John Schranz enjoys a unique position in our theatre. For decades he has trodden a lonely path, supported by small groups of disciples, endlessly rehearsing and then performing works largely written by him and his actors, works which eschew the niceties and attractions of the commercial theatre and which have found the approval solely of a small and changing coterie.

He has, however, found great satisfaction as an academic at our University in the field of theatre studies and, especially in his creation with the neuroscientist Richard Muscat, of a Masters course straddling theatre and the study of creativity within the new science of what they call Performative Creativity.

Schranz’s group has been calling itself Grupp għall-Inkontri tal-Bniedem (Group for Human Encounters) for close on a couple of decades.

Judging by the work it has just performed in what it calls its new Action Base Studio at Buskett, bearing the title Stultifera Navis – jew Ow Wen di Sejnts Kam Sejling In, Schranz remains the theatre man he has been for years, with his exploration of what it is to be human, and also with his disdain for realism whether in plot or in characterisation and emphasis on the symbolism of props and the use of music.

For those who do not read Latin, Stultifera Navis means ‘The Ship of Fools’, a name coined by the author Sebastian Brant for the satirical allegory of mankind he published in 1494.

The work I saw, however, seemed to be more about the fears and pains of living than about the foolishness of men. The latter, however, was suggested at the beginning when, following hard on a lament about the suffering women in places like Misurata and Damascus, a number of persons dash around and try to have a huge meal, accompanied by the music of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana (unfortunately, a fault in the sound system spoiled the music’s effectiveness on the first night) only to find that the food they expect is not there at all, while Orff’s high-pitched song sung by the swan ready to be eaten on the table hints at man’s greedy contempt for the environment.

There is a scene towards the end in which the four main actors (three women, one man) are woken from their misery about the death of their beloved ones, whose photographs are taken out of a pram and placed before the audience, or about marital troubles, by a siren announcing the arrival of a ship.

They burst into joyful shouts of “Il-Vapur, il-Vapur!” and begin to dance gaily, some of them trying – not very successfully, I must say – to induce members of the audience to join them in the dancing.

This scene, as well as the opening scene, seemed to be a deliberate borrowing of a famous moment in Francis Ebejer’s 1964 non-realistic play Boulevard (in which Schranz played one of the minor roles), in which dejected people who have been brainwashed into waiting for their ship of hope to arrive, are fooled into thinking it has and are seized by shortlived joy. Schranz assures me he did not have Ebejer’s play consciously in mind, but agrees it might be an unconscious reminiscence.

What he did have consciously in mind were the ships coming to the relief of Misurata, and in this play the joy is interrupted terribly by the explosions and deadly flashing lights of war.

The ship itself is shown on stage as one of those objects children create out of a folded sheet of paper, thus indicating its uselessness for the serious work required of it.

The play is dedicated to people known to Schranz and his Grupp, people from Middle Eastern countries who have suffered and no doubt still suffer in the hope that their happiness will finally come, that the viable ship of freedom and economic viability they so much desire will soon come.

The piece as a whole is bitty and sometimes obscure, but Schranz has wisely used short quotes, only a couple of which I recognised, by foreign authors like Ibsen, Brecht or Khalil Gibran, and local authors like Joe Friggieri, Immanuel Mifsud and Clive Zammit, which make the spoken element of the piece sharper than is usual in this type of work.

Apart from the recorded extracts from Carmina Burana, the production utilises a number of short works by Shostakovich and Vladimir Vavilov and traditional Maltese folk songs, all played beautifully by the violinist Antoine Frendo and a piano accordionist whose name I do not know.

Schranz has always insisted on not publishing the names of his actors, but the four main performers made their characters watchable without trying to create three-dimensional characters of the familiar type.

Perhaps they did not grip my attention as realistic characters do, but their figures and their predicament remain in my memory.