Mad rush

Rohandra John

TIGHT SQUEEZE: People jostle each other to get through the gates at the western entrance of the Culture Ministry’s head office at Jerningham Avenue, Bemont, where free tickets were being distributed yesterday, on a first-come, first-served basis for a cultural presentation entitled: “Dance Me Lover” to be staged by the National Theatre Arts Company of Trinidad and Tobago. The show will be held at the auditorium of the newly-built National Academy for the Performing Arts on the Princes Building Grounds, Port of Spain, on Saturday and Sunday.-Photo: JERMAINE CRUICKSHANK

Droves of people yesterday crowded the pavements at the Ministry of Community Development and Culture’s head office on Jerningham Avenue, Belmont, in a mad rush for free tickets to the first cultural presentation that will be hosted at the multi-million-dollar National Academy for the Performing Arts next weekend.

Outside the Naparima Bowl in San Fernando, people also lined up for tickets for the command performance of Dance Me, Lover by the National Theatre Arts Company of T&T at the Academy.

Members of the public were invited to collect free tickets-two per person-for the event at the Academy, which will be officially opened tomorrow.

Several people who waited patiently in line yesterday in Port of Spain, braving the scorching mid-morning heat to get tickets, said they were more interested in going to see the ’great Academy’ than they were in the cultural presentation.

A number of them told the Sunday Express they ’were dying to see what the inside’ of the massive structure looks like, having only been able to see its exterior for the past several months. Others said they would be looking to see whether their tax dollars had been ’well spent’.

’I not so much interested in the shows. I want to see what inside the Academy is like. From outside, it looks beautiful, and it is a great building, but I want to see what the ambience is like. I think that is why a lot of people may be going to the shows,’ St James resident Simone Chin Choy said after she exited with her tickets yesterday. She said she was surprised at the number of people she saw waiting in line for tickets when she arrived at the Ministry’s office around 9.45 p.m.

In advertisements published in the press last week, the Ministry said tickets were to be distributed to the public from 10 a.m., but yesterday, people showed up at its office on Jerningham Avenue from as early as 8 a.m.

By 9.45 a.m., there was a long line of people, some with umbrellas, standing at the gate at the western end of the building’s car park entrance, where they were required to wait. That line soon stretched past the Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago Ltd (TSTT) building, also located on Jerningham Avenue, as the morning progressed, and the pavements became crowded.

The lone security guard and a Ministry of Health employee, Clarence Baptiste, who said he was asked to assist with manning the gate at the western entrance, had their hands full as they struggled to keep the crowd under control. Baptiste was often heard pleading with the crowd to act responsibly and to exercise more discipline.

Some people knocked the Ministry for not putting a better ticketing system in place. One member of the public, who did not wish to be identified, said it was unfair that after waiting for ’so long outside the gate’, people were required to join another line once inside the compound, before they got to the area where the tickets were being distributed. Others questioned why a numbering system had not been put in place.

Efforts to contact the Ministry’s communications manager, Aleem Khan, for comment yesterday proved futile.