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Tony Hall (1948–2020) and
Dennis “Sprangalang” Hall (1949–2020)
Attillah Springer on the lives and legacies of T&T’s Hall brothers, legends of the stage and TV screen, who died less than six months apart Photo by Bruce Paddington
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t was as if the universe knew that what we needed was an army of cultural workers. That those visionary leaders could not succeed without people to first imagine a region after the colonisers. How were we, without a shot being fired, without our or their blood being spilt, supposed to turn our backs on our colonial mindset and get on with the business of being sovereign? They could not possibly do it on their own. We, this Trinidad and Tobago, this Caribbean region, needed an army that could wield the word with enough precision that we wouldn’t need to resort to violence to confront our demons. It was as if the universe knew that this region would not survive without an armour made of the finest mettle of cultural confidence. We already knew the power of the calypsonian. And poets had walked on the frontline of 1970, making jail along with the leaders of the marches. It fit that theatre was also important. It fit that plays about us became essential, that the theatre director could pivot to the playwright, that the performance could pivot to an idea of a process that centred us, our bodies as instruments of communication. And if I think now of all the work that Tony Hall and Dennis Hall did, perhaps what they did best was find ways to communicate to us our specialness. That they were expected to do this work of helping us define who we are with minimum support from those who reaped maximum benefit from their efforts is the great tragi-comedy of the arts in the region.
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These days, as we try to cut culture down into saleable parts, we cannot possibly imagine what it must have been like to live the lives that Dennis Hall and Tony Hall lived. How they could have done so much of their life’s work without ever being properly compensated. How they inherited a family business, as if the arts were like a hardware store or a law practice, replacing their father eventually on the stage at Naparima College, where he was a teacher, and backstage working the lights, and in front directing the plays, helping another generation make sense of themselves. What is important to note is that they were not alone. There were similar efforts at building cultural confidence happening in other parts of the country, all across the region. In other families, people were reconnecting to the skills they grew up seeing. The stickfighting and the drum-making and the storytelling, the rituals involved in staging Ramleela. For my generation, those of us who were born post–1970 Black Power and pre–1990 coup, there was a decade of awakening that was marked by that army of cultural workers. The Hall brothers were part of that army, appearing on the frontline known as Gayelle. Inside the people TV, with one television station, we watched ourselves every Thursday night. Transfixed that people who looked like us could be the stars. Consider these two men as excellent communicators, in such similar and radically different ways. Tony with the quiet certainty. Tony the ubiquitous presence, unrepentant scholar without a PhD to make him the official property of any institu-
