I recently watched a very entertaining production of a children’s opera put on in the Manoel Theatre’s new Studio Theatre. This is in Triq iz-Zekka and it is accessed up some flights of stairs but also by a capacious lift.

The Manoel’s management could also consider using this space to accommodate work in progress- Paul Xuereb

The roomy rectangular space it provides can be used in a number of manners, and chiefly by placing both the acting space and the audience along the length of the studio or, of course, along the breadth. It is also provided with a cabin for sound and lighting control.

This studio theatre is much smaller than the MITP and so it will probably appeal to fewer directors, especially as it cannot take an audience of more than a few score, and, of course, the space available cannot allow for large productions such as we have often seen at MITP.

Still, it can easily accommodate smaller studio productions – productions unlikely to appeal to a large audience.

The Manoel’s management could also consider using this space to accommodate work in progress or work that has been completed but needs to be staged in some way so as to reveal its stage-worthiness and the flaws in its writing.

In the fairly recent past, the Manoel used the courtyard in Palazzo Bonici for readings by performers of scripts requiring audience reaction. This was often useful, but surely a performance by actors of some experience without script in hand, with good direction, without set and with minimal props could give a playwright an even better idea of his play’s strength and weakness.

As ever, we lack a reasonable number of playwrights able to write interestingly or sufficiently plucky to risk facing audiences and criticism in the press and media.

The experience of play-readings in public has shown we do have writers who are willing to put up their works for public criticism if they feel it will help them improve their scripts for eventual full stage production.

The possibility of an economic stage production with certain limitations should probably attract even more authors. It might be sensible if the Manoel Theatre’s management considered setting up a programme of such productions in the studio theatre for a trial period starting some time next year.

The Manoel Theatre should also start planning straight away for 2013, the 20th anniversary of the death of Francis Ebejer. All Ebejer’s full-length plays, starting with Vaganzi tas-Sajf (1962) and ending with Il-Ġaħan ta’ Binġemma (1985) were premiered at the Manoel Theatre.

Some feel his plays belong too strongly to the time when they were written to be palatable to today’s audiences. Others feel a team of experienced theatre people could come up with sensitive adaptations of key works like Boulevard, and that, in any case, the realistic pieces like Il-Ħadd fuq il-Bejt or Meta Morna tal-Mellieħa remain very largely acceptable as they were written.

We have had very successful presentations of scenes from the plays and from the biography of Ebejer, but we now need to see a few of the plays in their entirety to enable scholars and theatre people confirm or revise their assessment of this author, but also for the benefit of many young playgoers who know very little about the works of the most important playwright Malta has ever produced.