A troupe of final year theatre students from the Malta Drama Centre will travel to Linz, Austria, to take part in the Fokus Internationales Theatre-Fest. The festival, running for fifteen days in June, is featuring original plays from Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Russia, India and Malta.
The Fokus International Festival aims to celebrate European diversity through theatre and it invites participating countries “to bring a little of their native identity to the stage”.
The Malta Drama Centre’s entry, Gahan, the Town Idiot was selected after being short-listed by the organisers, who had asked for DVD previews of vital scenes from submitted scripts. Based on a concept by Joe Friggieri and Albert Marshall, tutor-director Lino Farrugia created a parody on the travails of Gahan, a national folk “hero” who refuses to die even though he is assaulted by foreign cultural invaders, including Mister Mack Donald, a latter day giant.
“This is a mock drama with traditional overtones”, explained Mr Farrugia. “Gahan is born from the union of a local giant and a fat goddess and as he grows up to face the big world, he is given to eccentricities and all sorts of improvised music”, he added.
The Maltese entry is being brought to life by a group of nine actors who have been rehearsing steadily for the past two months. A spokesman for the Drama Centre noted that in Austria, Malta will be presenting “a highly stylized version of teatrin”, a brand of drama which might well be representing the only authentic idiom to have developed on the local stage since the nineteenth century. “In a way, Gahan is done in a very clinical manner but the performance is very electric and very dynamic”, said the director, who is being assisted by Chris X. Grech, another tutor at the Centre.
Asked how would one expect the Maltese entry to be received at the Austrian theatre festival, Lino Farrugia said: “We think the audience would be surprised with this brand of theatre. They normally consider Malta as a deeply Semitic island and probably, they would not expect the many layers of idiosyncrasies that we have discovered throughout the rehearsal period”.
The Malta Drama Centre has acknowledged the assistance of Merlin Library of Blata l-Bajda in terms of publicity material and other support.
© 2008 - The Drama Centre Malta , All rights reserved.
Gahan The Idiot
hits the Austrian Stage
