 In 1962 the family went to live in Trinidad and Slade Hopkinson joined Derek Walcott's Trinidad Theatre Workshop and was a celebrated Corporal Lestrade in Dream on Monkey Mountain.He studied at the Yale Drama School on a Rockefeller scholarship between 1965 and 1966, taught at the University of Guyana (1966–68), then returned to the TTW.However, by 1970 there was a falling out with Walcott and he founded the Caribbean Theatre Guild in 1970.