Minsh meditates on mas, Miss Miles

By Austin Fido

There was a time when designer and masman Peter Minshall had only two dogs: Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Norman Manley. But he encouraged them to enjoy themselves, and “they enjoyed themselves all over the house and the yard, and in front of guests when they were drinking tea.” Such enjoyment resulted in the night Elizabeth Taylor, a white dog with a look of Labrador about her, gave birth to ten jet-black puppies on the landing outside Minshall’s bedroom. “In that moment, I realised: one little black dog is just another little black dog, but ten little black dogs is a more beautiful, interactive work of art than the Mona Lisa!” He calls them his children. There are only eight of them now, but they fill the yard of their home, which they share with their parents (two canine; one human), with an exuberant kinesis of barking and play and joy.

Minshall, who has just completed a late-afternoon shave in the open air, leaves the yard to give his first interview since the band he designed, Miss Miles—A Band on Corruption, was presented at Carnival 2014. But first he must negotiate with Mr Mauvais, a ginger tom with hazel-green eyes, sitting on the stool at the kitchen counter Minshall would like to claim for himself. Gentle words are deployed, persuading Mr Mauvais to exchange his perch for a fruit bowl on the counter, where he lounges and listens with feline solemnity. One can see echoes of Miss Miles—a small band with every member identically dressed in black—in the sable children of the yard. One black-clad mas player is just another black-clad mas player, but four dozen of them is a statement. It is a statement Minshall regrets was not made on Carnival Tuesday, in the full context of the Band of the Year competition.

Minshall loves a sailor band—it is a mas form he regards as entirely original to Trinidad Carnival—and he does not begrudge All Stars its title for Carnival 2014. Still, as he maintained in an e-mail to Tony Hall, co-producer of the band Minshall designed this year, if the white masks and black costumes of Miss Miles had marched to the Savannah on Tuesday afternoon, crossed the stage with their banners and placards held high, each individual step amplified by the identically-uniformed steps of the rest of the band, “WE WOULD HAVE EAT DEM UP!” This is not a critique of All Stars. It is Minshall’s way of describing the power and effect of mas as an original art form. And he knows, as few others do, the impact mas can have when it is done right.
It is the impact once described to Minshall by an admirer of his work as “a statement as lasting as the pyramids.” It is the impact Alyson Brown described to him after a day of playing Tan Tan on the streets of Kingston for Jamaica’s Carnival. 

Peter Minshall at his Port-of-Spain home in a post-Carnival interview.
 Photo: Anu Lakhan

“Minsh, rub my shoulders, they are so tired,” he recalls her saying. Minshall was concerned.  “A modern king or queen costume is designed for someone to carry it for five or ten minutes, then rest,” he says. He asked her why she was so exhausted, why she hadn’t stopped for rest. “I couldn’t,” he remembers Brown saying. “Everywhere I looked, all I could see were the smiles.” “Now tell me,” asks Minshall, “Can you achieve that with a painting in an art gallery?” Few who saw Tan Tan will ever forget her. The face of Miss Miles in 2014 is also powerful. Minshall recalls labouring with terror over the mask for Miss Miles. His first effort to make the face which would define the mas and the band “came back looking like Hulk.” Working quickly, Minshall adjusted the lines of the face in clay—refining Miss Miles’ features, making her superlative, but not slapstick. He sent the new mask out to be turned into plastic, “and they sent it back to me painted white—I had to become the make-up artist.”

Knowing the first mask was the only one he would make himself, knowing he was creating a template for others (working under greater time constraints than himself) to follow, knowing this one had to be perfect  because only perfection could withstand the inevitable errors that creep into a harried mas-camp production line, he set to work. “I made mistakes. I ran inside, got white paint to cover my mistakes, worked on the line of the eyebrows.” He mimes trembling hands and nervous glances at the sky, “Oh Lord… Lady looking from heaven, this is your eyebrow—and I’m sending you out on the road.” All in the service of one objective: getting it right. When the moment arrived that he looked at his creation and did not feel the urge to run back into the house for more white paint, Minshall felt a thrill of nervous energy: “Miss Miles… you’re real.” 

His voice is barely a whisper at the memory. It is the same whisper he used to describe witnessing the puppies squeaking into life on his landing: “I had never been that close to birth before.”
Mas, like the frenetic swirl of love and noise that greets Minshall every time he enters his yard, is powered by life. When Minshall looks at pictures of Miss Miles on the road and sees a headband out of place or a costume too hastily assembled, he is angered by the opportunity missed to affect people the way he knows mas can: “You only have one shot!” There may be no repeat performance, but it is a mistake to call mas ephemeral. A statement remains until it is retracted or superseded. Minshall leaves the room to change into a lighter-weight shirt. Mauvais raises his head to interrogate the space his companion has vacated: is he coming back

SOURCE: http://www.guardian.co.tt/byline-authors/austin-fido

MISS MILES, A Band On Corruption

MISS MILES, A Band On Corruption, conceived by Tony Hall, designed byPeter Minshall, features Cecilia Salazar with general consultancy and 'Corruption' theme song by Wendell Manwarren, Roger Roberts and Stanton Kewley (3canal), general consultancy and production supervision by Meiling, general consultancy Trevor Jadunath. 

