How we met: ‘She was assured, fashionable – and beautiful’

After Wayne moved from the UK again to Trinidad within the mid-90s to work at an area paper, he wasn’t positive the place he wished his profession to go subsequent. “My mum is blended Trinidadian and Chinese language, and my dad is English,” he says. “I used to be introduced up in Trinidad however I’d been doing media research in Sheffield.” In addition to writing, he additionally beloved performing, and would typically carry out in native productions.

In 1997, he was forged in a play referred to as Jacques and His Grasp by Milan Kundera. That’s the place he met Louris, a psychology scholar who was performing in her spare time to make extra cash. “My first impression of Wayne was that he was humorous,” she says. He was at all times pulling faces and making jokes.” Though they have been each relationship different folks, they developed a friendship.

The present they have been engaged on was set in Seventeenth-century France and lots of scenes befell in a barn. “My character needed to climb into the granary and we’d at all times keep there chatting whereas we waited for our scenes,” says Wayne. The forged would additionally socialise collectively after rehearsals. “She was assured and fashionable. We stayed pals when the play was over. I received a job as a company copywriter and my workplace was close to the place she labored at a radio station as a manufacturing technician,” he says.

In 1999, Louris went to the UK for a spot 12 months, to work in theatres and acquire expertise in manufacturing and performing. When she returned, she and Wayne have been single. “I ran into him in a bar and he invited me again to his place for a drink. That’s the evening we received collectively,” she says. “I by no means anticipated to listen to from him once more, however he referred to as me just a few days later and requested me to go see a play with him.”

Realising how a lot they loved one another’s firm, they started relationship however it wasn’t lengthy earlier than Wayne was headhunted for a job in St Lucia because the artistic director of a advertising and marketing company. Across the similar time, Louris was supplied a fellowship in theatre training and outreach in Washington DC. They agreed the space can be too onerous for them to proceed a relationship, however they stayed in contact.

“At Christmas she invited me to DC. It was bitterly chilly however we had such a good time,” says Wayne. Within the new 12 months, Louris informed Wayne that she couldn’t face one other DC winter and wished to maneuver residence. “As an alternative of going again to Trinidad in the summertime of 2001, he prompt I be part of him in St Lucia,” she says. “I knew I wished to be with somebody inventive. Wayne can also be some of the safe males I’d ever dated; he’s so enjoyable and really clever.”

She determined to present it a go and her momentary transfer grew to become a two-year keep. “My mom was horrified. She was like: ‘You’re going to St Lucia to stay with some man!?’” she laughs. However Louris quickly realised she had made the fitting alternative.

In 2003, they moved again to Trinidad the place they received married and arrange a theatre firm collectively. They’ve two kids, born in 2007 and 2014. In addition to producing performs domestically, they supplied team-building and company theatre programmes till the pandemic slowed issues down in 2020. Louris is now a programme supervisor for a significant competition in Trinidad, whereas Wayne is a stay-at-home dad, in addition to an actor and playwright. “I really like Wayne’s sense of humour and the way he has at all times supported me in every little thing,” she says. “In 2010, my mom fell ailing and he or she died in 2014, only a week after my daughter was born. He helped me by means of all of that. I additionally suffered badly in being pregnant with extreme hyperemesis gravidarum, and he did every little thing for me whereas I used to be unwell.”

Wayne says they each come from “family-oriented” backgrounds and share the identical ardour for theatre and the humanities. “Louris is attractive however she’s additionally very supportive. We at all times discover a strategy to discuss what we’d like and make it work.”