More or less theatre’s latest endeavour, Get Your Act Together, is giving two local playwrights the opportunity, expertise and funds to create and tour with their own scripts over the next two years. Here, Get Your Act Together’s coordinator Angele Galea tells Iggy Fenech all about the project.

Year-round productions, better staging, more theatre spaces, and fabulously talented actors: Malta’s theatre scene has definitely blossomed over the past decade or so… Yet, one important part of a great legacy in theatre is a canon of work that can continue to be staged, studied and referenced in the years to come, and that’s where Get Your Act Together comes in.

Angele Galea

The brainchild of Angele and Malcolm Galea (who have over 30 years of combined experience in theatre), Get Your Act Together will be giving two amateur, up-and-coming or established playwrights the golden opportunity to work with mentors to create a script in both English and Maltese that will go on to tour the Maltese Islands. And, thanks to the support of the Malta Arts Fund within Arts Council Malta, together with the Valletta 2018 Foundation, it’s all paid for!

“The first workshop for Get Your Act Together will take place on March 11 in Gozo and on March 12 in Malta,” says Angele, who is a co-founder of More or Less Theatre and the coordinator for the project.

“While spaces are limited to both workshops, anyone who is interested in scriptwriting is free to join and, while there, they will get to meet and discuss their ideas with the four mentors on this project.”

During the workshops, attendees will get to discuss their ideas for scripts related to island life and cabin fever, which are the official themes of the European Capital of Culture 2018. Moreover, they will get briefed on the two-year project that will see them create multiple drafts of the script to be staged at both this year’s and next year’s Science in the City, as well as go on a 10-week tour around Malta and Gozo.

The idea behind Get Your Act Together is to give playwrights hands-on experience in the process of creating a piece from start to finish

The speakers at the workshops, which will also double as the mentors of the two chosen playwrights, are namely Italian actor and director Domenico Castaldo, who specialises in actor-training, Spanish math educator Eduardo Sáenz de Cabezón, who has given Ted Talks on combining science with humour and stories, French anthropologist Elise Billiard, a visiting lecturer in Material Culture at the University of Malta and actor, director and playwright Malcolm Galea, who is also a co-producer of the project.

“We want to give the two prospective playwrights all the tools needed to come up with a script that will move people to laugh, cry, think or feel,” Angele says. “Yet we also want them to understand the logistics behind staging a play, the research that needs to go into writing a script, and the way other important elements within a play, such as acting and staging, need to be thought of from the beginning of the process.”

Malcolm Galea. Photo: Francesca Attard

The two playwrights, who will be chosen by Sáenz de Cabezón and Castaldo after they submit their proposals, will then delve into a two-year project that will see their ideas come to life. On top of regular Skype-calls with their mentors, they will also get to stage the first draft of their play during Science in the City later on this year, and will also get to visit their tutor in Spain or Italy to see them at work thanks to the Roberto Cimetta Fund.

Roberto Cimetta Fund is an international, non-profit organisation that helps artists to travel in order to develop contemporary artistic cooperation projects in the Euro-Arab geographical zone and beyond.

Based on their tutors’ and audiences’ reactions, the playwrights will then have time to amend the script, ensuring that the final version of the play, which will have its debut during Science in the City in 2018, is as close to perfect as possible.

“Once we have the final scripts in hand, the playwrights will then work with a team of actors, stage designers, producers and directors to come up with a piece of portable theatre that will go on to tour 10 Maltese and Gozitan towns,” says Angele.

“Moreover, through the contacts that they will make during the project, as well as the help of More or Less Theatre and their tutors, they will then be encouraged to submit their work to international festivals and theatre circuits.

“The idea behind Get Your Act Together is to give playwrights hands-on experience in the process of creating a piece from start to finish, including the revising of the script and its adaptation for different audiences,” Angele says.

Those interested in attending either the workshop in Gozo or Malta, can get in touch with More or Less Theatre by e-mail at info@moreorlesstheatre.com or on Facebook by look-ing up Get Your Act Together.