Artistic Encounters: 2014

Summertime Theatre

Been putting blogging and interviews on hold for quite a while now . . . feels good to get back to writing again. Still intend on interviewing artist Claire Farrugia. It is a challenge I admit to think up an interview plan for someone who clearly has talent and yet sadly hasn't got to that stage of being given that opportunity to exhibit her works with an air of recognition and humble attention. I hope eventually this and next post will be a medium to aid her on, just as I have done in a previous Calling-To-The-Stage Segment.Copyright © Diandra A. 2014

Meantime, I've been doing theatre in double this summer.

I acted for the first time in MADC's production of The Merchant of Venice as Stephano, and directed for a second time in the annual One Acts Festival with a Maltese play that has never been performed by the playwright till this September.

It felt great participating in one of my favourite Shakespeare plays earlier in July; to befriend and be among an awesome & lively cast and crew, see the story develop gradually up to rehearsals and performances at San Anton Garden

and watch the poetry and characters come to life . . .Copyright © Diandra A. 2014

Citing in unison

to strong monologues and scenes

were my personal delights,

and parroting some trademark verbal shenanigans

from fellow actors

were never lacking between us.

PRINCE OF ARAGON: [nasal, high pitched]

Who chooseth meee . . .

Yet the more I attended the rehearsals

and dove further into the story

as a piece
beyond the pages and the academics,

the more I could see a deeper layer in the play that presented more than merely being an "anti-Semitic" piece. Copyright © Diandra A. 2014

The theme can only be rounded up in one phrase:

the presentation of sinners.

Copyright © Diandra A. 2014

The Merchant of Venice, I believe, is a medium of presenting people from various walks of life. It was not just made up of racism and hate scenes, but each scene of that scenario were stitched up by hinted linings of people with flaws, and yet are redeemable.

Redeemable also if they allow themselves on that path to be beyond the stereotype placed upon them.

Copyright © Diandra A. 2014

I believe
it is
a reflection
of our imperfect human state
as sinners
and the rippling effects we create
at each other.

Copyright © Diandra A. 2014
Shakespeare is more than a poetry-monger.

He is a mirror barer.

Whoever passes his path becomes the echoing soul he places in his plays,

occupying the bodies within his fellow actors on the stage.

His pen brought to life
the gossiper,
the arrogant,
the materialist,
the proud,
the humble,

the feminist, the misogynist

(I'm thinking here more on Benedict and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing)

the amateur (like Dogberry in same play).

Even most of his villains aren't solely villainous

without having flaws
emotions
and a history behind them,

because perhaps

he was able

to see right through such people.

People that we see to this day.

He wrote with reason.

Looking again say at the character of Antonio,
true he was generous and aided friends where he knew they needed it,
even in a position where he couldn't.
He has some virtues. Copyright © Diandra A. 2014

However

when he was redeemed
and saved in court
from the increasing anger of Shylock,

partially caused by his own lack of charity,

his actions of accepting one half of his goods and demanding Shylock to become a Christian may have proved superficial . . .

"Presently becoming a Christian"

came to Shylock by force

not by choosing
in response to received mercy and love

out of his own free will . . .

and the receiving of the letter informing Antonio of his ships arriving safely to Venice at the end of the play, proved not so much a quick penning from the Bard to create a happy ending, but rather making Antonio no better than how he behaved before and lacked that acknowledgement and gratitude to pass that same mercy to his enemy. Copyright © Diandra A. 2014
Copyright © Diandra A. 2014
That letter proved undeserving next to his previous actions in court towards Shylock.

He was just as business-minded (and somewhat materialistic) as Shylock was:

ANTONIO

He seeks my life; his reason well I know:

I oft deliver'd from his forfeitures

Many that have at times made moan to me:

Therefore he hates me.

DIANDRA

It's way beyond liberating forfeitures Antonio.

