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maltatoday SUNDAY 21 JANUARY 2018 31 This Week Was there anything in particular about this version of Antigone that attracted your attention and made you want to commit to the project wholeheartedly? Maybe it's my age. An adapta- tion of Sophocles' great play set in Nazi-occupied France appeals to me – after all I was born only a decade after the end of WWII. The Anouilh adaptation, while follow- ing the Grecian Lines, makes the analogy between what was going on in France at the time very clear and abundantly poignant. When Tyrone told me that he would be re-transposing Antigone to a Vic- torian circus, I immediately got visions of a pulsatingly passionate, Pagliacci-type interpretation, and I was hooked. What do you make of the team behind the project, and are they in line with your ideas about where to take the staging of new theatrical material on the island? I know Tyrone to be extremely intellectual, however his collabo- rators will balance this trait with a strong appeal which will ensure that this 4,000-year-old play will survive for perhaps another 4,000! It is the timelessness of Greek thea- tre which has ensured that these wonderful works by Euripedes, Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Aris- tophanes are still relevant today as they were in the great competition of Olympia – I am a classicist by nature and yes, I strongly believe that the Manoel Theatre should be the flagbearer to introduce yet an- other generation to the wonderful world of classical drama. In a sense, this particular version of the classic Greek story will be a reinterpretation of a reinterpretation. How do hope the local audience responds to these "layers" of the production? The reinterpretation of an inter- pretation doesn't worry me. The message is clear, the emotions pris- tine and the beauty of the language is palpable. Great works of art con- tinually renew themselves and dra- ma which deals with the vagaries, eccentricities, deviations of human nature, remains as basically as un- changed as we are ourselves: we re- act to jealousy, frustration, venge- ance and all other human emotions today, just as our antecedents did thousands of years ago! Not too long ago, you commen- ted on how challenging it was to cast roles in the local theatrical context, which led to some ripples of discontent in the scene. Do you still hold to what you said, and if so, how do you think the situation can be remedied? Since my "infamous" interview which was part of an overview of what I was experiencing as Artistic Director of the Manoel, we have in fact made some great strides in the right direction. One of these im- provements was the establishment of Teatru Malta. Still, I feel we need to improve the situation. We need to have more classical plays and by classical I mean literary plays – Shakespeare, Marlowe, Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello, Lorca, Ver- ga, etc... the selection is truly vast. People in Malta have such lim- ited access to this genre of the arts that it suffers from all-round neglect – audience development and education is of paramount importance – we simply cannot go on with the mentality that our annual visit to the panto at Christ- mastime is the be-all-and-end-all of our dramatic experience! Far from it. There are plenty of excel- lent actors around in Malta – I have no need to be convinced of this fact – it is however a situa- tion where only a of years ago, the national theatre was wholly de- pendent on independent theatre companies to provide its dramatic productions, season in season out. This led to a commercialisation of drama in the sense that, under- standably, dramatic companies would stage comedies and popular hits to ensure that their box office income would be commensurate with their risk and efforts. The lit- erary standards consequently got lower and lower. This is what I would like to turn around. And my original remark was prompted by the fact that nowadays all actors seemed to prefer acting in TV dra- mas than in something by Anouilh, Beckett, Miller or Pinter – I hark back to the golden years of Maltese Theatre when in the 70s and 80s the Atturi Theatre Group, regu- larly presented plays like Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf?, Crime on Goat Island, Hedda Gabler and other great literary masterpieces that certainly took their audiences out of their comfort zones. In those days, Atturi played to packed, en- thusiastic and appreciative audi- ences! What has changed so radi- cally since then? What is the next step for original theatrical productions at the Manoel Theatre? I have every intention of resusci- tating the "scene" created by Atturi at the Manoel Theatre and I hope that together we can create theat- rical masterpieces that will inter- nationalise our annual calendar in the field of drama. We have other productions in the pipeline notably Arthur Miller's great masterpiece The Crucible and also the third of Spettur Bonnici Saga by Stagun Teatru Malti, Grokk Teatru 'Baxx Baxx' and we are preparing an even more varied dramatic programme for 2018/2019 season which will be around shortly. Looking ahead while looking back and enjoyable games com- pletely autonomously. He has designed a system called AN- GELINA which is basically an AI that makes games. He also writes The Saturday Paper, a summary of an academic games paper for a developer audience. The keynote speakers kick- start the event and inspire the gamers by teaching them a key aspect of their field. The funny thing about a game jam is that it condenses the pro- cess of making a game into 48 hours, but essentially the pro- cess is very similar. You need to coordinate the various as- pects of the game within the time frame. As the 48th hour approaches you also need to make the decision about what you need to cut from your original idea, just as an AAA company has to strive to the release date and decide what they can safely cut from what they have promised. Matt Binkowski's talk 'How we balanced Dying Light and how I fucked it up' will be just as relevant for someone in AAA as someone mak- ing a game at the game jam. The keynote speakers also do a round of all the Game Jam teams and provide feedback, which hopefully inspires and also allows the jammers to see how industry would perceive their ideas. In addition to their spe- cific expertise the presence of the keynotes themselves and their interaction with the jammers is a huge network- ing experience that happens in an informal setting, but at the same time very focused on the topic at hand. In previ- ous years, some keynotes have even expressed interest in col- laboration or investment into some of the talent at the Malta Game Jam. What do you hope visitors will get from this year's edition of the Game Jam? "How can I get into the in- dustry?" is a common question at our events and almost with- out fail the answer provided is: "Make a game." So above all we hope that the visitors of this year's edition get a game out of their jam. It might not seem like a lot, but having a completed project, however rough it may be, is worth a lot. Another thing ; we'd like visitors to get new multi-disciplinary contacts, making it easier for them to pursue their game creation projects in the future. So many different and divergent roles need to come together for games and it isn't always easy for these silos of expertise to interact. We hope that at the Game Jam play can meet art and science. Antigone will be staged at the Manoel Theatre, Valletta on February 2-4 at 20:00. Directed by Tyrone Grima, the play features Sharon Bezzina in the lead role. Bookings: http://www. teatrumanoel.com.mt/ The Malta Global Game Jam 2018 will be taking place on January 26 to 28 at the Institute for Digital Games, University of Malta. For more information and to register your participation, log on to: http://maltagamejam. institutedigitalgames.com/. Event poster designed by Guillermo Ortego Manoel Theatre Artistic Director Kenneth Zammit Tabona: "The Manoel Theatre should be the flagbearer to introduce another generation to the world of classical drama" The Manoel Theatre's Artistic Director Kenneth Zammit Tabona sits down with TEODOR RELJIC to discuss Antigone – a new production of Jean Anouilh's Antigone, which transposes the Sophocles tragedy into wartime France... and which will hopefully herald a new era of classic drama at the Manoel Sharon Bezzina and Mariele Zammit in Antigone – directed by Tyrone Grima and driven by a 'Victorian Circus' aesthetic