This year’s Malta Arts Festival features new initiatives such as a theatre week and an opportunity for young artists to perform alongside established performers. Visual arts are back on the scene but there will be no Shakespeare this year, notes Veronica Stivala.

This year’s annual Malta Arts Festival will not feature a Shakespeare performance after the Bard’s works had been a staple of the festival for five years.

The festival is called an arts festival, and not a performing arts festival so I believe there should be more of a balance of all the arts- Vince Briffa

This comes just after the news that MADC will not be holding its annual Shakespeare production.

From 2008 to 2011, the Shakespeare Globe Theatre company had put on a number of shows, and in 2007 the MADC had staged A Midsummer Night’s Dream as part of the arts festival.

Festival artistic director Mario Frendo notes that because of the Shakespeare events in London this year, it was difficult to secure performances.

That said, the festival, now in its seventh year, is very strong on the performing arts and features a new initiative. Featuring an assortment of workshops, talks, demonstrations, and performances, Theatre Week and the Emerging Artists Series offers theatre practitioners and enthusiasts a unique opportunity to get up close and personal with distinguished thespian visionaries.

The Llanarth Group and Phillip Zarrilli will present Making The Body All Eyes, an intensive workshop on acting techniques applied to structured improvisations and performance problems of Samuel Beckett’s plays.

They will also be giving four special performances of a selection of Beckett’s late-period short plays under the collective title of The Beckett Project. One of the plays is Not I, a play which was inspired by Caravaggio’s The Beheading of St John the Baptist during the playwright’s stay in Malta in 1971.

Furthermore, the Odin Teatret will present their latest group performance The Chronic Life, and a work demonstration On Dramaturgy conducted by artistic director Eugenio Barba, with Odin Teatret actress Julia Varley.

This year the visual arts are being reintroduced into the festival after they were omitted in last year’s edition. An exhibition entitled Wiċċ Imb Wiċċ is being held at the Upper Galleries at St James Cavalier, Valletta. Curated by Austin Camilleri, the exhibition will present self-representations by 10 local and international artists raising questions of identity within social, historical and gender-related contexts.

Vince Briffa, one of the artists exhibiting, lauds the re-introduction of the visual arts to the festival. He notes, however, that more attention should be paid to art:

“The festival is called an arts festival, not a performing arts festival, so I believe there should be more of a balance of all the arts. Just as there is a special focus on the performing arts this year, I would expect that one day it will be on visual arts.”

Briffa praises the choice of venue – “It is the best location for such an event” – but notes that were there to be a wider variety of exhibitions, this would open up opportunities for venues which engage more with the public.

Looking back on past programmes of the festival, one will notice that although certain regulars of the festival, like the Shakespeare, Puerto Flamenco and the Strada Art and Wine Festival will not feature this year, there are a number of other recurring performers.

These include the cellist Enrico Dindo, the Kronos Quartet, and the brass band, The Big Band Brothers.

Frendo points out that returning artists are imperative to an arts festival:

“An artist who returns is proof that what you’re doing is of a good standard,” he notes. “An artist will never come back if they are not happy with what you’re doing.”

The artistic director underlines how all big festivals have artists with whom they have established working relationships. Creating a good relationship with artists could lead to other possibilities and opportunities for collaboration, he explains.

The performance by the Israeli Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak Dance Company called Bombyx Mori, came about because of the MAF committee’s good working relationship with the Israeli embassy, for example.

Acknowledging the importance of networking in the arts, Frendo discusses the Emerging Artists Series, where exceptionally talented, young local artists will be performing alongside established artists and get the opportunity to receive advice and be motivated by people in the know.

Violinist Jean Noël Attard and pianist Joanne Camilleri, and Batera Duo – featuring saxophonist Philip Attard and pianist Christine Zerafa – will be performing in this series.

Other highlights of the Malta Arts Festival include The Big Band Brothers’ Maltese music revival Ftakar 2. It will be dedicated to songs penned by artist Alfred Sant.

The Rubberbodies collective will present a devised theatre performance titled Old Salt: (A) Portrait of Seamen. Set against the stirring backdrop of the Vittoriosa Grand Harbour Marina, Old Salt sees the multi-disciplinary collective reaching into the past to revive the harbour’s deepest secrets.

The festival runs from July 1 to 18 and comes to a close with a performance of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess by the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, St Monica’s Choir and Mirabitur Choir under the direction of conductor Wayne Marshall.

Tickets are on sale from ticketline .com.mt, or the Embassy Cinema box office in Valletta.

www.maltaculture.com

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