Rondell Mungal

Bachelor of Arts, Theatre Arts with Music and Psychology

First Class Honours

Faculty of Humanities and Education

Deprivation was a foreign concept to Rondell Mungal in spite of his humble beginnings because of his parents’
love and dedication to ensuring that their two sons were provided for. That love and dedication, coupled with
their diligence to working for a better future, saw their family move from living in a small wooden structure to
a split-level concrete structure, and exemplified for Rondell the values of hard work and love, and how he’d
been fortunate to be born into such a family.

In Naparima College, he found his passion for the arts, and made and executed a plan: he would pursue the
sciences throughout Forms 4-6, win a national scholarship, then study music at university. A wavering in his
certainty saw him switching from his BA Musical Arts degree to a Practitioner’s Certificate in Theatre Arts so he
could have time to figure his path out. Instead, he discovered that storytelling was his calling and singing was
his medium. With no desire to abandon music, when he enrolled in the BA Theatre Arts programme, he
minored in Music with a focus on vocal performance.

The UWI, while not his first choice of university, became the one that he needed to truly understand his
Caribbean-ness and to take pride in his Trinbagonian identity. Through the Student Exchange programme
offered by the Division of Student Services and Development, he was able to learn to compare his time in a
North American university to his time in UWI and found no less enrichment at The UWI.

His most memorable UWI experiences are all ones he describes as “spiritual in their own way”: taking in
Kambule at 5 am on the Piccadilly greens, attending an Orisha Fest at midnight in Central Trinidad, performing
Carmina Burana and Requiem with the UWI Arts Chorale, backed by a full steel orchestra, and listening to Dr
Dani Lyndersay’s tales of her global travels, to name a few. He describes also an almost transcendental
experience of being exhausted on the Department of Creative and Festival Arts’ steps, laughing with friends
and, in a single fleeting moment of stillness, being filled with love and gratitude for his comrades.

Rondell’s concept of what it is to “Be UWI” was influenced by his inspirational figures and lecturers – wearing
your Caribbean-ness with pride, “daring to be messy in the pursuit of higher standards of innovation and
excellence and being bold and unapologetic as I take up space”. His plans for the future involve graduate study,
travel, and contributing to the growth of regional creative industries, with ample room for the unwritten.