Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1021976
4 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 2 SEPTEMBER 2018 THIS WEEK ART Stitching has been a long time coming, and not for the most savoury of reasons either. How does it feel to finally be allowed to stage this play? It HAS been a long time coming in- deed. Ten years is a long time – espe- cially when you're in court. Feelings are mixed if I am to be honest. I'm exceedingly happy that we won – it was an important case and important discussions came out of it. Ours was the last play to ever be banned in the whole of Europe, and because of this case we now no longer have theatre censorship on the island. On the other hand, expectations for this play are high and I'm petrified! However I can't deny that it IS fun to re-explore a play after a decade. My understanding of it is deeper and it's remarkable how it stands the 'test of time', as it were. It's exceedingly well written and we haven't had to change anything other than a single sentence, even though we're ten years older as the characters. Looking back on it, what would you say were some of the most significant reasons for Stitching to be censored? And beyond the shameful political implications of the censorship itself, why do you think this play ruffled feathers in particular? I think it was a reaction to theatri- cal productions, more specifically Unifaun Theatre productions, going down the 'in-yer-face' theatre path. I think it was a knee-jerk reaction on the part of the board of classifica- tion which turned into a ridiculous witch-hunt. It was the wrong play to pick on. The play is immensely moral at heart – it's a harrowing journey granted, but the heart is pure. The harsher parts are not gratuitous, they are the products of a mind and soul that are not very healthy and are try- ing to make sense of an awful tragedy. I'm afraid I can't say more for fear of spoilers! However, the reasons given for ban- ning the play were two utterances of It is, at the heart of it, simply a story about a woman being emotionally rent apart by a tragedy. But from its status as a 'cause celebre' of the local censorship saga in the late noughties, the Unifaun Theatre production of Anthony Nielson's Stitching has already secured a unique role in the history of the Maltese stage. TEODOR RELJIC speaks to actress Pia Zammit as the production finally gets ready for its local debut at the Teatru Manoel Studio Theatre The art of coming undone Pia Zammit and Mikhail Basmadjan finally face each other on stage for Stitching – the play at the centre of the Maltese censorship row back in the noughties