Registration: 33 Murray St, Woodbrook. 5pm to 9pm daily.

Tel: 1-868-681-7475 Email: info@lordstreet.net

MISS MILES, Mas Corruption, in the manner of Traditional Mas, is based on the new character in the pantheon of traditional mas characters, the elegant, defiant MISS MILES the Woman of the World. This mas, called 'The Woman of the World' was first played, by that ‘whistle blower for all seasons' Gene Miles herself, in the Trinidad Carnival of the early nineteen seventies. In 2014 Man, Woman and Child will play MISS MILES. They will discover and celebrate MISS MILES 'the fashionista' to be found within themselves. They will perform their own 'political resistance' to corruption through playing their own MISS MILES.

A short drama, presented in the Gayelle (The Sacred Circle), will feature a few key characters based on the struggle Ms. Gene Miles waged against corruption throughout her life (1930-1972). This piece of street theatre will be presented in the circle from time to time as the band proceeds along its merry way. MISS MILES, A Band On Corruption, continues the A Band On . . . series with which Lordstreet Theatre Companystarted in 1990. MISS MILES, Mas Corruption, a LORDSTREET LiME for street, is produced by Lordstreet and Break-a-Leg Productions. 

MISS MILES - The Face of Carnival 2014 http://jouvayinstitute.blogspot.com/2014/01/miss-miles.html

Minshall back as designer this year

By Gillian Moore

Veteran masman Peter Minshall is making a return to Carnival with Lordstreet Theatre’s band for Carnival 2014, Miss Miles, A Band On Corruption. The small band, conceived by Tony Hall, was inspired by ongoing work around his play, Miss Miles, the Woman of the World, starring Cecilia Salazar. The band—men, women and children—will portray the lead character, the late anti-corruption activist and 70s fashion icon Gene Miles. And Peter Minshall is designing the mas. When

Peter Minshall

Hall told the veteran masman about his idea for the band, showing him photos from a Miss Miles-themed Woodford Square protest for World Anti-Corruption Day last December, he never expected him to come back with sketches and the desire to design costumes. “He got excited about it,” Hall told the T&T Guardian. “He understood the intrinsic nature of the mas.”

In Hall’s concept, Miss Miles, A Band On Corruption, is the addition of a new character to “the pantheon” of traditional mas mainstays of T&T Carnival. “How come we stopped creating Carnival characters in 1955?” Hall asks, alluding to World War II-inspired mas archetypes like sailors and firemen. He feels that art is being pushed out of the mas space, and wants to see it return. He thinks Miles has the makings of a new traditional mas for our times. “She has all the physical characteristics to make a character,” he said. “She is political. She is elegant; she is a fashionista. She is anti-corruption. She is international; she’s a world character,” and like all archetypal Carnival characters, midnight robbers, etc, Hall says: “she is in all of us.” Hall said Miss Miles was a call to participants to embrace their “inner Miss Miles”, taking a stance against corruption. “We will find our strength to deal with corruption, find political resistance.”
 

It’s not Lordstreet’s first foray into the Carnival space. They started out as an Old Mas outfit with A Band On Drugs in 1990. They worked on the idea along with Errol Fabien, drawing on his experience with addiction and rehabilitation. “It was a placard mas,” he says, with participants doing tongue-in-cheek portrayals of different aspects or phases of drug addiction. He described one costume that had socks attached all over, and a sign that read “Sock Addict”. “It started out with just a few people,” he says, “but on J’Ouvert morning, there were more than we could count.”
After that, Lordstreet teamed up with the Rape Crisis Centre for A Band on Violence, and then presented A Band On US, exploring the theme of cultural imperialism in 1992. Rapso band 3Canal is working on co-ordinating the band and has contributed their song, Corruption, as the theme.
 

Salazar is also a coordinator and designer Meiling has come on board to supervise production. According to Hall, the Gene Miles character was played while she lived by people commenting on the political scene at the time, with costumes like The Minister’s Girl. He said she herself played a Gene Miles mas. “She had that kind of objectivity about herself. It wasn’t self-centredness or arrogance; it was a kind of gift of seeing. Hall’s play, Miss Miles the Woman of the World, will return to the Little Carib Theatre on March 8 and 9, right after Carnival, so “she can greet and chat with her friends one more time before she goes back up. she hopes to have a nice, clean Carnival with all her friends.”

Miss Miles, A Band On Corruption, is produced by Lordstreet and Break-a-Leg Productions. It will be based from Tuesday at 33 Murray Street, Woodbrook.
For more info call: 1-868-681-7475; email info@lordtreet.net ; or, follow the band on Facebook: Miss Miles - Mas Corruption
Webpage: http://jouvayinstitute.blogspot.com/2014/01/miss-miles.html

SOURCE:Trinidad Guardian