Shylock was a victim of his own hate

that increased at each ounce of enmity he received,

including from you.

You didn't regret earlier cursing
and spitting on him

nor denied to do so again in future.

He was just as weak as you.

A man most vulnerable by prejudice -

who could understand that more than you

in that court room?

Your generosity was limited by your own prejudice

Charity falls on all just as much as mercy. . .

and we can't ignore the possibility

that Portia's Mercy Speech

acted also

as generally guiding and acknowledging

every single person

in that courtroom

of the vulnerability they and we all would face:

That in the course of justice

None of us should see salvation

We do pray for mercy

and that same prayer

doth teach us all to render

the deeds of mercy.

Portia had her own flaws too.
Some audiences love her, some don't.
Copyright © Diandra A. 2014
Yet she stands out in my eyes to be the one redeemed from certain characteristics that made her (and seem like) a-spoilt-little-rich-girl, by receiving the true love she wished to be more worthier for, and yet has humbly gained it. Copyright © Diandra A. 2014

Out of love for Bassanio, she uses her intelligence and understanding of logic (like father like daughter) to be an instrument and voice of guidance to mercy, victory and humility (for Shylock in his case)
in a courtroom . . .
where the language and behaviour
of such a surrounding
is all law,
blind to the human being standing before them
calling them one term or other that lacked distribution of dignity & mercy.
Copyright © Diandra A. 2014
Seeing Portia more fully during production, she is a worthy heroine to look up to.

Next time you pick up The Merchant of Venice,
look beyond the anti-Semitism.
See the characters in your mind as people,
and those sorts whom they talk about,
and take note how nearly every character mentions one type or other of people: from two-faced Janus (Act 1 Scene 1, ll 50-56) to Shylock's speech; from tedious suitors to fellows who speak an infinite deal of nothing.
Copyright © Diandra A. 2014

-.-.-.-.-

The third time participating in the MADC One Acts Festival (second time as director) proved itself to be more fruitful, working with more confidence, as the overall rehearsal process was absolutely void of the notion of competition behind the Festival. Copyright © Diandra A. 2014

Focused solely on bringing into existence Adam u Eva, a Maltese play written by Guze' Aquilina. A play I found in a collected book of one act plays that, according to Aquilina, was never performed.

I chose it from March this year; the earlier the better to see and create the vision. It was tedious work editing and cutting down the script to the time limit of 30 minutes, aside the fact that the play itself without the editing was frustratingly repetitive and would have completely side-tracked attention from the playwright's poetry.

I worked on dabbling first time with surrealism, a style the story was calling to be staged & bring to presence. With a full and determined cast at the ready also, unlike the first time. A whole month meant to rehearse two years ago was a prolonged audition session. Nightmare.Copyright © Diandra A. 2014

We worked as a team, one encouraging the other, with a few laughs here and there. The best compliment I got from my fellow actors was how much they enjoyed themselves in both nights, and willingly agreed at the possibility of staging it again, whatever the resulting feedback would be. No care towards walking out of the Clubhouse without an award whatsoever.

To sum it up . . . the general feedback we got? Copyright © Diandra A. 2014

Oh my gosh!!!

Didn't even imagine it to be so positive!!

Absolutely exhilarating. Will stage it again in future - defo!!!

Copyright © Diandra A. 2014

And to top it off, we walked away with 3 awards and 2 nominations!!

The awards - again - were never important, but to be focused on creating theatre and learning along the way was what made the surprise more rewarding.

For at the end of the day, when we actors and directors step in a theatre for rehearsals and production nights, it's not people's approval that gives the satisfaction, nor the anticipation of a good review by the critics (whose perspectives are always different from the directors, unless within reason), but the journey of creating with people, to finally reach to the destination of presenting art. Always serving God from the start to curtain call, and acknowledging Him as the Divine Playwright and Director of the plays being done together.

Exposed Innocent Flesh - Part 2

Interview with Marc Cabourdin

and Director's Notes

What drove you to direct a play on human trafficking?

