saw, we believe is acknowledged to be a world class facility in a small developing country, seeking and striving to take its place among the great countries of the world,\u201d Manning said. Udecott has blocked attempts to have an open media tour of the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaxpayers are going to have to live with this,\u201d Victor said yesterday.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.newsday.co.tt\/news\/0,117279.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Andre Bagoo March 14, 2010 – newsday.co.tt IT COULD TAKE as much as $80 million to correct flaws in the design of the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA), Port-of-Spain, the interim President of the Artists Coalition of Trinidad and Tobago (ACTT) Rubadiri Victor, estimated yesterday. While Prime Minister Patrick Manning last week … Continue reading National Academy for the Performing Arts tragedy<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,88,29,30,7,26],"tags":[48,82,222,1015,49,1020],"class_list":["post-2698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-complaints","category-entertainment","category-finance","category-pnm","category-politics","category-udecott","tag-calder-hart","tag-patrick-manning","tag-performing-arts-centre","tag-politics","tag-tt-govt","tag-udecott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2698"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2701,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698\/revisions\/2701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}