Praise for Ellen O’Malley Camps

“…One such Renaissance figure is Helen (Ellen O’Malley) Camps… producer, director, writer actor…In 1982 she formally inaugurated the Trinidad Tent Theatre…Helen has taught theatrical, musical, dance and managerial skills to any number of apprentices, none of whom pay tuition fees.”

Jan Murray, Cosmopolitan – Caribbean Focus 1982

“Camps…Probably the only professional theatre director in the Caribbean, in fact wholly trained in the Caribbean, having had no training whatsoever in theatres abroad, has produced a new dramatic form out of the resources she found already around her.  What her Tent Theatre does is ‘Carnival Theatre’ – as new an art form as Minshall mas, as traditional in character as the original calypso.  Carnival theatre is theatre as entertainment, as serious political and social commentary, as comic and tragic drama using the traditional figures, costumes, dances, music and characters of Carnival to express the message or tell a story.  It sounds so simple and so obvious that you wonder why no one ever did it before …Carnival Theatre develops its plots through Midnight Robber, Pierrot Grenade, Jammette, Baby Doll, Dame Lorraine and so on, ensuring that the dances are traditionally correct and the characters authentic.  All art forms are born of and build on sources already there.  What is revolutionary is the vision and the creativity to take those sources and out of them create something wholly new. …However as we all know ‘a prophet is without honour…’ The Tent Theatre – exemplifying one of the few wholly and uniquely Trinidadian art forms to be developed this century – has had to take down its canvas tent, its home in the Hollows.”

Diana Mahabir, Express Newspaper, 1986

“Camps could be said to have carried on and extended some of (Derek) Walcott’s roles.  Her Trinidad All Theatre Productions was used by Walcott to premiere his Pantomime at the Little Carib, April 1978… Her company also sponsored the Walcott-directed Remembrance at Bentley’s Hotel Normandie Dinner Theatre, July 1979 and for six weeks in 1982 she toured England and Europe with J’ouvert.  Such an international tour had always been a dream of Walcott for the Trinidad Theatre Workshop.  Camp’s use of folk and carnival characters and masks brought together the two approaches to West Indian theatre that Walcott and Errol Hill had argued about in the early 1960’s.  She had created an avant-garde Alternative Theatre.  Her strong personality and convictions, which made her a leader and achiever and one of the few members of the TTW who could stand up to Walcott, also made her, especially as a foreign, Irish, white woman unacceptable to many Trinidadians.  In February 1982, Beryl McBurnie accused Camps of ‘taking over’ the Little Carib and Camps resigned as director-manager.” 

Bruce King, Derek Walcott & West Indian Drama, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995

“Don’t expect gloss; the tent facilities are rough and ready, the players change stage-side out of oil-drums, everything is in view.  If Berthold Brecht had done it, the critics would be delirious.  In its rented tent, theatre is going back to basics, re-inventing a language and a vision.  And I think it is going to work.”

Theatre critic, Jeremy Taylor, 1984

“Camps…watched the oldest traditional characters of Carnival being pushed aside by the huge masked bands which now fill the streets in a colourful procession each year.  She worried about what would happen to the Midnight Robber and to Pierrot Grenade and their clever speechifying.  What would come of the dancing of Jab Molassi, the Minstrels and to the animal-and-rider Borokit?  For Camps the answer was to bring these old-time characters onto the formal stage, along with calypsonians and the steelband, in a new style of musical theatre that she calls Carnival Theatre… In all of her work, she is directly influenced by the colours and gaiety of Carnival, varied folk traditions, as well as rock and other popular music.  Perhaps she has started a new musical tradition… Helen’s canvas tent, pitched in Port-of-Spain, housed both her Carnival Theatre and his (Paul Keen-Douglas) Talk Tent”. 

Ken Corsbie, Theatre in the Caribbean, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1984

“She was the last great hope for theatre.”                  

Judy Raymond Trinidad Guardian May 28^th 2001

“The thing I would hope she’s honoured for is as an educator. She wasn’t just a teacher of theatre, she taught people how to live.  She taught them the possibilities; that it was possible to do it if they worked hard enough.”

Moving Spirit Of Theatre’s Shining Moment, Trailblazer, Tireless Organizer And Coach, Ellen O’Malley (Helen) Camps Honoured For Work On Trinidad & Tobago Stage