Primarily two things: first of all it’s community theatre - something I do and enjoy doing, so the narrative and my focus has been social commentary. Why Innocent Flesh, because for the past eighteen months I’ve been doing work with migrants. I’ve been looking at human trafficking from that kind of aspect, so when I was given the opportunity to talk about human trafficking but from that layer of sex trafficking, that made it an ideal play to take on and get to work.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

Aside the fact that Wesley Ellul was the one who presented the script to you that brought it on . . .Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

Wesley and I work together. The formula we try to stick and keep doing for the first time and for the first year is to create theatre, and to re-create a company that’s not just say comedy. It’s finally a model where you have the piece that can bring in the money, and when one does that, you have before you your artistic piece and your community piece, and Innocent Flesh was the community piece, as simple as that.

Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

As the director, how did you manage to develop the play onto the stage? When you read it did you envision it? Was it a developing process that came along in participation with the actresses?Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

Yes, you read the play many a times, and you study it; you know it and you know it inside out, and before you actually get to read it with the actors you have a beautiful vision.

I am a firm believer of creating a piece organically, and that the starting point of every actor in developing a story starts from the self. What happens then is it changes, so what you do is you play upon the strengths and the weaknesses of the characters and the actors you have. So what you would have tuned is leaning to the self, because if we were to present it with a different set of actors, the piece would change dramatically.

I always go about starting from the self. The process used when we first started rehearsals for the first few weeks was very much first studying the self rather than the characters. We asked questions of ourselves, saw the places in our lives as a teenager where maybe there was a moment where life could have taken us onto a different path, and when we found that moment we were able to invest into the characters that were in Innocent Flesh.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

Remember, Innocent Flesh was nearly partly a piece of theatre. When Kenyetta had written it, the text - the words were very much the true words of the girls she had actually encountered and worked with. We had to create that value of reality and what I call the ‘currency of truth’, what is the currency we were using.

In order to allow the people to be invested in it and to have the spectator engaged, first we needed them to see that these are real people. Hence to start off from a real person you have to start from yourself, and that is the value the actors actually found, discovered and nurtured throughout the process of the piece: how to be real. Not to be performers, not to be entertainers, not to be re-enactors but how to be artists; to be actors – to be anthropologically correct, to be journalists. The system we use is starting off by playing games, the game of objects that Stanislavski speaks about, to discover our truth.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

The theatre is not life; it is life as it ought to be. You take it so much higher, it’s got to be up there all the time.

I noticed in the production that there were patterns of provocative-ness to innocence to each girl telling her story. How did you bring into action this synchronisation? Did the script help you in some way? Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

The thing is, it was because the people are organic. When you are starting on very strong foundations and you invest in the time, in the people and in what their story is, in what their objective is, when you have the four different actors talking about them, talking on, telling us their story and not just telling us but driving - because that’s what it means, to drive the story, the richness of such a piece is for it to be very indulgent. So it could be all about like, “Oh look at me. I’m a poor prostitute and my mummy doesn’t love me and I want to go back home”, and that would have been polished. That would have otherwise been your regular teen soap opera, you know - ‘dramm’.

What allowed for those images you just spoke of was the fact that we always played, and technically speaking it’s a little incorrect to say this, but we always went against the ‘vain’ of the text.

One of the tricks we used, let’s just say if in one of the scenes it’s read as though one of the girls is in pain, we played against the pain. So what we did is like, “Ok, there’s pain. We’ve got to cover it up with humour”. And that is how those vignettes started getting created, because then what happens is that when you see something truthful happening – and also do remember what an artist does is primarily holding up a mirror, saying ‘this is what I’m seeing’. When the actors gave me what they were giving me that is what you then start creating. In that sense, as much as it was scripted, the beauty of an organic piece is that I take lots of lightness into changing things around, and that is only because I use its strengths and weaknesses.

