What be­gan as a dream on a re­hearsal room floor in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­came an in­ter­na­tion­al jour­ney that car­ried the voic­es of young per­form­ers, ed­u­ca­tors and the­atre prac­ti­tion­ers across the At­lantic and on­to sig­nif­i­cant stages for Shake­speare and the­atre.

Mil­waz Pro­duc­tions em­barked on its Road to Italy Tour 2026 from Ju­ly 9 to 26, tak­ing a del­e­ga­tion of 23 peo­ple, rang­ing in age from nine to 65, to the Unit­ed King­dom and Italy for a jour­ney of per­for­mance, ed­u­ca­tion, cul­tur­al ex­change and in­ter­na­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

From Oc­to­ber 8 to 19, the group will bring the spot­light back to home stages at the Na­pari­ma Bowl and the Tacarigua Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre with its an­nu­al Mil­waz Shake­speare Fes­ti­val.

This year’s fes­ti­val theme, The Lagniappe, takes its name from the Cre­ole word lagniappe, mean­ing a lit­tle some­thing ex­tra.

“The Road to Italy was nev­er just about get­ting to Italy,” Mil­waz founder and cre­ative di­rec­tor Janieka Tu­dor-Bap­tiste said.

“It was about tak­ing a dis­tinct­ly Trinida­di­an voice in­to the world. It was about young peo­ple dis­cov­er­ing that the lit­er­a­ture they en­counter in school can take them across bor­ders. It was about show­ing in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences that Shake­speare can live in Car­ni­val. And per­haps most im­por­tant­ly, it was about prov­ing that a dream con­ceived in Trinidad can find its place on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage with­out los­ing the pow­er of the orig­i­nal work.”

But an ex­pe­ri­ence such as that was not just hand­ed to the group on a plat­ter. They had to put in the work through re­hearsals, fundrais­ing cam­paigns, spon­sor­ship ef­forts, visa ap­pli­ca­tions, trav­el arrange­ments, cos­tumes, pro­duc­tion meet­ings and count­less mo­ments when the dream seemed big­ger than the re­sources avail­able to make it hap­pen due to a lack of lo­cal spon­sor­ship.

But the team con­tin­ued.

The tour grew out of Mil­waz Pro­duc­tions’ com­mit­ment to mak­ing lit­er­a­ture and the­atre ex­pe­ri­en­tial for young peo­ple.

“Rather than al­low­ing Shake­speare and oth­er lit­er­ary texts to re­main con­fined to ex­am­i­na­tion pa­pers and class­rooms, Mil­waz has built its work around the be­lief that stu­dents should be able to see lit­er­a­ture, hear it, per­form it and ex­pe­ri­ence it,” Tu­dor-Bap­tiste ex­plained.

That phi­los­o­phy, she said, be­came es­pe­cial­ly sig­nif­i­cant with Malvo­lio’s Mas­quer­ade, Mil­waz’s Caribbean reimag­in­ing of William Shake­speare’s Twelfth Night. Set against the vi­brant cul­tur­al world of Trinidad Car­ni­val, the pro­duc­tion ex­plored Shake­speare through fa­mil­iar Caribbean char­ac­ters, rhythms, move­ment, mu­sic and so­cial re­al­i­ties.

“In the Unit­ed King­dom, the del­e­ga­tion en­coun­tered Shake­speare not mere­ly as a school sub­ject but as a liv­ing in­ter­na­tion­al cul­tur­al tra­di­tion. The Lon­don ex­pe­ri­ence pro­vid­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­gage with the­atre, Shake­speare­an spaces, artists, ed­u­ca­tors and cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions while prepar­ing the del­e­ga­tion for the next stage of the jour­ney. Hun­dreds of peo­ple were ex­posed to Malvo­lio’s Mas­quer­ade through per­for­mances at Cana­da Wa­ter The­atre, Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, Blooms­bury The­atre, Trinidad and To­ba­go High Com­mis­sion, Colom­bo Cen­tre- Coin Street Com­mu­ni­ty and the V & A Mu­se­um, South Bank Cen­tre through JUST VIBEZ com­mu­ni­ty,” Tu­dor-Bap­tiste re­called.

In Verona, Italy, the home of one of Shake­speare’s most fa­mous imag­ined worlds, Mil­waz Pro­duc­tions rep­re­sent­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go at the World Shake­speare Con­gress, held this year as part of the 50th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions of the In­ter­na­tion­al Shake­speare As­so­ci­a­tion.

“For many of the young peo­ple who went on the tour, this was their first op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence in­ter­na­tion­al the­atre and cul­tur­al ex­change on this scale. They trav­elled not sim­ply as tourists, but as per­form­ers, learn­ers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Trinidad and To­ba­go. They en­coun­tered artists from dif­fer­ent coun­tries, ex­pe­ri­enced in­ter­na­tion­al the­atre spaces

and dis­cov­ered that the skills they had de­vel­oped in class­rooms and re­hearsal rooms at home could car­ry val­ue far be­yond T&T’s bor­ders.”

She said the com­pa­ny now stands at an im­por­tant point in its de­vel­op­ment: con­nect­ing its ed­u­ca­tion­al work in T&T with in­ter­na­tion­al the­atre, lit­er­ary and cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

“The ex­pe­ri­ence has cre­at­ed pos­si­bil­i­ties for fu­ture col­lab­o­ra­tions, in­ter­na­tion­al per­for­mances, cul­tur­al ex­changes and ed­u­ca­tion­al part­ner­ships. It has al­so strength­ened Mil­waz’s vi­sion of po­si­tion­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go as a place where Shake­speare, Caribbean per­for­mance and lit­er­ary ed­u­ca­tion can meet in in­no­v­a­tive ways.”