Gozo Creative Theatre Club is next weekend staging a performance of The Jeweler’s Shop (A Meditation on the Sacrament of Matrimony, Passing on Occasion into a Drama) by Karol Wojtyia, who later became Pope John Paul II. It is being held to celebrate the Pope’s canonisation today.
This one-act play, translated from Polish by Boleslaw Taborski, explores relationships between men and women and the joys and pain of love and marriage. It looks at humanity’s ideas and expectations of romantic love and marriage. It is a truthful and animated look at the way people act when in love and their motivations for entering into a relationship.
Wojtyia had long been involved with theatre before becoming Pope. As a student of literature, and then as a priest, bishop and archbishop, he acted, directed and wrote dramatic criticism, translated into Polish Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, and wrote six plays.
The Jeweler’s Shop is the only English translation authorized by the Vatican. It provides a special insight into the thoughts of Wojtyia who captured the imagination of people of all faiths throughout the world like no other Pope before him.
The play is directed by the theatre club’s artistic director George Mizzi. The cast includes Mariella Cassar, Mariella Falzon Gannon, George Camilleri, Charlene Galea, Jamie Camilleri, Marisa Galea, Mark Lawrence Zammit, Sharona Refalo, Andy Fava and Sara Grech.
It will be performed in collaboration with Wirt Għawdex at Santa Cecilia medieval chapel, Lambert Street, Għajnsielem, on Friday and Saturday at 8pm and on Sunday at 7pm.
Entrance is free and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.