A lot of time, especially in the Maltese scene, if you don’t speak in a particular way, if you don’t stand in a particular way, they’re considered weaknesses. But they’re not. That’s human. They’re frailties that make you true, rather truthful. You play with that. You try not to hide it, you know? You try and hide a big hole in the wall you’re just going to make a mess of it. You just expose the wall, and turn it into a piece of art and say, “no I wanted that hole there”; give it its relevance and to just not shy away from it. Just go with it, be bold. You’ve got to be bold, not be shy of it and play with what you have.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

Speaking on developing the characters.

You start from the self. We still do not know or I may be generalizing, but a lot of people think because you sing and dance and you do something like this you’re an actor. But no – one has to understand that this is between a performer, an entertainer and an actor. That’s three different elements altogether; it’s like you’re talking of a musician, a painter and a singer, they are three distinct disciplinary arts.

With Innocent Flesh what I would like to think is that it does climb one more round towards being an actor. So that is what we used and brought up; it’s the actor-artist apart from himself. It started from there, it’s what we used. And then yes we started creating bits of variables of the text. In the sense, being a play and being in a play, we are allowed to do things that in life we’re not allowed to do, hence referring previously to playing and boldness.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

Starting from that, if I had to be faced with such a situation and I wanted to go for broke, how would I face it out? What are all the options? How would I drive that to its fullest? And that’s where we picked it off. So it wasn’t from what are the rhythms of this or how do you stand – no. Not all that, because if you're real it just happens.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

You made Candace and a particular sub-character Maltese - but mostly Candace. Talk abit further about that decision of making one of the characters local.

I think actually with Candace that is an example of what I was talking about before, especially in the English-speaking theatre world. The idea is if the currency we’re dealing with is truth, and for this you have plays in Malta who could expose the situation and the reality that is alive in Malta, you could not have had anything but a Maltese girl there.

Anything less would have been rubbish; would have not been real. So Candace specifically was made to be that from the very beginning and I wanted to have a Maltese-speaking actor, rather than an English speaking actor speaking Maltese. That was a very specific decision. I tried looking for different ethnicities, but it was very hard to come by. They didn’t turn up for the auditions.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

We did our research - anything less is not art. Hence it is why we worked with the Women’s Rights Foundation.

Proving human trafficking is

not some sort of a myth,

not something only found in movies.

It’s there.

It’s real.

Of course – absolutely! There’s a lot of information, even if you want to scratch the surface. You understand and realise that the stories that were put up during Innocent Flesh are actually truthful.

I still remember when I started reading the script,Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

I thought,

“Well, is it relevant to Malta?”

What’s written and true to L.A.

it’s true to

Malta

it’s true to Rome,

it’s true to Moscow.

These stories happen the world around.

It’s a modern day reality

which also probably goes

beyond

the socio-economical-political reality

that we face with,

what’s been happening these past 10, 12 years

and

unfortunately,

the situation is only

going

to get

worse.

What do you personally think is the main factor that drives and keeps human trafficking striving on today? –Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

Money.

It’s a 1.5 billion dollar industry. Globally.

It’s about making money off people; something that has been going on forever.

It boils up to primarily just that.

Money to be made off the living. It’s something that somebody wants to buy.

Money and Lust.

How do you think we individually need to stop this?

To say “to stop” is a very finite statement. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s ever that easy.

But what one can start doing is something very simple: using art to expose. That is what the artist does. The artist is not there to judge or to justify, but to say, “Look, this is how things are”. As a result, when you meet people like Innocent Flesh, you might pick somebody to actually start thinking about it and reflect about the person, their situation and their background.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. What do you stop – the victim or the perpetrator? Who is actually the victim and who is truly the perpetrator? It’s like saying ‘how do I stop crime’.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

On my director’s notes of Innocent Flesh I placed the quote, “not in my backyard”; yet you can be surprised. There was a situation, over a year ago, there were girls kept as/by criminals in a flat in Paceville. We’re not talking about in the middle of a desert here.

