British playwright Rebecca Brewer will be premiering the locally-commissioned DripFeed on the Maltese stage this month. Adam Brimmer asks her about the real life stories that inspired the satirical piece.

How did your collaboration with Studio 18 come about?

Artistic director Jean Marc Cafà and I went to drama school together, so we have known each other for a long time. I came to Malta for a workshop of a separate project with Studio 18 a few years ago, alongside my partner, British actor Oliver Hembrough. I was bowled over by the artistry, commitment and professionalism of the members of Studio 18 and knew I would jump at another chance to work with them. So when Jean approached me last year about writing something for them, it was an easy decision.

Drip Feed has been described as a satirical piece about 21st century realities – did you choose this theme or was it the brief?

This wasn’t the brief – we started out by looking at fairy tales, believe it or not. But, as with everything anyone writes, you cannot ignore what you’re reading/thinking/hearing about at the time of writing. It bleeds in, somehow. Everything is a product of its environment. A lot of the writing I enjoy is satirical, and a lot of my writing ends up that way, too. I don’t consciously decide to do it.

What made you decide to base the narrative around the film industry?

We started by asking the members about their earliest memories of fairy tales and who or what they identified with, if anything. We looked at the messages in traditional fairy tales and found there was a lot we wanted to improve.

Firstly, a lot of female characters in traditional fairy tales either fall into hopeless princesses who need saving or wicked stepmothers. There are few or no characters from the LGBTQ community in any fairy tale. And there is also this worrying theme that characters who are ‘ugly’ on the outside are ‘ugly’ on the inside. We wanted a fairy tale that felt more representative.

We looked at the messages in traditional fairy tales and found there was a lot we wanted to improve

Then, my thinking strayed to the people who would be tasked with actually making this happen, and it’s that scenario which DripFeed came out of. I’m obsessed with the idea of humans as creatures who are pack animals, who are tribal. We all are, whether we know it or like it. The way we dress; our political leanings; what we are into – we all end up falling into groups and patterns, somehow.

And social media is the perfect demonstration of this. In a world where data is everything and we are marketed to according to what an algorithm decides is our ‘cultural grouping’, how can we ever know our tastes are our own? Also, it was a way to feed into some of my stranger experiences as an actress.

Is the film industry in this play a metaphor for life in general? If yes, can you elaborate?

I don’t know. I think there is obviously a parallel between the film industry and the version of ourselves we like to show to other people. Social media plays into that, hugely. The film industry is tasked with creating the ‘final cut’ of something for people to watch. But, in real life, you can’t do that, you can’t edit conversations or moments. We are our own living blooper reel, I guess!

What were the biggest challenges in translating your ideas to script?

Writing the play, I was conscious of being a British writer writing for a Maltese audience. I made it clear to both directors that if something doesn’t translate well, then they have my full permission to tweak it!

Otherwise, I guess it was balancing the satirical elements of the play with something that still feels believable. The news has actually become more satirical than any writer would dare to be. It also felt important to me that the play didn’t have the neat and happy ending that a lot of the fairy tales we analysed do. 

It is rare to have the author of a script at hand to clarify exactly what she meant by a particular scene. How do you feel this will affect the production of the play?

Hopefully, this will mean that the piece feels cohesive and that the voice and the ideas are clear. But I was also really excited to hand the play over to directors Andre Agius and Jean Marc Cafà, and to the cast, so they can put their stamp on it. Once it’s in their inbox, it’s theirs to chew on and wrestle with. But I’m only a voice memo away if they need me. 

Would you say this is a play that celebrates the underdog/minorities?

I hope so. The lead character, Ramona, is a novelist trying to work in the film industry for the first time. She is an outsider and, by nature of her chosen profession, she spends a lot of time alone. We all want to feel represented, we love it when a film or song really ‘speaks’ to us.

DripFeed runs between April 25 and 28 at Montekristo Estate, Luqa. Tickets are available by looking up Studio 19 on Facebook.