For educator and visual and performing artist Dr Danielle Elliott, there is no “going downhill” at age 50.
Instead, she intends to fulfil her dream of performing a one-woman show, From Belmont to Brooklyn…And Back, in her persona of Danielle Debonair, at Kafe Blue (formerly Kaiso Blues), Wrightson Road, Port of Spain on July 28.
“For me this half-century year is pivotal. Putting something out with vulnerability, with courage, fulfilling my dream. I really wanted other people to see all parts of that. What is your dream that you’ve been holding on to? Go ahead and try it.
“Even the way we think about ageing in Trinidad and Tobago is different than elsewhere. Sometimes people start to talk about ‘going down’ when they reach 50 or 60.
"I don’t think that has to be the case. It could be a time to begin something, to try something new, be inspired by your own life and see, in turn, what other lives you can inspire.”
In From Belmont to Brooklyn…And Back – A One-Woman Show, Elliott is playing different characters of varying genders and ages.
She describes it as a humorous and thought-provoking journey of self-discovery.
She said the longer she lives the more she wants to give life advice and tell people what she has learned, but in a gentle way that is not condescending, so people can take from it whatever they can and use, and leave the rest.
Elliott told WMN she has always shared funny or dramatic things that happened to her with others, in person and on social media.
“It was not until I was in the US in grad school that I realised a lot about who I am as a Trinidadian and as a person from the Caribbean. It was when somebody said, ‘Wow, your life is so anecdotal. It’s the way you tell it,’ that I started to notice that’s a Trini thing.
"We really are storytellers and dramatic people.”
She said she always loved performing.
She got her first taste in Sunday school and later in theatre classes at Bishop Anstey High School, and, throughout the years, it remained an interest and passion.
As an English literature professor, she found ways to make a moment theatrical when she lectured or gave a talk, or ways to get on a stage.
She also thought abstractly about doing her own show, rather than looking for plays and shows by others that were expressions of herself and her interests.
In 2008, she started solidifying her ideas about that future show.
She began collecting her and other people’s anecdotes and stories – the good and the bad, the big and the seemingly insignificant, even Carnival stories – as she believes life, what goes into making a person who they are or will become, is fascinating.
And she is curious what would come out if people stopped to take stock of their lives.
At the beginning of the pandemic in TT, during the lull of lockdowns, she, like many others, took the time to reflect on herself and her life.
“When TT opened up, it was a kind of metaphor for me, maybe I should be opening up about my show too. And I really wanted to get it done before my 50th birthday on August
