The Pikużi plays are playful but highly educational on many levels. Veronica Stivala meets the creative team who write, workshop, act, dance and sing in the shows.

Pikużi is a series of new plays in Maltese aimed at children aged six and over. Part of the Manoel Theatre’s Toi Toi education programme, they are devised and directed by Arts Education Consultant Rosetta Debattista.

Rosetta believed in a need for plays that are playful but highly educational on many levels: “The plays deal with a variety of issues felt very strongly by children… the joys of friendships as well as the heartaches, peer pressure, feelings of jealousy.”

The content of these plays also ties in with educational material covered at school. And, of course, there are then the beautiful aspects of the arts – using artistic tools to help the children imagine, wonder and believe.

This team of actors takes a creative approach, incorporating dance and music in their sketches. I meet Ruth Borg, Antonella Mifsud and Mariele Zammit to discuss their shows for the new scholastic year.

Ruth plays the adventurous, humorous and decisive Pik. “What I like best about her is how her spontaneity as a character, evident in her direct and blunt reactions, blends beautifully with her genuine sensitiveness to others, especially Żi.

Mariele not only plays 10-year-old Żi, who is caring, quick-witted and subtle with her humour, but she also writes the songs for the plays. “The lyrics highlight the feelings exposed and Pik and Żi’s thoughts,” she says.

The narrator, played by Antonella, also helps to convey what the characters are going through. She bridges the gap between Pik, Żi and the audience. “The narrator is a gender-less, mysterious storyteller who often engages in audience interaction and sometimes lets them in on insights that our protagonists themselves might be unaware of.”

What is most fascinating is the way this team do all the work themselves from writing the script, to workshopping it and coming up with all the material, from dancing, singing, inter-active activities and so on.

Although our target is young children we do not attempt childish topics

“One of the most important and defining features of our artistic process is that the initial ideas come from us,” they say. Sometimes, ideas stem from conversations the group have outside of the working context, or even from a mere observation made by someone else, which impels them to develop it further. Other ideas emerge from other artistic mediums such as music, Maltese traditions and images.

The three do not always agree on everything, but they use this to their advantage, believing that their contrasting ideas, diverse backgrounds in theatre and different talents actually serve as a great asset for creative development.

The three work by setting themes for their plays such as culture, adolescence and uncertainty, which then carve the path for their characters. With adolescence, for example, they explore the beauty of childhood and delve into what it was like to be a child in the olden times.

Knowing your audience is key to any successful show and the fact that all three actors have worked with children definitely works to their advantage. Their main priority is to not belittle their audience.

“Children are very inquisitive and perceptive. They discern subtleties which often pass by unnoticed by adults. Although our target is young children we do not attempt childish topics,” says Mariele.

The safe boundary in all this is that the main characters of the plays are children themselves. This means that the young audiences perceive everything through the lens of someone their age. Therefore, they understand Pik and Żi and relate to them and their stories easily. There is always an adult figure to balance everything out, not to teach a lesson but to help lead the children in the right direction or to inspire them to ask the right questions.

“It is ultimately the Pikużi themselves who come up with the right solutions. This allows the children to view their potential and to perceive their capability of making choices,” says Ruth.

Pikużi has been complimented on its approach towards dealing with topics that are not usually tackled or discussed. For example, last year the productions saw Żi going through the stages of grief as she lost her grandfather.

To avoid being too didactic, the plays are also very funny and many parents enjoy themselves as much as, sometimes even more than, their children. And one has to underline the fact that the plays are in Maltese, which the children appreciate too.

Without revealing too much, in this year’s first play Pikużi will encounter a small obstacle that will change their school life as they knew it – so that will be one adventure they will have to live through in the midst of many others throughout the course of the rest of the plays. Intriguing. And there’s only one way to find out what this is…

The first Pikużi play opens on October 25.

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