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Interview with Steve Oudit

The National Drama Association of Trinidad and Tobago recently launched their new logo. In this conversation with Christopher Cozier , the creator of the new NDATT logo Steve Oudit talks about the concept.

It is not surprising that Steve Oudit was asked to design the logo for the National Drama Association. His illustrational posters for the Baggasse Company have caused as much controversy as the theatrical productions, which taunt our latent Victorianism. His posters have been torn down by nuns, his "fertility man" made the Carifesta officials nervous and his recent ad design for The Mind with the Dirty Man was censored before publication.

In keeping with his desire to fuse high design with indigenous street lyrics as well as test the limits for taboo subjects such as race and sexuality, or which is really serious art in this society, his images always present us with a challenge ...

CHRISTOPHER COZIER: Give us some idea of what's happening.

STEVE OUDIT: Once I got the commission, I thought it better for me to do it how I have been approaching most of the work recently. I am trying to get closer to my own drawing style; an activist drawing style. If you look at this particular image you can see that it has similar threads to the Carifesta images. So the attempt was to make a form that looks like it belongs here.

When I say so I am not referring specifically to Trinidad; I am talking regionally. That is why I went after a strange style, a very strange form, a very strange expression. About representing drama, most times for Theatre Arts you will find the two faces: tragedy and comedy. I wanted to get away from that. I wanted a bit more gesture and action. I wanted to locate it some place here, where I feel that drama is more at home, more relevant.

If you look at the relationship between the head and the body and where the head meets the body, one can see the head does not belong, the real head of the figure is behind a mask.

CC: That is why the eye seems so transfixing.

SO: The eye is a focal point. What I wanted to do is to highlight some of the things that I feel are lacking in the theatre, such as the visual, the need to see, because I feel there's very little that's exciting visually. I thought there was a need to open up the eye of it, OK.?

CC: What are the hand gestures?

SO: One is kind of energetic, like bye, and so the energy is directed outward, and the other one tries to pull the energy back in, so it's like the violent gesture and the gentle gesture. You see something like this happening in the Hindu tradition.

CC: Why do you have this kind of small pointy bottom sticking out?

SO: The attempt was to costume the character and leave some part of the character open, so the hands are open. I use some form of geometry to suggest that it's a symbol and not necessarily about realism.

Top of page for next column ...

Original design by Steve Oudit

SO: If you look carefully, it seems like the figure is standing forward or just about to go backward or spin around.

CC: The heart?

SO: Well, is heart, lip or blurb. My feeling was that the National Drama Association of Trinidad and Tobago, with a name like that ought to try to represent something that addresses the inertia of our drama. It is just the cliché of talking from the heart. It is about words you really mean, language and dialogue that you think is really worthwhile.

CC: The lines underneath?

SO: There was no line underneath. As I looked at it more and more I felt that he wanted to walk, to backwards in space, jump or dance, I felt that it was working around in a repetitive pattern. I could see 100 of those across a wall. So the line could be like stage.

CC: The black and red, let's talk about that now.

SO: Again, my chosen area is in popular art, a mass market where the people's idea and education about art is not about reproducing the accepted institutions in 'fine art. So when I said speaking from the heart, I really meant that. That's which I painted the heart red. I went straight to it. The thing that I found to be worthwhile was that I was able to tilt the heart and still make it read. A lot of people are reading it as a heart but it could be bulbous lips. I meant it to be both heart and an extension of the lips; they become very very bulbous - it's like a steups or when you say something and pout your lips after.

CC: The face is very much a doll's face. Why a doll mask?

SO: Interesting, that you say a doll. It was not my intention for it to look like a doll. I wanted to change the scale so that the head was much larger than the body, because I feel it represents the responsibilities of the people who are making theatre over here. They carry around a lot of information, they have to make it available, accessible and visible. So, I used the mask as that weight, that burden.

Again, I was looking for a style that I feel would belong here. More and more now, I am looking at what might be considered outsider, folk, tribal or art of the region. The region includes Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, South America. I was very impressed by the kind of masks they are doing, the kind of representation.

It's Creole, but there's also African, Amerindian influence ... like a totem pole.

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