Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/914278
maltatoday SUNDAY 10 DECEMBER 2017 This Week 43 PLAYWRIGHT Alfred Buttigieg has just announced the publication of his Collected Plays, a 180-page book featuring 'Ippermettili Nit- laq' ('Please Let Me Go'), 'Dwar Menopawsi, Minorenni u Muturi High-speed' ('On Minors, Midlife Crises and Fast Motorbikes'), and 'Mela Hawn Xi Manikomju?' ('What is this, a Madhouse?') – which have been translated into English for the first time – as well as his most famous work, 'Ir-Re- wixxta tal-Qassisin' ('The Priests' Revolt'). Written between 1986 and 2016, all four plays have been staged at various prestigious ven- ues, including Teatru Manoel and Spazju Kreattiv, and received ac- claim from critics. Three of these plays, ('Please Let Me Go', 'On Minors, Midlife Crises and Fast Motorbikes', and 'What is this, a Madhouse?') concern dif- ferent life stages, including birth, menopause, old age and death. The fourth, 'The Priests' Revolt', is the playwright's earliest work included in this volume. At the time it was first staged in 1986, Marco Galea – now a senior lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Malta and an authority on political thea- tre – had written: 'Buttigieg has generously produced a work that can become an important turning point in Maltese contemporary theatre.' "I've always toyed with the idea of having my plays translated, par- ticularly as I believe they deal with universal subjects that any audi- ence from any cultural background could connect with," says the play- wright, who is currently working on his last play. The translations, which were carried out by Irene Mangion (bar the one for 'The Priests' Revolt', which was com- pleted by Marco Galea) were funded by the Malta Arts Fund, and stand tes- tament to the quality and the versatility of Maltese theatre. "I never write about the same sub- ject twice. As an author and a play- wright, I always challenge myself to do things differently and to grow creatively," Mr Buttigieg adds. Two of the plays featured in the collection, 'Please Let Me Go' and 'On Minors, Midlife Crises and Fast Motorbikes', were listed in the ninth and 10th editions of the Euro- pean Theatre Convention's 120 and 119 best contemporary European plays for the stage, respectively. IT'S not every day that you dis- cover that you have a secret base- ment at home, and it's certainly not every day that you discover that in that secret basement you have a ... time-machine. Imagine: your very own time- travelling facility. Where would you go? How far back would you go? What would you do? These are all questions that 11-year old cousins Alex and Maia, screech at their father when he tells them the news that they have inherited this special possibility of travelling to the past. They are a bit more than time-travellers – they are also protec- tors of time. The children even- tually end up in Val- letta of the 1940s, bang in the middle of World War II just after the Royal Op- era House has been severely bombed. Their presence in the past helps Malta to foil a spying op- eration which would have given the en- emy an edge – and thus, possibly, changing the course of history as we know it. The suspense and the fast-paced plot, and the in- sight into life 70 years ago makes Il-Vinkulari: Il-Vjaġġaturi taż- Żmien unputdownable – not only for children but for adults as well. Time-travel has always held a pe- culiar fascination for readers across generations – the spellbinding time-travel tale of Trevor Żahra's Meta Jaqa' ċ-Ċpar is a bestseller till today. One of the first readers of the book, 13-year-old Andrew Sammut, had this to say: "I was curious till the very end! It makes you realise how if you change a few seconds in the past, there would be a huge effect on the present." He loved the fact that the story itself was fiction yet it had a lot of history in it "without even realising you're reading history." The book is the first in a series of adventures by Storikus' writer and playwright Simone Spiteri. "As a child I always wanted a time-trav- elling machine," Spiteri says, add- ing that this is what inspired her to write this book. She believes that time-travel can provide a perspective on contem- porary problems by throwing light on how things were in the past and how difficulties can be ironed out in the future. "In this way, time-slip stories can be good food for thought on political or social issues giving readers the chance to think about the world around them and to consider how things could be done differently," she says. Moreover, the book highlights the importance of memory - personal and collective - and how important it is for us to know how to appreciate it and treasure it. "I think is pretty impor- tant in an age where everything seems to be so instantaneous and disposable at the click of a but- ton." Her tale has been further enhanced by the illustrations of Moira Scicluna Zahra – which at the beginning of each chapter give us a hint of the highlights to come. The idea of creating a fiction se- ries came while she was researching history for the Storikus textbooks. "From a simple premise of hav- ing two children explore various time periods in Maltese history, the story kept growing and tak- ing a life of its own and I could do nothing but let it develop and eventually write it." Il-Vinkulari: Il-Vjaġġaturi taż- Żmien is available from all lead- ing bookshops or directly online from merlinpublishers.com BOOKS The collected plays of Alfred Buttigieg – now on the shelves Time-hopping Maltese kids The 180-page tome features English translations of the author's four full-length plays, which were written and staged between 1986 and 2016 Alfred Buttigieg: The Collected Plays can be purchased from all major bookshops locally, as well as on Amazon Kindle internationally