It is meant to be a spec­tac­u­lar show­case of the best of ca­lyp­so and mas, a pre­miere event that should be set­ting the pace for the two days of Car­ni­val that fol­low.

A show that ends with the crown­ing of the King and Queen of Car­ni­val and the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch should be the biggest event on the Car­ni­val Sun­day cal­en­dar, at­tract­ing ca­pac­i­ty crowds.

On pa­per at least, there should be high en­ter­tain­ment val­ue in a show that fea­tures what was ad­judged to be the 12 best ca­lyp­sos of the sea­son and the most out­stand­ing ex­am­ples of mas cre­ativ­i­ty and colour in the cos­tumes that cross the stage.

How­ev­er, for quite a few years, Di­manche Gras (Big Sun­day) has failed to live up to those ex­pec­ta­tions.

Sun­day’s pro­duc­tion, which start­ed at 7 pm and went on for more than six hours be­fore the win­ners were fi­nal­ly an­nounced, con­tin­ued a trend of long, drawn-out shows that do not tru­ly re­flect the best of T&T Car­ni­val.

It is time for the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), which has been pro­duc­ing the show in con­junc­tion with the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) and the T&T Car­ni­val Bands’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA), to ac­knowl­edge that the cur­rent Di­manche Gras for­mat does not work.

The tra­di­tion of a Car­ni­val Sun­day gala has ex­ist­ed for al­most as long as the fes­ti­val it­self and for many years it grew in scale and grandeur.

What is now known as the Di­manche Gras show start­ed many decades ago as a vi­gnette in the Car­ni­val Queen Show, then grad­u­al­ly evolved in­to a grand com­pe­ti­tion with singing and danc­ing in a daz­zling dis­play of the Car­ni­val arts.

The com­pe­ti­tion cur­rent­ly con­tains two crit­i­cal com­po­nents—ca­lyp­so and kings and queens of the bands—in a pro­duc­tion that seeks to har­ness and present all the el­e­ments of Car­ni­val in one spec­tac­u­lar show.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Di­manche Gras has lost its lus­tre and is in dan­ger of los­ing its place as the most an­tic­i­pat­ed event on Car­ni­val Sun­day.

There have been at­tempts to tweak the pro­duc­tion, in­clud­ing a con­tro­ver­sial and short-lived de­ci­sion to re­move the King and Queen com­po­nent and make it ex­clu­sive­ly a ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion. That proved to be a huge fail­ure.

Sev­er­al no­table artis­tic di­rec­tors have been in­volved in pro­duc­ing Di­manche Gras, some of whom came with im­pres­sive track records for ma­jor events. How­ev­er, they nev­er man­aged to repli­cate that suc­cess on the very chal­leng­ing Grand Stand stage at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Re­cent edi­tions of Di­manche Gras have been helmed by Davlin Thomas, an award-win­ning pro­duc­er and artis­tic di­rec­tor, who has been at­tempt­ing some lav­ish pro­duc­tions with large casts of dancers, mas­quer­aders and guest per­for­mances by lead­ing so­ca and ca­lyp­so stars.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, putting to­geth­er a large-scale pro­gramme more than six hours long at a venue that presents nu­mer­ous chal­lenges with light­ing, acoustics and vis­i­bil­i­ty, re­quires a fresh in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach.

The size of the Sa­van­nah stage and the fact that it is an open-air venue are not in­sur­mount­able chal­lenges. It is pos­si­ble to main­tain the spir­it of the show and dis­play the finest Car­ni­val tra­di­tions with new ideas, and out-of-the-box plan­ning to meet the de­mands of a mod­ern au­di­ence. Ide­al­ly, Di­manche Gras should be a three-hour pro­duc­tion of the high­est cre­ative and tech­ni­cal qual­i­ty. Need­less to say, we hope the stake­hold­ers will set aside time in the post-mortem for dis­cus­sion of this mat­ter so that 2026 will not meet us hav­ing this same dis­cus­sion.