Acclaimed play Blanket Ban is coming to Spazju Kreattiv this month. Esther Lafferty speaks to writers and actors DAVINIA HAMILTON and MARTA VELLA about the upcoming performance.
This Friday, the long-awaited show Blanket Ban, written and performed by Davinia Hamilton and Marta Vella, arrives on stage at Spazju Kreattiv. It was conceived in 2020, after the first pro-choice rally had taken place in Malta and as assistance from the Abortion Support Network became available in Malta.
“We wanted to contribute to this movement for change and asked ourselves what we could contribute as performers and activists too,” explains Vella.
“While anyone can search online for the facts on abortion legislation here, what you couldn’t find was the voices and stories of the women facing tough decisions. We felt it was important to put them centre stage.”
With a background in journalism, Hamilton suggested they interview people who have experience of abortion in Malta and make a play out of it. Initially, they talked to medical and legal experts, other journalists and people they knew.
The play focuses on Malta’s strict abortion ban.“We all know someone who had an abortion. You either have had one yourself or you love somebody who has,” adds Hamilton.
As the pair gathered information, they realised that although they were mostly in agreement, sometimes they found themselves ‘butting’ heads. They decided therefore to incorporate personal elements of their journey too.
“That’s when we wrote the characters of Davinia and Marta into the play,” smiles Vella.
Although the show is a two-hander, Vella and Hamilton take on around 30 characters, as interviewers and interviewees, doctors and nurses etc. Considering they’re covering a very heavy topic, they’re hilarious, and aside from their view on its stance on abortion rights, the performance is a love letter to Malta.
The pair clearly love their home nation, describing it as a friendly place where everyone has many shared experiences. They tap into their childhoods, their joy and pride at being Maltese, and their favourite foods (pastizzi, of course).
There’s a toxic positivity around pregnancy.“In the show there are three layers,” Vella continues. “The first is Davinia and me, then there are interview scenes, and then the third layer is the most theatrical: we have a character called The Voice of The Sea, as we explore the island of Malta itself.”
“The figure of the mother is so particular here,” adds Hamilton. “Our reverence for ‘the mother’ dates back to prehistoric times and our earliest artefacts are goddesses of fertility evoking ideas of birth and abundance. That’s probably why, when we’re so progressive as a nation about so many issues, we aren’t when it comes to a woman’s right to self-determination.
The woman is often spoken about not as a real person with agency, but as an ideological container who must adhere to society’s expectation
“There’s a toxic positivity around pregnancy, and an engrained idea, linked to the miracle of Mary, that the greatest gift of all is having a child. In addition, because we also have pride in our resilience, we still see virtue in suffering: that it is when something is hard, we really think it’s worth it.
“I also have a theory that the conflation of woman with mother is a form of misogyny in Malta. Here, everything is about the rights of the unborn – a hypothetical person who is a blank slate and can be perceived as ‘pure’ or ‘sinless’.
“Meanwhile, the woman is often spoken about not as a real person with agency, but as an ideological container who must adhere to society’s expectations. Thus, although we celebrate motherhood here, we are denying individual mothers their own thoughts, feelings and failings too, the realities of being human.
Mothers are being denied their own thoughts, feelings and failings.“Something that we’ve also learnt, adds Vella, is that the majority of women who have an abortion are mothers. Reading comments online here, you’d think it was mostly young single women getting abortions, when abortions are most common in women who already have a child or children and know that they cannot deal with another.”
The script of Blanket Ban has changed significantly since the show was first performed in 2022 to include the overturning of Roe v Wade in the US, and the Andrea Prudente case the same year, which led to passing of Bill 28 which now allows abortion in Malta if a woman’s life is at serious risk.
“This is an improvement, but do you know there is no single other life-saving medical procedure that requires a panel of three specialists to make the decision? It’s still fraught with problems,” the pair sigh. They also keep their facts up-to-the-moment, and have incorporate recent comments from current politicians.
“We’re taking a clear position on abortion and women’s rights,” summarises Hamilton. “We aren’t so much trying to convert people so much as to inform the Maltese population about what is happening here like whether you support abortion or not. We’re saying, let’s look at the people making heart-breaking decisions alone and in fear because they don’t have a voice in this country. They are your sister, your wife, your colleague, your boss. We need to lift this veil of silence that is bringing so much shame and so much stigma to them.
“These are the women who have been asking us to bring Blanket Ban to Malta so their voices can be heard. We were thrilled therefore to be invited by Spazju Kreattiv.”
Blanket Ban runs from March 7-9, 14-16. It is part of the Spazju Kreattiv Programme 2024/2025, produced by Chalk Line Theatre and supported by Arts Council Malta.