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maltatoday | SUNDAY •26 DECEMBER 2021 4 THEATRE Oliver Friggieri: a life worth MARIA THEUMA WHO was Oliver Friggieri? To anyone with an interest in Mal- tese literature, that question is an important yet oblique one. He was, of course, a man who received great acclaim in his lifetime; canonically, his pres- ence in the Maltese imagina- tion felt practically complete and atmospheric, way before his death. Much like the so-called greats of any country's literary legacy, his figure tends to get caught between reality and mythos. He features in the yearly class- room checklists of Maltese language syllabi and textbooks; fragments of his 'Jekk' poem are a familiar sight, displayed on the hundreds of bus shelters across the islands; his novel- to-screen adaptation of It-Tfal Jiġu bil-Vapuri, as serialised on local television, has been wide- ly watched; the documentaries and discussions around his person and work are manifold in scholarly and mediatic fora. Most of us can recap the main aspects that marked Friggieri's life, give or take a few details: in his youth he received an education at the Archbishop's Major Seminary that prepared him for the prospects of priest- hood, only for him to leave the seminary and turn his academ- ic attention to the study of the arts and humanities; he wrote prolifically—novels, poetry, literary criticism, philosophy, pamphlets, newspaper arti- cles; he led the establishment of Maltese literary academia. During his time as Professor of Maltese Literature at the University of Malta, drones of students flocked to the lec- ture halls that he stood in dai- ly and, for decades, his name featured in the acknowledge- ment and dedication pages of the countless dissertations and theses that he supervised. When he passed away, in No- vember 2020, he was given a state funeral on a day of na- tional mourning; tides of grief came rushing in from all spec- tra of society and, with them, the eulogies, the memories, the proclamations of gratitude, in- exorable and assured. With O., Teatru Malta, in co-production with Teatru Manoel, reclaim and reconsid- er this biographical narrative, digging their heels into the pregnant messiness of inter- pretation that follows when the depth of literature gets read alongside and is allowed to merge with the life and hu- manity of its writer. In their role as Malta's national the- atre company, Teatru Malta are known for their prowess in taking a story and transporting it to an experimental set-up without losing sight of its core tenets. This time, for O., Teat- ru Malta have shifted their fo- cus and efforts to the genre of dance-theatre. As the performance pro- gramme informs us, O. op- erates in the manner of bi- ographical theatre, but not quite. "This is not a tribute, nor is it a critical analysis. This is not a night of remembrance, or a collection of professor Ol- iver Friggieri's best work. This is O.," artistic director Sean Buhagiar asserts in his note. In this sense, O. sits with the im- posed monumentality of Frig- gieri's personhood but rejects the clarity of linear biography, allowing its protagonist to ex- ist in plurality. Selected writings that draw from an array of Friggieri's lit- erary and critical works—snip- pets from his poetry, novels, autobiography, articles and reviews, among other things— are brought together to form an emotionally-charged patch- work of the conflicting fates that Friggieri saw for himself and the world around him, all of which is presented across separate sequences with ti- tles that define the topic and theme—Dun Karm, Poem, Environment, Faith, Life/ Death, Nation/Politics, Stu- dent and, finally, Epilogue— offering glimpses into Frig- gieri's various obsessions such as poetry, religion, mortality and national identity. A com- mon thread runs throughout: Friggieri knew better than to blindly trust his writerly in- stincts. In each sequence, we find him deep in introspection, questioning his every own in- tention, suspecting every feel- ing. It is for this exemplary self-awareness, O. reminds us, that we read Friggieri. For the performance's en- tire duration, speaking and