Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/871892
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 10 SEPTEMBER 2017 30 This Week What were some of the initial ideas that led to Get Your Act Together? Did you notice a lack of engaged feedback for aspiring playwrights? Ever since I started working in Maltese theatre in 2003, I've noticed that it's been steadily evolving. The standard that au- diences have come to see and ex- pect has been steadily rising and even the way that companies are running their productions has been leaning towards the pro- fessional. Of course, there's still a fair way to go but we felt we'd be remiss if we didn't contribute to this evolution in some way. Currently, almost all local playwrights write plays as a pastime and consequently they have the luxury to work on pro- jects that are relevant to them that may however have a limited relevance. Even people such as myself who write full- time have the nature of our work dictated by potential audience appeal, with rel- evance often taking a back seat. One of the primary aims of Get Your Act To- gether is to commission and mentor playwrights that are ready to create works that are relevant while also being appealing to local and inter- national audiences. However the main objec- tive of the project is to alter the life cycle of locally-cre- ated theatre pieces. Cur- rently, a new play would be written either in Maltese or English and performed for be- tween one and three weekends before being put away – cutting off any further development prospects. Even your average play by Francis Ebejer, arguably Malta's most celebrated play- wright, is unlikely to have been performed more than 50 times at most since it was first writ- ten. This severely curtails the development process. Get Your Act Together aims to counter this first by having the plays written gradually over a number of drafts, and then having them performed at different regional theatres with a week in between each performance. This week would give the writer and pro- duction team time to respond to audience feedback and amend certain parts of the work. The idea is that by the end of the writing and performance peri- ods, the plays will be closer to being perfected, with a realistic potential for further develop- ment at international festivals. How do you hope that Get Your Act Together will offer something different in this sphere, than what has been offered by different entities in the past? Pretty much everything that Get Your Act Together offers has been already offered by other initiatives in the past – although not as a whole. There are already entities that com- mission specific works over a number of drafts (Staġun Te- atru Malti), others that per- form an original play weekly or bi-weekly over a number of months (The Comedy Island), and of course there are several village companies that make use of venues outside Valletta. Get Your Act Together however will do all three at the same time. Our focus is on producing work that will be relevant na- tionally as well as internation- ally and that can be easily ex- ported to international festivals – mostly through resourceful casting and design. What can you tell us about the first two scripts that have been chosen, and why do you think they make for an interesting starting point for this initiative? Lizzie Eldridge's play focuses on a widow who lost her teenage son to a drug overdose. In El- dridge's poetic style we see the protagonist's plan to plant a tree in the field where her son died thwarted by a developer's plans to build a complex right over her son's memory. It's a very stirring piece that touches upon a number of sore points in the Maltese psyche while also be- ing relatable on an international level. Gianni Selvaggi is a younger writer and his piece focuses on a young man on the cusp of independence being diag- nosed with a potentially ter- minal illness. Finding some wonderfully comedic mo- ments in a very dark situa- tion, Selvaggi's protagonist makes a number of discov- eries about life while dealing with a number of crippling situations. Both pieces are relevant and relatable across several demo- graphics and nationalities. The event forms part of Science in the City. How do these scripts conform to the brief of celebrating both science and the arts? We're currently living in the Scientific Revolution where concepts that humankind has taken for granted for centu- ries are being systematically questioned and turned on their heads. It's only natural that this would also be reflected in our theatrical output – just like how in bygone days theatre would have had a strong theme of phi- losophy, religion, empire, mo- rality, and so on… Many excit- ing contemporary writers like Duncan Macmillan and Nick Payne infuse their plays with themes ranging from environ- mental awareness to quantum physics, so we jumped at the chance of a partnership with Science in the City. Both selected plays have a scientific theme – mainly psy- chology, environmental sus- tainability and health. Appli- cants for the programme were informed beforehand that the selection process would take scientific content in mind. This also served the function of mak- ing the prospective playwrights propose pieces that would tick certain boxes – a fundamental skill for anyone hoping to oper- ate professionally. Finally, how do you hope that Get Your Act Together evolves in the near future? On one level, we hope to keep contributing to the way in which plays are written locally – there- by giving Maltese works a fight- ing chance at a productive devel- opment curve. On a secondary level, we also hope to contribute towards altering the way that lo- cal theatre practitioners see thea- tres as well as people's attitude to local theatre. Maltese theatre-makers seem to be a bit spoilt in the way that we see potential venues and we keep retuning to the same handful of spaces – often opting to scrap a play if none of them happen to be available. However anyone who sees the excellent plays staged in lecture halls and hotel rooms at the Edinburgh Fringe would TEODOR RELJIC speaks to playwright, theatre director and actor Malcolm Galea about Get Your Act Together, an initiative aiming to encourage up-and-coming playwrights by providing mentorship and funds, and which will be enjoying its first showcase at the upcoming edition of Science in the City Polishing up for perfection "The prospective playwrights were encouraged to propose pieces that would tick certain boxes – a fundamental skill for anyone hoping to operate professionally" The first chosen playwrights for Get Your Act Together: Gianni Selvaggi and Lizzie Eldridge. Photos by Julian Vassallo and Jacob Sammut