The Cleaner and the Queen A lesson in intercultural communications

Okay. Call me a prude. But when comedienne Deborah Maillard asked the IABC T&T’s conference speaker, Angela Sinickas, whether “she picked up a rasta man” during her diving trip in Tobago, I wanted the seat in Queen’s Hall to open up and fold me in.

Frankly, I didn’t know if I should have laughed out loud or cringed. Had Maillard gone too far? Before I answer, here’s the context.

Californian based Angela Sinickas, is regarded as the queen of measurement and one of the most recognised global voices on measuring the return on investment (roi) on communications and PR programmes. She travels the world consulting and fulfilling speaking engagements. She is white and bilingual; she speaks both Spanish and English

Trinidadian-born Maillard is an accomplished entrepreneur. That’s her day job but most of us know her as a dramatist and comedienne, Philomena, an irrelevant cleaning lady who muses on life. It was in this context that Deborah aka Philomena was hired by IABC T&T.

We wanted an act that would be funny enough to break the ice after lunch inertia and we asked Philo to assume the character of cleaner in a communications department of a large firm searching for ROY (a play on the word ROI, return on investment). The objective of the skit would be to use laughter to make the audience understand the concept of measurement.

Oh, I forgot to mention that like Angela, Philomena is also bilingual. She speaks English as well as a really fantastic Trinidadian dialect. It was over this that we could have committed our biggest intercultural communications faux pas.

You see Philomena spent ten minutes on the Queen’s Hall stage poking fun at Angela’s name (she called her Snickers), her American accent, her Spanish pronunciation. She didn’t let up. The crowd roared with laughter and so did I but when the sexual references popped out of Philomena’s mouth and it became a little too personal, that’s when I started to freeze. Being married to an Italian, I know all too well that in an intercultural environment one man’s joke is another’s insult.

To her credit, Angela never once flinched and actually, if the truth be told, she gave as good as she got. To Philo’s question about picking up a rasta man in Tobago, Angela chuckled, saying there was no need to since she had brought her own, referring to her Indian-born husband who is a film editor and accompanies her on her business trips. The conference participants felt comfortable laughing because Angela herself was so comfortable with the dialect and the humour.

I suppose that things turned out the way they did because our guest had been thoroughly briefed and was introduced to Philomena before the dramatist took the stage. At our post conference dinner, Angela said she couldn’t stop laughing during Philomena’s entire skit commenting “did you see the gold teeth in her mouth?”