With his imminent departure as Notte Bianca’s artistic director on the horizon, Sean Buhagiar speaks to Anna Marie Galea about the trials and tribulations of his time at the helm of this Herculean event and where he plans to go from here.

Many people will be sad to hear about your imminent departure as Notte Bianca’s artistic director. What made you decide that now was the right time to leave?

Some people might be happy I’m leaving too! Joking apart, now that I have been the artistic director of Notte Bianca for six years, I had a six-year vision for the event, one that would lead it to the year where Valletta became the European Capital of Culture. After this year, I believe Notte Bianca needs a fresh perspective.

While I do have my ideas and opinions, I was 26 when I first took on the task, and I now feel like I need to focus on other projects. The festival is not mine after all. I believe you can only be a good artistic director if you believe your programme, project or company is more important than yourself. I brought what I could to Notte Bianca and feel I’m leaving the festival on a high. That is why I felt that the time has come to pass on the baton.

The first of its kind in Malta, Notte Bianca was able to bring art and culture to the people and it is of this that Mr Buhagiar is particularly proud.

There have been so many highlights over the years and so many projects close to my heart – the bellophone which let children play church bells from a console, that day we hung a giant pigeon over St George’s Square, that time we served lampuki spring rolls or the time when we got a 70-piece brass band to play on a balcony.

There are simply too many memories to choose from because we have commissioned over 100 works over the years. That said, the ones I mention most fondly are the ones that involve a clear form of legacy. We rebuilt the old Valletta band stands and fixed and used community spaces. Last year, there was this little girl who ended up performing in a dance piece we commissioned in the Diju Balli area because she attended most of the rehearsals. These are the moments I will cherish.

I also believe we have done the cultural sector quite a few favours. For example, three years ago we commissioned a young light enthusiast with an idea called Festa Festun. In Festa Festun we hung programmable LEDs all over the street and audiences could control them with a console. Today, this young lad has his own light design company which is doing very well. I feel proud when we are told that Notte Bianca has improved qualitatively through the years. I think we managed to battle through the snobbery that a mainstream public event of this size risks facing from certain factions of the artistic sector.

Notte Bianca needs constant reinvention

When I took over, Notte Bianca already had a massive audience thanks to the work of previous managers. This gave me a chance to risk more, to challenge that status quo. It was always a challenge to do this while keeping that audience, but I think we have managed to do so. Now, Notte Bianca is a much-awaited platform both for established artists and young ones with great potential. Many want to perform or play in Notte Bianca, and many will keep attending to watch these performances.

Of course, organising something of such magnitude has not been without its pitfalls and challenges.

Notte Bianca needs constant reinvention. However, that is a personal challenge, one that is up to the artistic director to solve in one way or another. The greater challenges are the ones beyond your line of control. I believe that our artistic sector has a serious problem whereby many a time, we are missing the necessary logistical and technical elements for a production. Ideally, an artist would have his own production manager, his own light set-up, his own soundman and his own stage manager. However, from experience, more often than not, they would have no idea where to start (and I don’t blame them) from. This affects the quality of the work as there is no one to focus on the technical aspects of the production. Our educators are failing us at this.

We are trying to train artists, musicians, dancers, actors but we are forgetting that these people need producers, artistic directors, production managers, stage managers, script supervisors and so on. There is no infrastructure to provide these skills. In fact, I can wear my theatre-maker hat here too. Where are our young production designers? Our light designers? Our sound designers? Where are our audio-visual experts? Our prop makers? Our set builders and our crew members? While there might be one or two professionals out there, there simply isn’t enough expertise in these fields for all the productions happening.

One would have thought that the long journey leading to the capital of culture would have helped here, but it did not. This stifles the capacity of a festival such as Notte Bianca with so many events happening at once. For example, I was limited to how many light installations I could commission because there simply aren’t enough light designers on the island.

The evolution of Notte Bianca as we know it today has been an interesting one and one which has provided Mr Buhagiar with much food for thought.

I think Notte Bianca has evolved in such a way that the festival has a timbre. I wanted to focus on participatory arts, interactive projects and new media along with traditional elements like music stages and site-specific theatre or dance. I wanted people to flow to the mainstream clubbing event while stopping for a Philip Glass concert which they would end up listening to as well. That is the beauty of Notte Bianca... different audiences who would never meet at any other cultural event would meet at this one.

Notte Bianca has seen great names like ŻfinMalta, the MPO, Nonotak, La Fura Dels Baus... this year we will see the likes of great artists like Tangerine Dream and Vinicio Capossela. Who would have thought this could be possible six years ago? It was not easy to get here. Rome wasn’t built in a day. But that is exactly why I believe we need more artistic directors and more opportunities for them.

Along the years, Notte Bianca has inspired several events in different localities. However, many of them rarely have an artistic director. Many of these entities work with internal committees and this simply won’t do. I would love to see what an artistic director could do with, say, Festa Frawli. I am consciously being radical to make a point. What light installations can happen at Birgu by Candlelight? What performances can be created at a medieval festival? Many youngsters in the arts tend to snub these events because they do not see the potential for collaboration: a platform where they could start, even with small budgets. It is up to an artistic director to make sense of things; otherwise, we are stuck with the usual food stalls and open days.

Why don’t our museums have artistic directors? Why is an open day just an open day? What site-specific events can there be? What new media can be played with? The role of an artistic director is very different from that of a curator but both would work wonderfully together, creating beautiful moments for our audiences if they were given the chance.

Speaking about the future of Notte Bianca and himself, Mr Buhagiar is optimistic.

I am the artistic director of Teatru Malta, the national theatre company, which has several ongoing productions. That already takes a lot of my time and energy.

However, I do have some projects I have sidelined for some time which I might get back into, or just come up with new ones.

I am looking forward to seeing my successor take Notte Bianca into the unknown but till then, I am excited to see what people will think of my last Notte Bianca on Saturday.

I’ve been told it’s the best one ever. Who am I to doubt that?

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