Every year, children’s festival Żigużajg rolls around and every year I have to confess I tend to be somewhere else. There’s no little theatre lover in my life to ferry around from one section of the well-attended festival to another, though it’s the kind of event I would have been over the moon to attend when I was that age.
Finally, this year, I was present and accounted for, with a fun trip to the heart of Malta’s youth theatre scene for two performances.
First was Rave and Behave, an energetic offering for kids 10 and over, fronted by local duo The New Victorians, otherwise known as sisters Bettina and Philippa Cassar.
Written and directed by Erin Carter, the performance earned plenty of laughs from its young audience (particularly when poking fun at the not-as-young audience members). The story followed a pair of young sisters, Bella and Blue, as they set out to realise their dream and become the opening act for The New Victorians.
Their race against time (and disastrous lack of WiFi!) leads them on a slapstick journey, complete with a lesson on sound and music.
Sadly, the adults in Bella and Blue’s lives are all rather grumpy and unsympathetic, which may not be the best message to relay to the younger members of the audience.
Despite that, the pair are able to triumph using teamwork and determination to reach their goals and rise to the occasion.
While the show took a while meandering around before it hit its stride and introduced its strongest element (such as the musical sampling section), it never seemed to fail to entertain its little fans. And, being a few decades past its target audience, what do I know? Maybe grown-ups really are all grumpy.
The next event that night took me to the Castille Vaults, which I had actually never visited before. A more complex piece of theatre for an older audience, iLand is the kind of experience I would have given my eyeteeth to be part of when I was the same age as the cast.
This promenade theatre piece by Studio 18 sent me on a trip down memory lane. Though times and technologies have changed from when all my friends had carefully-curated MySpace pages, the issues faced by teenagers have not.
The prevalence of social media has made things more complicated for today’s young people, but the same basic problems with personal identity, peer pressure, and self-consciousness will always ring true.
At its core, iLand dealt with a story that can ring true for people long after their teenage days are through. We all struggle at some point to find our place in society, we all struggle with inner fears and anxieties, and we all want to be accepted by the people around us.
I doubt there was anyone in the audience who couldn’t identify with these struggles in some way, and it’s that ability to relate to the show which I feel made it a success.
I believe that artistic director Jean-Marc Cafa has helped to fill a void that existed when we were teenagers, giving the young performers of Studio 18 the opportunity to express themselves on stage in a piece they worked to devise themselves.
Despite the fact that these youngsters are only at the start of their theatrical careers, it’s amazing to see the opportunities available to them, and the work they put into it.
Though its journey is far from complete, theatre has a growing place in Maltese culture. The mere existence of a festival like Żigużajg was nothing but a dream for many of us growing up, but now here it is, year in and year out, hopefully sowing the seeds for a new generation of kids. And I can’t wait to see what they do next.