We’re at the end of our fourth week of the Dundas-UNESCO Summer Intensive, and participants have experienced a wide range of instruction, from what goes on behind the scenes to new approaches to acting. As usual, Erin, our Project Manager, has pulled together a video of participants’ comments on the week, and she also has photos to share.

The third week of our workshops has finished! Here’s another video update!!

The Dundas-UNESCO Summer Intensive is in full swing, having begun on June 16. We have photos to share, but I think that the best way to summarize the impact and achievement so far is through these two videos.

In 2022, the Dundas applied for a grant from the UNESCO International Fund for Cultural Diversity (IFCD). The purpose: to professionalize the theatre industry in The Bahamas. We narrowly missed being recommended for a grant.

In 2024, we tried again. This time we were successful!!

Our new AC system is starting to arrive.

First the condensers were removed. Then the ductwork for the new system arrived. More recently, the air handlers have also landed in Nassau.

So most nights for the past two weeks or so, workers from Coastal Air Conditioning have been at the WVS, installing the new ductwork. They’re working in the evenings and nights because, well, it’s cooler that way.

So the Black Box is getting a new foyer.

We moved the theatre door.

We took out the original benches.

We’re changing the colour and rebuilding the benches.

We have gutted the Black Box bathrooms.

One of the earliest things Brian said when looking at them was, there’s a lot of wasted space in them—specially in the Ladies.

So we are rebuilding them ground up and making them not only look better but accommodate more people at a time.

People who’ve known me for a while now I’ve been dreaming about a prop cage that can be locked up and accessed once agreements have been reached about what can be used, how, and for how long.

Well, we got it!! As we configured the auditorium and the backstage, we got our prop cage.

Patrons of the Dundas will know that one of the challenges with having a property as big as ours is keeping it secure. Once upon a time, the grounds were completely enclosed, with a wall at the front and a fence at the back. The fence, however, was damaged during Hurricane Matthew and was further compromised as people who lived to the east of Mackey Street used the Dundas as a shortcut to Palmdale or the food store. We tried to slow down that traffic by fencing off the back from the front of the property, but some of the neighbours came in and took the chainlink fences and gates for their own purposes.

We are now building a wall around the back of the property.

This is mostly a photo post to show, bit by bit, a little of what we’re doing in the Black Box. This shows activities at the end of May and the beginning of June. We’ve put in ceilings and we’ve reconfigured the foyer (you can’t see much of that here). Below is just a bit of a snapshot of how we rebuilt the theatre side of the PAB.