March, 2020
Hello kids!
How are you? I am the artistic director of the National Theatre Company, Teatru Malta. What do I do? Well, put simply, I meet a lot of artists and creatives and we come up with projects together so that we can tell interesting stories, and create extraordinary moments of shared imagination for our audiences, through theatre! Did you get that? Teatru Malta. Write it in your diary so that you remember us, follow us and come watch us. We are your national theatre too! We’re a bit like your national football team, or your national orchestra, but we make theatre.Actually, let me tell you a real story from the sports world. Mike Tyson was 14 in 1980; He went to Las Vegas where he saw his childhood hero, Mohammed Ali, one of the world’s best ever boxers, being defeated by Larry Holmes; whilst watching the match, he promised himself he would avenge his idol. Eight years later he would knock-out Larry Holmes and become the world’s best boxer. He became Mohammed Ali’s favourite boxer.
The point is that if you have enough talent, passion and commitment to live off your art, maybe we might be working with you in a couple of years, and you could become our favourite theatre maker!That does not have to be the case. If you really, really enjoyed this theatrical experience, but you dream of becoming an austronaut, a neurosurgeon or a full-time organic farmer, (or have absolutely no idea and you’re only thinking about what movie to watch next weekend) we still look forward to you becoming some of our favourite audience members – because now you know!Now you know how much dedication, time and artistry goes into producing a show. We have a lot of artists making theatre; creating stories which show us different perspectives on being human, designing shows which make us happy or sad and tell us how close those emotions can be, producing shows that make our night-out worthwile.
A famous American playwright, Arthur Miller, once wrote “a child’s spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it” in a famous play called The Crucible which he wrote in 1953. Indeed, we do not want to run after you, we want you to run after us, to catch us in a theatre near you! But for now, enjoy your Trikki Trakki, because it’s your festival this year! Go, take the stage, make theatre!
(And so they did.)