Can it be stopped – I don’t know.

But I think the most important thing to do is allow people to be aware of the situation without judging. Without passing any judgement, without saying what is and what is not, but just tell them, “listen, this is what’s happening”. And then people will make their own mind up.

-.-.-.-

'NOT FOR SALE' - Philip Leone-Ganado's article on human trafficking in SundayCircle.

SUPPORT Chris Dingli's project Palermo - Palermo Team Website

How Palermo came to be - Film Treatment

Mira Sorvino's Speech against Trafficking

Few films worth watching:

- 'Human Trafficking' starring Mira Sorvino & Donald Sutherland (Trailer)

- 'Trade' starring Kevin Kline

- 'Sex Traffic' starring John Simm
'Watching Sex Traffic is not a horrible experience because it works well as a thriller
so it's exciting and you are always gunning for the good guys - but you can't escape
the fact that it's a depressing subject matter". John Simm

-.-.-.-

Director’s Note to Innocent Flesh: “Not in my backyard!”

Surprisingly enough it is not as uncommon as we think. Paraphrasing Dr. Lara Sciberras, of the Woman’s Rights Foundation, “there is more of them than there is of us”. What did she mean? Our first conversation leant towards the socio economic reality of girls and families that find themselves in dire situations and resort to the oldest job in the world. But there is more to it than that.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

It is very easy for the bourgeois class to tut in disapproval and turn their heads in shock horror. The truth is that the sex trade is worth 31.5 billion dollars globally. Let us not fool ourselves that sex trafficking and slavery is alien to Malta. The 4 stories you’re about to witness are very real and very much true.

When Wesley approached me with Kenyetta’s script, my first reaction was to think that the piece was not Malta centric enough, but with research, investigation and analysis, you realise that these stories are the same the world over. More pertinently these girls and their stories are a very modern day Maltese reality.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

We all know of the street in Gzira, but there is more to it than that. It is very ‘comforting’ to think that that is our only reality. Yet we have all heard of a salon or of a guest house or of a flat or of a club . . . but as an island nation we are happy to not think too much about it.

“What? Girls kept prisoners in a flat in Paceville? As if . . . How’s that possible? U ajma can’t they just run away?” you protest. If only life were that simple. So black and white.

It does not take much, to really see what is happening in Malta, and there is so much more that we are blind and oblivious to.

For the 4 young actors playing these girls, it wasn’t as daunting or as far-fetched, as they had the will and daring to invest fully into their characters. The process of the piece revolved around their own personal journeys as teenagers. In the back of the cupboard of one’s emotional lock up, one always finds a moment were an event was the catalyst for a choice and a new path trodden.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

We are not here to justify, judge or comment on the truth. We are simply exposing it. As an artist it is my duty to hold up a mirror to society, and in turn let is bask in its glory, or balk at its failures.

Technically the piece reads very much like a radio play, with its rich eloquent text, and theatrically it is great work and a pleasure to devise the moments and vignettes that you will see develop in front of you. The design and aesthetic of the piece mirrors and juxtaposes the inner thoughts of the girls and drives the action and narrative poetically.

Nadia, Tina, Sarah Jane and Simone brought all of themselves. They come together as a chorus, they break way in to their respective roles and they mirror each other’s character’s journey. Their generosity, focus and specificity have allowed me to shape up the piece for the theatre in its purest form.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

Marc Cabourdin

-.-.-.-

To read Part 1 click here

Innocent Flesh to be performed again

on Saturday 15th March

MITP Theatre, Valletta

Deviating Dialogue

"Calling to the Stage . . ."

Stephanie Sant

Photographer

Participated in second edition

of 'Divergent Thinkers' at St James Cavalier in 2013

Social Links:

Facebook

Official Website
500px.com/stephaniesant

Youtube Channel
-.-.-.-.-

What inclined you to sign up and participate in the Divergent Thinkers exhibition this year?

