Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1547522
WHAT happens when a voice is taken from you? Not simply the ability to speak, but some- thing deeper: the confidence that your own story belongs to you. In Sittax, the new work by Dwal Ġodda Theatre Troupe, written and directed by Mar- tha-Marie Gauci, a woman is trying to find that voice again. Philomela has lived for years with something she cannot quite put into words. Follow- ing a moment of trauma, her voice has been violently ripped from her, and she is left to ne- gotiate the strange territory between remembering and forgetting, between the person she once was and the person she has become. The play begins after the event. That distinction mat- ters. There is no attempt to turn trauma into spectacle. Instead, Sittax asks what hap- pens in the long aftermath, when life is expected to con- tinue and yet something inside a person has remained sus- pended in time. Philomela's childhood friend returns to her story. He ques- tions her memories. He sug- gests that perhaps memory has become an excuse. She is forced to confront not only what she remembers, but the possibility that another person remembers the same past dif- ferently. And so the audience becomes part of the uncertainty. What happened to Philome- la when she was sixteen? Why has that memory remained so powerful? What happened be- tween these two friends? And how much of the past can ever be recovered once time has be- gun to reshape it? The answers emerge slow- ly, through what is said and, perhaps more importantly, through what remains unsaid. The journey back to herself is not made alone. As Philomela moves through the memories held by the cave, encounters with others begin to reveal something that the past has obscured: sometimes healing does not begin with an answer, but with another person will- ing to remain present. The production takes place inside the 13th-century caves of Ir-Razzett tal-Qasam in Manikata. Here, the landscape becomes part of the language of the play — a physical place in which memory, silence and voice meet. At 40 minutes, Sittax is de- liberately compact. It asks the audience to listen close- ly. Because perhaps the most difficult question is not what happened to Philomela. It is whether, after everything, she can still hear herself. Presented by Dwal Ġodda Theatre Troupe in collabora- tion with Koperattiva Rurali Manikata, performances take place on: Friday 20 November 2026 — 8.00pm Saturday 21 November 2026 — 7.00pm Sunday 22 November 2026 — 6.00pm The pathway leading to the caves is uneven. Comforta- ble, suitable footwear is rec- ommended. Seats are limit- ed. Booking: https://forms. gle/5hxAJDKszZhogLZG 8 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 11 NOVEMBER 2026 CULTURE Sittax: The voice that has to find its way home In Sittax, the new work by Dwal Ġodda Theatre Troupe, written and directed by Martha-Marie Gauci, a woman is trying to find that voice again Elle Borg and Peter Fenech