Clear educational paths for budding theatre professionals are top of the wish list for the incoming head of Malta’s first national theatre company, eager to put a halt to the country’s artistic brain drain.
“There’s no accreditation; it’s not clear for people who want to become professionals what path they should take,” Teatru Malta artistic director Sean Buhagiar told the Times of Malta.
“It’s crazy. If you want to be an actor, where do you go? Drama Centre, School of Performing Arts, private schools, Mcast? I’ve seen good work being done by the university and other entities but there needs to be more collaboration and less empire-building.
“Teatru Malta needs professionals, because if we’re in a situation where the best people go abroad or are forced to take safer jobs, we risk having our projects fall below what they could be.”
Professionalisation has long been a buzzword in an industry striving to export works and compete on an international stage, but where actors are still frequently paid significantly less than minimum wage and work erratic hours without contracts.
Mr Buhagiar, who is also the artistic director of Notte Bianca and was deputy artistic director of Valletta 2018 until last February, believes the role of the new company should go beyond simply creating theatre productions and serve as an advocate for concrete and tangible changes.
A company without walls is needed now more than ever
Coming into his new role, the precise structure of the first national theatre company has yet to be fully defined.
Yet Mr Buhagiar refers to the concept of a “theatre without walls”, producing works without being tied to a particular venue or style: scripts in Maltese, adaptations of classics, site-specific and new media works are all being considered in his “something for everyone” vision.
“A company without walls is needed now more than ever because we need to decentralise,” Mr Buhagiar said. “There’s nothing wrong with a lot being done in Valletta, but there are a lot of opportunities out there. I want Teatru Malta to perform at the Manoel as often as we perform in nightclubs or village squares.
“Right now there is a lot of talent and not a lot of collaboration. It’s still about empires.”
The appointment also comes at a time where fault-lines are growing between the English-language companies that have for years dominated and driven the scene, and a new brand of ostensibly innovative theatre endorsed and funded by the Arts Council, often working in Maltese and tied to a specific set of strategic priorities.
Many in the legacy companies feel their work is increasingly being sidelined, as funds and even performance venues become ever more difficult to secure.
Mr Buhagiar, however, is confident that he can steer Teatru Malta clear of any emerging hegemony. His vision is “artist-led”, encouraging practitioners to come forward with their own ideas: he wants radical change, but he wants it to be bottom-up rather than prescriptive, and he is keen to avoid creating competition with existing producers.
“We have a lot of talent; if we get the opportunity to collaborate internationally, to professionalise, we need to make use of all that talent. Audiences will always be different, so the national theatre company needs to produce to everyone and work with everyone.”
Teatru Malta in a few words…
“It’s a national theatre company without walls. It will be a company producing and co-producing theatre, and also act as an advocate for theatre in Malta. But ultimately it aims to create – in collaboration and co-production, but also on its own steam.
“It should fill in lacunae in the kind of work that’s being produced. There’s a lot to be done in terms of audience engagement and the professionalisation of the sector. By offering more work, by collaborating with educational departments and festivals, hopefully in five years we’ll have more people working in theatre.”