Peter Minshall
Peter Minshall, a Trinidadian artist and designer, revolutionized carnival arts with his bold, theatrical creations. Renowned for blending Caribbean tradition with global storytelling, he also designed the opening ceremonies for the 1992 Barcelona, 1996 Atlanta, and 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, cementing his legacy as a master of spectacle.
Plantain was commissioned to write a profile on him. Here is an extract:
The past is palpable with Minshall. He’s been unfolding his life’s stories at breakneck speed and, as if watching his own play—part adventure, part comedy, all drama—he often refers to himself in the third person: “I remember, Jackie Hinkson, Peter Minshall, these two skinny boys hanging over the bannister of the Antilles, looking back at the wharf. And there’s the Minshall clan,” he booms, pointing into the distance, “and there’s the Hinkson clan, and we’re waving goodbye. Jackie’s off to Paris to do painting, and me to London to join the Central School of Art and Design.”
In his mid-30s, Minshall got his big break designing for a major ballet production at London’s Sadler’s Wells. His mother is at the premiere as he receives a standing ovation and she seems to have been a potent force in her son’s life—when she summons him to design a Carnival costume in Trinidad for his 12-year-old sister, he simply agrees. From the Land of the Hummingbird takes five months to compose, explodes to life on stage, and Minshall is soon after, in 1976, invited to design his first mas band. For its artistic and technical considerations, for juxtaposing human energy with moral inspection, Paradise Lost signals a watershed moment in Carnival history. And the trajectory of Minshall’s career thereafter, you probably already know: Zodiac, Carnival of the Sea, Danse Macabre, Jungle Fever, Papillon, River, Callalloo, The Golden Calabash, Carnival is colour, Rat Race, Jumbie, Sans Humanité, Tantana …
Olympic and World Cup opening ceremonies followed, “But to me,” he hastens, “the real work was happening on Tragarete Road and Frederick Street.” He invites us further back. “I remember the first time I ever played J’Ouvert. I sewed a t-shirt for my head so there were only holes for my eyes and mouth, placed a German-imported wire mask over that, stuffed coconut fibre into a hairnet, dressed opaque stockings on my arms and feet, and put on my mother’s slippers, a handbag, and fan:
Dame Lorraine!
Down de Road!
4 o’clock Monday Morning!
Only much later you look back on it and think, 'My God… That was total liberation. Relieved. Completely. Of gender, age, race - a spirit form wandering among the crowds…’" He had had to leave Trinidad to realise that mas was art — “Our art” — and that it was no lesser than what he had trained for, whether for Sadler’s Wells, or the Shakespeare Company.
Unlike the designs that have characterised some of his costumes, Minshall’s home is austere: stripped of clutter and colour. White chairs, white cushions, white coffee table, white walls, no hangings. Else too many distractions? Perhaps. Looking around, everything’s been meticulously considered. Furniture and decor assiduously laid out along crisscrossing lines, as though observing imperceptible grids. The garden: a latticework of palms, benches, hanging plants, walkways, fountains, a gazebo, a colonnade, all giving way to a Samaan he planted himself on the far side: “This is the Real drama,” he delights, “I just needed the house to fit in with the tree!” We’ve been sitting on the porch for a couple of hours now. The sun has sunk, the roads of the world have grown dark, and the cacophony of parrots have given way to emphatic cicadas. We’re leaning in a little closer. He’s more at ease. He says so himself. Minshall is no longer delivering, as he is now confiding:
“I look back at River”—his 1983 Magnum Opus in which greed, Mancrab, triumphs over life and purity, Washerwoman—“and you have to ask yourself why it should remain so relevant today?" Carnival is dying, he feels, “and our children are selling themselves for a handful of coloured beads.” He fears for the country, as he does for the planet and the people on it. Trump, Khashoggi, climate change, crime… “I carry all that with me.’” He is an artist, he says, it comes with the territory.
It’s been brewing for a while now, it seems. “I’ve just got to do this,” he considers. “I have no choice. It will be difficult because the pillars that have always supported me - mas being a supremely collaborative art form - are gone. But I cannot not give it a try. This is a matter of duty. I have to do the biggest work of my life next carnival. End of story.”
He pulls out a sketch he’s working on. It is inspired by the Pietà, a subject in Christian art depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Christ. In his interpretation, however, Mankind lies dead from self-inflicted sins, and is cradled by a wounded Mother Earth. With Mas Pietà, Minshall is declaring a return to mas - a street opera in four acts:
First act: ‘Armageddon’.
Second act: ‘Ashes to Ashes’.
Third: ‘Over the Rainbow’ - a rhapsody of Garland and Armstrong’s classic, “Because yes, even in the world of Trump, I sometimes think it is a wonderful world…”
The fourth and final act? ‘Le Paradis Retrouvé.’
Horror, Pity, Love, Light: Mas Pietà is a big story to tell.
But how else will the world be compelled to wake up? Minshall wants little islands to have something to say, and he wants the world to know that little islands have something to say. Earlier, he read us a quote from one of his favourites, poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, whose words encapsulate Minshall’s appetite and aspirations: “The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves.”
Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Barcelona, 1992. Photo by Jordi Cotrina.
Barcelona Olympics opening ceremony. Photo Dieter Enliicher / AP