Notte Bianca is known for highlighting the works of local artists, and this year is the turn of popular playwright Francis Ebejer. Here Jo Caruana takes a look at the four plays that will celebrate the 20th anniversary since Ebejer ’s death.

Notte Bianca has become synonymous with local culture – a night to celebrate all facets, media and artists, from fashion designers to musicians and everything in between.

This year’s all-night event invariably sets out to do the same, albeit in a different way. And this year, it’s the life and times of Malta’s major playwright Francis Ebejer that have been cast into the limelight; not least because 2013 marks 20 years since his death.

“Just about every student who has ever studied Maltese in some capacity will have come across Ebejer,” states Lino Farrugia, the coordinator behind PintaTeatru, a four-piece, site-specific portfolio of the artist’s work.

“He literally revolutionised theatre in Malta, and it makes sense to remember him in this capacity, at a vibrant event that is well known for cultural promotion and attracting large crowds.”

Yes, chronologically speaking, this is a great time to be celebrating Ebejer’s works … but there is no denying how phenomenal his writing is, either.

The project takes the form of four pieces inspired by the life and works of Ebejer, each performed by a group of actors from a different local production company. Taking place at various auberges around Valletta, each piece will be performed numerous times throughout the evening.

“This was an idea spearheaded by Notte Bianca’s new artistic director Sean Buhagiar, and I thought it was brilliant,” continues Farrugia.

“I look back very fondly on the work I did with Ebejer himself, so I am now thrilled to be coordinating PintaTeatru in his honour.”

The pieces have all been chosen to highlight different aspects of Ebejer’s unique style. The first, Boulevard, was penned as theatre of the absurd, a style the playwright was very famous for. It is being presented by Wi111ow Theatre, a company keen to show Ebejer’s writing in a new light. It will be performed at the Auberge d’Italie.

“This piece is all about interpreting things in a different and unique manner,” explains Alba Florian Viton, who is directing it. “We like to think of it as a surrealist painting transformed into a play, and this version has enabled us to strengthen certain aspects of the text that we feel are especially important.”

The team believe this to be a piece that will require its audience to read a little between the lines. The themes, meanwhile, will beg those present to question the standards dolled out by society.

“We ask whether it’s easier to remain ignorant than to question things,” Florian Viton says. “Is ignorance bliss? It’s a very poignant question and one which we’ll put to our audience throughout the evening.”

The second piece, Ħitan, is based on one of Ebejer’s first plays. It was originally written for television in 1970, and subsequently became a stage production. It is best known for its straightforward style and simple plot, as well as for its heightening tension which keeps its audience guessing until the very end. It will be performed within the internal courtyard of Palazzo Castellania in Merchants Street.

The story follows three gener-ations of a Christian-Jewish family, two of whom have survived the Holocaust. The grandfather, who has settled his family in Malta after the war, is obsessed with remembering the Holocaust and making sure that his grandchildren know everything about it.

It is clear he feels guilty about surviving, especially as his wife died in a concentration camp.

“As a show, it does provoke incredible emotions of hate and pain,” says the piece’s director, Dorothy Singh. “While themes of guilt and memory are also verycentral to its success.

“Although written in the 1970s, this play bears significant relevance to today’s world. The old man’s tales of gas masks and other attack paraphernalia don’t seem so far-fetched when you think about what is happening in Syria at this very minute.”

Also proving itself as a timeless work, a piece based on Ebejer’s novel, Il-Ħarsa ta’ Rużann, is the third piece being showcased in Notte Bianca, this time at the Museum of Archaeology.

Chosen by director Frank Tanti, who was also recently involved in a TV production of the same book, it depicts the socio-political situation in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century and sheds light on its effects on Malta.

“It highlights the class differences that existed and the power that true young love can exert, even in the most unlikely situations,” explains Tanti, who is producing a live-theatre version of the novel.

Finally, a piece produced by the Masquerade Theatre Company will complete the foursome. Performed in English, Hour of the Sun tells the story of a sun-scorched villa set in a blurry Maltese landscape, which sets the scene for two expat couples’ dreary poolside existence amid the sounds of exploding petards and screaming cicadas.

“Anyone who has cursed the Maltese sun will definitely relate to it,” says Erin Stuart Tanti, who is directing the piece at Palazzo Parisio in Merchants Street.

“Personally speaking, I have always been drawn to local works, so I made a beeline for this project when I heard about it. Hour of the Sun plays to the part of me that sometimes feels I am a stranger on my own island (largely because I was raised by an Irish mother). Ebejer illustrates the sun to be the catalyst by which the expats in this story transpire for the better or worse – it is a claustro-phobic, tense and succinct piece.

“As for my thoughts on highlighting Ebejer now? There is no denying how phenomenal his writing is, either; it is timeless and very worthy of modern portrayals. His work certainly deserves its place in Maltese theatre today.”

Notte Bianca,supported by the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts, kicks off at 6pm on Saturday.

www.nottebianca.org