It is rare to witness a theatrical protest production in Malta, rare at least in it being promoted explicitly as such. When entering MITP on the 6th of November, an experience similar to entering a Maltese bus due to the large amount of people waiting to enter through a small entrance, I was eager to see how this production was going to unfold. It is also not a common occurrence that the director of a play happens to be a guy still in his teenage years.
After climbing the few steps that greeted us upon entering, we found ourselves at the CENSOR ME!!! ART CAFE, guarded by two young men dressed in black, sporting black sunglasses. The little room was overcrowded and I had to excuse myself a few times in order to move around to look at the paintings. There were around a dozen of paintings, maybe more. The paintings were by different artists, with some artists having more than one exhibited. A particular painting which caught my eye depicted two men who where painting each other in a quasi-erotic manner. It reminded me of M. C. Escher’s Drawing Hands. Another painting that struck me had a collage of broken glass and other objects used in cosmetics. This seemed like a symbol of how vanity and self-love can damage a person’s character, and how this kind of thinking and behaviour is encouraged in today’s mainstream media. At one moment, I looked curiously at one of the young men who were dressed all in black and stared at his face. He turned his face towards me, aggressively, and I broke my stare.
After about five or ten minutes in this small, overcrowded room, we were told by the young men dressed in black (who represented thought-police) that we were going to be searched before entering the theatre, and asked whether that would be a problem. Nobody seemed to complain. The thought-police also told us that everyone should switch off mobile phones before entering the theatre. I switched off my mobile, while the people were being admitted into the theatre. Nobody was searched. While I was entering, a girl passed a comment, I don’t know about what, and one of the thought police began asking loudly “What did you say? What?” and the girl, meekly but with a smile replied “nothing!”
The staging of these thought-police was a brilliant idea, since they illustrate the fact that in everyday life there are people who are always trying to tell you what to think, what to say and what to do, whilst trying to diminish critical thinking as much as possible. With their arrogant display of power they captured the essence of the patronization that such people manifest.
The actors were already miming whilst we scouted for a seat. The scene was a reconstruction of the office of the Board of Stage and Film Classification where the actors (one of whom was playing the part of Ms. Therese Friggieri) were in a state of agitation. After a few minutes, the actor who was playing Ms. Friggieri read a part from the script of Stitching (the play which was banned earlier this year by the board).
This sketch brought across the fact that Ms. Friggieri had to read the script of Stitching before taking a decision that would not allow any interested people to watch the play. But since the sketch was more focused on making the audience laugh, by means of making Ms. Friggieri look like a prude, it failed to focus on the actual hideous implications of the ban.
After this little sketch, the actors began dancing and singing an adaptation of “The Ballroom Blitz” with lyrics re-written by Erin Stewart Tanti. The singing was unintelligible, and I felt that this piece was more put into the show for entertainment’s sake, something which undermined the goal of the play.
After this number, two actors appeared, parodying promotional agents in gestures, appearance and tone. The two informed the audience about a new tool which turns plays into politically correct ones and which successfully removes all the violence, blood, sex scenes and swear words. This performance was taken from Jonathan Rand’s The Least Offensive Play in the Whole Darn World. It fitted appropriately in the show since it is about how to transform a classic play which is inappropriate for a high school. This gladdened me because in this context it was subtly making fun of the Maltese culture and society by comparing it to a high school, where the authorities are deeply concerned about the decorum of its members. What followed were a number of sketches which showed how popular plays (such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet) can be acted out after being processed by this new tool they have invented which removes all undesirable features from a play.
Before the interval, there was another sketch taken from the show “A Little Bit of Fry and Laurie”, titled Sex and Violence, which is a very good comedy piece. It’s contents were slightly changed by Erin Stewart Tanti in order to bring it into the context of this production.
After the intermission, the production continued with another set of short scenes, this time focussing on political correctness and the superficiality of those who want everyone to believe that everything is fine. These pieces were written by the American playwright Alan Haehnel. I found these sketches quite childish and cheap with their humour resembling the sort found in Dulli’s comedy shows. As agianst censorship as I may be, ironically I felt that the Board of Stage and Film Classification should have actually banned these sketches on the grounds of being puerile and offensive to the intellect of the viewers. This is not to say that I didn’t have a laugh or two watching them, but sometimes I felt nauseated by the low quality humour.
The last sketch was Drugs are Bad by Jonathan Rand. This comical piece’s message was about how people tend to rebel against their upbringing, and how two parents (played by Anthony Ellul and Marthese Parascandalo) used this characteristic to actually instill good morals into their son.
To end the show, all actors danced and sang a song by the Kaiser Chiefs, to a warm applause from the audience.
The production was in English, however some actors at certain points spoke some words or whole sentences in Maltese. This sudden switch to the Maltese language elicited laughter due to the unexpectedness of such an abrupt change in language and the contrast it created. It seems that although the Director choose to produce the show in English, it was necessary to throw in some Maltese to make it more “localised”. These sudden shifts between two languages, together with satirical comments, criticising extreme political correctness, reflected the different influences that affect Maltese people. The extreme political correctness which was promoted with irony, during the whole show is more characteristically found in countries such as the United States of America than the Maltese Islands. However, since Malta is influenced through the media (and other means) by such countries, maybe, as Maltese people, we are starting to perceive the same problems of exaggerated political correctness. Keeping this in mind, I think that this theatrical production reflects the ambiguity of the Maltese identity.
It was a light-hearted show overall, with most of the audience (consisting of many youths) enjoying themselves throughout. The show overall felt a little fragmented since it consisted of many different sketches, but the cast and the band (which played little pieces between each sketch) did a good job in making it more composed.
I feel that the young director could have made fun of the Board of Stage and Film Classification in a more intelligent way. A few light-hearted sketches aren’t going to move the audience and make them realise how anti-democratic, anti-freedom of expression is the act of censoring art. Nonetheless I appreciate the initiative itself and the efforts of the whole cast, the band, the choreographer Emma Loftus, the musical director Abigail Brown and the young ambitious director Erin Stuart Tanti, who turned up their sleeves and worked together to communicate their disagreement with the censorship of the arts. |
