‘I hope audiences will see our culture in the piece’

TM: Why Lupu/Nagħġa and why now?

SS: There are quite a few reasons for this. While writing is a large part of what I do every day, writing a play just ‘for me’ with no requirements, about ideas I’m interested in, is not something I have the opportunity to indulge in very often.

So, when the European Theatre Convention and Teatru Malta proposed this project in collaboration with my company Dù Theatre, it just so happened to fit right into the kind of thematic territory I wanted to explore.

Moreover, I think I can safely say that the past few years have been quite an earthquake for us all on all levels: personal, national and global... and what better place to investigate all of that than at the theatre?

The playwright Simone Spiteri. Photo: Giola Cassar

TM: This is not the first time you’ve written and directed your own work. How do you manage to differentiate between the two roles, and how seamless would you say is the transition between the two?

SS: I don’t do it as often as I did when I had just started out. In fact, I avoid it as much as I can, except when a play like this comes along where my vision for it does not just stop at the writing stage. There was a very distinct visual language and vibe I wanted to work on which I knew I’d be able to dig deeper into as a director.

So, it’s not really a process of one role ending and the other starting in this case – I am both at all times with my team in the rehearsal room and the piece is a living organism that is still developing as we work towards the opening night. Not just through me in these two roles but hand-in-hand with the actors and an amazing team of creatives – especially our movement and light director Moritz Zavan Stoekle, who has a hand in the vision of this piece as much as I do.

I genuinely wouldn’t have been able to create what I had in mind without his part in the process.

TM: Would you say Simone Spiteri is primarily a writer or a director?

SS: For over 20 years in this field, I have been asked this question (including ‘actor’ in the midst as well) ... and for over 20 years I keep refusing to answer because... why choose?

I’m all three, sometimes individually, sometimes simultaneously. Sometimes I spend a long chunk of time in one of the roles and go back to the others in tiny bursts. I learn and grow through all and will keep floating between them for as long as I can and for as long as I feel each role helps me keep my sense of curiosity and expression alive.

TM: How does Lupu/Nagħġa differ from Dù Theatre’s last performance Repubblika Immakulata?

SS: Well, I think it looks, sounds and feels different because the scale of the piece, the visual language and the main story line go somewhere else. But it obviously intersects in terms of some of the themes.

Since Repubblika, things have changed in ways we would have never imagined back when we were rehearsing it and I think the tone and punch of things in Lupu/Nagħġa probably reflects that. But I’d say Repubblika is a very distant angry cousin of Lupu/Nagħġa, which is hopefully a bit more mature, tongue-in-cheek and more interested in human psychology at a deeper level.

As inhabitants of this country, I hope audiences will see our culture in the piece... however, in Lupu/Nagħġa we're trying to go beyond the specifically local and try understand why we collectively behave the way we do and what that can lead to.

How the small uwijas – one after the other – lead to a culture that enables the much graver things to happen, while still exonerating ourselves from responsibility, when it shouldn't be the case. When I discussed the play abroad with other audiences from different backgrounds, it didn’t seem like that was an exclusive way of behaving to just us in this country.

None of the characters have a name in the play. Photo: Maria Galea

TM: You refer to your cast as a “chorus”; could you explain why?

SS: The cast is made up of 12 actors who occupy two functions – they are representative of specific types of people in society but they also reflect the collective which we often call a flock of sheep but who can also very easily act like a pack of wolves when they find strength in numbers.

In fact, none of the characters have a name in the play, there are no names anywhere, because not only can they be anyone, but they also very conveniently use the excuse of them ‘just being a number’ to shirk away from whatever responsibility they might have and that is contributing to society being the way it is.

Dramaturgically speaking, the cast is also involved in all scenes and works together as an anti-Greek chorus almost... because it tries to interfere as much as it can in the way the protagonist and us, the audience, see things.

TM: What would you say is the most important message you’d like Lupu/Nagħġa to communicate to your audience?

SS: I don’t really write a play to give a message; I prefer, hopefully, to raise questions and invite reflection. But I genuinely believe that each audience member will meet the play where they are ready to meet it – just like the characters in the play.

Perhaps the most important questions could be... where do I stand in what I’m watching? What would I have done, and why? The most basic of questions any play should ask, really... but perhaps the ever-green reason why we do theatre in the first place.

Lupu/Nagħġa is a Teatru Malta for Pipelines, a European Theatre Convention Project in collaboration with Dù Theatre and supported by Arts Council Malta. This production will be taking place between January 27 and February 5. For more information and to purchase your tickets, visit teatrumalta.org. Even though this play will be in Maltese, people who do not speak the language will also have the opportunity to experience this spectacle through the English subtitles which will be present throughout it.