An award-winning and critically acclaimed play focusing on Malta’s strict abortion ban will be performed in Valletta next year.

Written and performed by Davinia Hamilton and Marta Vella, the play, Blanket Ban, explores the stories of Maltese women impacted by the strict abortion laws.

In 2022, the play, produced by Chalkline Theatre, won the UK Untapped Award and received critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, one of the largest arts festivals in Europe. 

Now, the London-based Maltese actors are excited to perform the show at Spazju Kreattiv in March 2025.

“This feels like a full-circle moment,” Vella said.

“While we have been so fortunate to share this work about our home country with British audiences, it’s Maltese audiences that need to see the show the most.”

For three years, the two artists spent countless hours conducting dozens of interviews with women who anonymously contributed their own experiences of abortion healthcare in Malta. 

“We are honoured to give a voice to those women who trusted us with their stories and I already get emotional at the thought that some of them will be sitting anonymously in the audience, watching.”

Hamilton said Blanket Ban opened up a space for people to talk about their own experiences with abortion without the fear of being judged or talked down to and hopes Malta will be no exception.

“Because abortion is a highly politicised issue, especially in Malta, women’s voices often get drowned out in the noise,” Hamilton said. 

Malta is the only EU state that prohibits abortion in all situations, except when a woman’s life is at risk and under strict conditions. 

While the actors feel the amendment introduced only last year is a step in the right direction, it is not enough. 

“I think that when people are moralising about abortion, women become dehumanised,” Hamilton said. 

“They are not people, they’re ideological containers, cyphers in some hypothetical fantasy. But women are real, and they deserve political freedom, and they deserve the right to decide what happens to their bodies.”

Hamilton said she hopes the Maltese audience who go to watch the show will be open to listening to the stories they present, in all their “messiness and humanity”.

“Shutting a door to conversation isn’t productive or helpful,” she said.

A scene from critically acclaimed 'Blanket Ban'

Script changes as abortion situation changes

Vella explained how the script for Blanket Ban never reaches a final draft, but is revised as the situation about abortion rights in Malta and around the world constantly changes.

Last year, Blanket Ban had a month-long run in May at the Southwark Playhouse in London.

“For this version of the show, we updated the script to reflect the changes in the year since we had last performed it. Blanket Ban is a docu-play, meaning it changes whenever the situation does.”

The duo describe winning the Untapped Award and performing sold-out shows as a “dream come true”.

“The experience of making and performing Blanket Ban has taught me a lot, about my creative process, about collaboration and also about my activism,” Hamilton said.

One thing she did not expect was the number of women who would speak to the duo after watching the play because they felt the need to share their stories. 

“We held space for many people. Maltese audiences who travelled to watch us, Americans devastated in the wake of the reversal of Roe vs Wade, and British people who didn’t realise how precarious the situation was in their own country.

"This phenomenon confirmed to me how necessary it was to create this space where people could talk about their own experiences with abortion, somewhere they wouldn’t be judged or talked down to.”