Poet, Theatre Director, and Journalist
Born in Ħamrun, Mario, the son of Carmelo Azzopardi and Maria née Bottiglieri was educated at the Lyceum, the St Michael’s Training College for Teachers, and the UM. In 1969 he qualified as a teacher of art with a distinction in the theory and practice of education. He resumed university studies in the nineties and graduated M. Phil. with a dissertation on Maltese Theatre.
Azzopardi was a co-founder of the Moviment Qawmien Letterarju, the Ċentru Espressjoni Populari, Teatru tat-Triq, and Il-Polz, a controversial literary journal regarded as a radical exponent of new wave genres. Between 1967 and 1972 he freelanced as a journalist on the theatre and the arts with L-Orizzont, The Malta Economist, The Bulletin, and Malta News. In 1971 he co-founded Sagħtar, while in the eighties he launched Neo, a left-wing literary magazine. He also co-edited Analiżi, a paedagogical bi-monthly journal for students of literature. He has also taught art, literature, and drama in state schools.
Azzopardi was one of the first resident tutors at the Maltese Academy of Dramatic Art (1977-1981) and served with the drama unit of the ministry of education. In 1979 he set up the Lyceum Youth Theatre. He conducted Theatre in Education projects with the Theatre Centre (London), the North London Polytechnic, and the Histoire et Theatre (Paris). In 1986 he conducted theatre workshops at Sonnenberg in Germany. In that same year he was also awarded the Phoenicia (Malta) Cultural Award for his direction of Brecht’s Galileo.
Azzopardi’s theatrical repertoire includes works by Aristophanes, Euripedes, Shake-speare, Webster, Moliere, Racine, Ibsen, Stringberg, Gorky, Chekov, G.B. Shaw, Eliot, Pinter, Wesker, Williams, Albee, and Sartre. He founded Politeatru in 1987 as a drama-forum group to cater for the culturally-deprived masses.
In 1988 Azzopardi co-founded the Maltese-Palestinian Standing Committee and edited and designed a collection of poems by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. In 1988 he directed Theatre in Education projects in Trento, Rovereto, and Bolzano (Italy) and with Jane Maud of the Young Vic Company (London). He was a co-ordinator of the International Festival for Peace held to commemorate the Bush-Gorbachev Malta summit in 1989. In 1990 he directed The Wall in Hamburg, a project to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall. Between 1989 and 1992 he carried out liaison work with art and theatre institutions in Berlin, Moscow, Leningrad, Rostov-on-Don, and Vilnius (Lithuania). In 1990, as an artistic director of the Russian Cultural Centre, he co-ordinated the first Maltese-Russian Festival of Arts in Moscow. During the same year he collaborated with the New Literature Society (Berlin) to launch the first Maltese Literary Convention in the German city. In 1991 he co-ordinated the first joint cultural venture between the US and Russian embassies in Malta: the musical Tom Sawyer was performed in English by actors of the Maxim Gorki State Theatre (Rostov). He went on a theatre study tour to the USA in 1992. In the early nineties, he freelanced as a journalist with The Malta Independent, In-Nazzjon, and Il-Mument. From 1995 he was the co-ordinator of the cultural supplement ‘Spektrum’, later renamed ‘Fokus’, of Il-Mument.
Azzopardi has published his poems in shared anthologies: Antenni (1968); Analiżi ’70 (1970), Mas-Sejħa tat-Tnabar (1971), and Dwal fil-Persjani (1972). He has also published five individual collections: including Noti mis-Sanatorju tal-Mistiċi (Silver Medal Literary Award, 1995). He also published a series of critical notes for students of Maltese literature. He is the author of an entry on Maltese theatre in the Encyclopedie Bordos de Michel Carvin (Paris, 1995). An anthology of his poems, Naked as Water (trans. G. Falzon) was published in California, in 1996. An earlier anthology Only the Birds Protest was published in 1981 in Oregon.
In 1995 Azzopardi resumed educational drama work with the Drama Unit Theatre Programme (Ministry of Education) with a series of projects conducted for academically-unmotivated adolescents. In 1998 he joined the policy unit at the ministry of education and culture and in 2000 was appointed as the ministry’s delegate on the first board of management for the St James Cavalier Creativity Centre. As theatre co-ordinator, he has forged links with artists and animators overseas who visited Malta with various theatre-in-education projects addressing students with special emotional and social needs. In 2001 he organised the first Drama Festival for Disabled Persons in Malta. He was appointed head of the Malta Drama Centre in 2004.
As part of the community programme at the Malta Drama Centre, Azzopardi visited countries like Italy, Austria, Germany Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania with programmes featuring community issues in the respective countries.
His book Verġni Sagri, Demonji u Boloh għal Alla won the National Book Prize for 2014, while his collection of poetry and prose poems Il-Fabbrikant tal-Marjunetti won the National Book Prize (2012) in the poetry section.
In 2015 Azzopardi wrote a short research piece which traces the theatrical and dramatic features in the writings of Teresa of Avila. Titled Ċekkmejt lil Kristu, the research paper was eventually transformed into a choral recital held in the refectory of the Carmelite Convent in Imdina. Azzopardi’s last theatre project is a series of workshops and improvisations with a number of visually-impaired persons at Aġenzija Spero. This project brings to an end a long career in the theatre in the manner of Azzopardi’s lifelong commitment to theatre at the service of the community.
This biography is part of the collection created by Michael Schiavone over a 30-year period. Read more about Schiavone and his initiative here.