In writing a play about Mikiel Anton Vassalli, Tyrone Grima tells David Schembri about being struck by how contemporary the father of the Maltese language feels.

Sean Buhagiar and Larissa Bonaci in Ċittadin Vassalli.

“Are you aware of who Mikiel Anton Vassalli was?” asks the refrain of Manwel Mifsud’s folk song Vassalli. Tyrone Grima would have answered that question sheepishly when he was commissioned to write Ċittadin Vassalli last year.

“My knowledge was limited,” Grima admits. “I knew the basic facts, but I was never aware of what an extraordinary man he was.”

He researched the topic thoroughly, until the point he could actually claim he fell in love with his subject of research. But why should we care about a man who was born 250 years ago? “Reading about Vassalli, I was particularly struck by how contemporary this man feels. He was certainly ahead of his times, and what he did, wrote and said seems to be more appropriate and relevant today than it must have been at the end of the 18th century,” Grima says.

“His vision of Malta, and his love for his country, alongside other controversial viewpoints, such as his critique on institutions, and his interest in the Arab world, truly show what a giant he was.”

What most people do not seem to know is that Vassalli had a very exciting and adventurous life, which included being imprisoned three times.

“If one had to top all this up with some anecdotes which are not yet sustained by historical evidence, such as his encounter with Napoleon on the ship en route to Malta, and spiced up with some dramatic licence, his life is little short of an epic,” Grima says.

The end product in this case was all based on historical evidence, with layers being added to make a strong story and spectacle.

The writer, who directed Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People a few years ago, finds Vassalli reminds him of Dr Stockmann in that play in that he was an idealist who lived in a world that could not understand him.

“His love for knowledge allowed him to have a wide perception of the world, and to realise that things do not have to remain as they are, simply because they had been so for centuries. However, he was also a man who endured pain, particularly existentialist pain, and who did not see his dreams come true, but on the contrary had to see his ideals collapse one by one,” Grima says.

Pain and this play go together for Grima, as part of the script was rewritten during rehearsals with director Mario Philip Azzopardi. “Mario is a very demanding man, and will not be satisfied with having a good script. He wanted an excellent piece, and he made me face my inner demons until I gave him what the production required,” Grima says. “In his vision as director, the writing is not divorced from the rehearsal process. I must admit that, in spite of the laborious work that this entails, the process I went through was very exciting, and I really feel part of the team and the production.”

A self-confessed Francophile, Grima focused on the period of Malta’s French occupation in the play, but recognises that this phase must have been the most challenging for Vassalli.

“It was the point where he started to grapple with the fact that not everyone is propelled by good intentions. In a time frame of less than two years, he experienced the glory of the French liberating the islands from the tyranny of the Order – certainly a climatic point in his vision – to a collapse of all that the French represented to him.”

Grima believes Vassalli would still have a lot to say about Malta, even today. “He would be challenging us to think, never to fall into the pit hole of mediocrity. He would be challenging us to go beyond the factions that have separated us for too many centuries... to get out of our comfort zone,” the writer says.

Vassalli, Grima adds, “would be challenging us to understand that it is time to mature”.

Ċittadin Vassalli, shows at the Manoel Theatre on Friday, Saturday and next Sunday as part of Staġun tat-Teatru Malti 2014.

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