I was doing my final examinations and came across the call for proposals and found it a perfect beginning into my precarious university-free future. I took the application as an opportunity to take on video further from my natural style, photography and display it.

One of your three videos in your presentation had shown two people playing around with a decapitated swordfish.

The swordfish is more of an anatomy lesson; it's two people freely exploring the anatomy of the creature.

You were recording how the two people were reacting with the fish head, playing around with its gauged-out eyes.

It was mostly genuine fascination with the anatomy of the fish that I was also involved with as I was filming the eyes closely.

I wanted to construct a space in which I could get as many interesting angles as possible so that I could extract still images from them. That was initially my proposal and how I started out, as from my personal experience subjects tend to be more 'restricted' into posing when it comes to photography and they would act more freely when it comes to film as they wouldn't be waiting for the shutter to click.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

So the divergence would be where the film takes me and I'd have an endless list of choices for frozen moments that could be then used as still images. Then I wanted to see what kind of videos I'd make. I wanted to use people and I wanted the element of performance art to be present as I am very much interested in exploring it. So as for videos one and three I 'constructed' a space (with mirrors and other props) for the subjects to engage within and I would take the stance of a voyeur in that case.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

You're a photographer taking on moving images, demonstrating to still create messages in a way through a second medium, while maintaining your point of view as a photographer.

This exhibition is like a transition from photography to film. I see much more power and potential of a more immersive atmosphere in the moving image. Even during the opening night people's eyes were glued to the screen whether they wanted to or not. We grew up in the presence of TV and cinema where we'd give our attention to the moving images on the screen so such an act is practically instinctive. Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

In this degree even the second video, where the two people were putting random objects on each other near a beach, was a form of transition to film where they would have just posed with the stuff on top of them in any intructed angle. Can it be said then that you were in the stance of a photographer with the instrument of a film-maker? I had been drawn to the screen, but because there was no story or character it made me feel like I was looking at the behind the scenes of a photographic session.

Indeed, the videos lack a story or main character...it is a documentation of a happening between 2-3 people, within a period of time, and the potential that can come out of it when there is an explorative attitude. The second video shows a person constructing using the available resources on top of another person...the act of constructing is a very human quality and could be linked to more primitive times- people building things to make them look prettier, make them feel more sheltered, make them feel busy. not to mention the attitude of 'doing for the sake of doing'.

Do the essays or writings stuck on the wall next to the screens echo the videos in some way?

The writings on the wall are pre-production sketches and write-ups of what happened.

Then is it correct for me to say that you were not only displaying human reactions in your volunteers in the situations being placed to them, but also bringing them out aswell in those viewing them?

Your divergence can be seen in taking your background as a photographer and draw what you normally see and experience into the medium of film.

It could also be seen in the fact that my videos are unscripted so divergence is very much present there.

As a photographer solely, what can you say is your most used and recognised theme when taking photos?

I would say . . . chance.

Chance . . . can you elaborate further on that? One example I can think of in link to the theme would be your peacock photo, how in that one shot you managed to get the bird in a precise distinct angle half-hidden behind the tree, without taking the platitude action of presenting a typical full view going 'this is what it is'.Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

Well one could take the title of my exhibition piece which was 'flee tin gly'- life is fleeting (sounds familiar?) and every photograph is one of the many fleeting moments in our lives.

What about the photos with you near nature? Be it near the sea or in your garden.

Two of my favourite places to be in which, as cliché as this might sound, fill me up with health and rejuvenation; the images of me present within them defines my relation to them. Copyright © Diandra A. 2013

-.-.-.-.-

Summertime Theatre

Exposed Innocent Flesh - Part 2

Interview with Marc Cabourdin

and Director's Notes

Deviating Dialogue

"Calling to the Stage . . ."

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