Have your own theatrical script funded

Get Your Act Together will give two local playwrights the opportunity, expertise and funds to create and tour with their own scripts over the next two years

A first of its kind project in Malta, Get Your Act Together will be giving two local playwrights the chance to develop a script based on the themes of island life and cabin fever with international experts and mentors. A project by More or Less Theatre, which is run by Malcolm and Angele Galea, Get Your Act Together is supported by the Malta Arts Fund within Arts Council Malta, together with the Valletta 2018 Foundation.

Amateur, up-and-coming and established playwrights will be offered the golden opportunity to attend a free daylong workshop on either Saturday, 11 or Sunday, 12 March. Held in Gozo and Malta respectively, the workshops will also be the first stepping stone in the two-year Get Your Act Together project, which will give the two successful playwrights mentorship and funds to create a theatrical script in English and Maltese.

Speakers at both workshops will include Italian actor and director Domenico Castaldo, who specialises in actor-training; Spanish math educator Eduardo Sáenz de Cabezón, who has given Ted Talks on combining science with humour and stories; French anthropologist Dr Elise Billiard, a visiting lecturer in Material Culture at the University of Malta and actor, director and playwright Malcolm Galea, a coproducer of the project.

“With Get Your Act Together we want to give playwrights the tools to go through the proper process of creating a script for theatre,” says Ms Galea, the project coordinator. “The two playwrights, who will be chosen following the workshops by Mr Castaldo and Mr Sáenz de Cabezón, will then delve into a two-year project that will give them the opportunity to understand the way a good story is written, how relationships work on stage, the way actors turn a script into a story and the logistics behind creating a piece of portable theatre.

Portable, in fact, is the operative word here, as on top of staging the first draft during Science in the City this September, the playwrights will work on a number of drafts based on audience’s reactions and will ultimately stage the final play at Science in the City in September 2018. This will then lead to a 10-week tour of the Maltese Islands and the submission of their scripts to international theatre circuits and festivals.”

Mentorship to the playwrights will include multiple one-on-one sessions online, as well as visits to see Mr Castaldo and Mr Sáenz de Cabezón in action through the Roberto Cimetta Fund, an international, non-profit organisation that aids artists to travel in order to develop contemporary artistic cooperation projects in the Euro-Arab geographical zone and beyond.

“We hope that, by the end of 2018, we’ll have two new pieces of original theatre based on is- land stories and cabin fever that move audiences to laugh, cry or think,” Ms Galea concludes.

Both playwrights who are chosen for Get Your Act Together will have all the expenses related to the creation, staging, mentorship and logistics of the piece funded by the project. Those interested in attending the workshops, which will take place at the Sannat Local Council in Gozo on Saturday, 11 March and at the Marquis Mallia Farmhouse in Mosta on Sunday, 12 March, are invited to send an email to info@moreorlesstheatre.com to register.

For more information about Get Your Act Together, visit the official Get Your Act Together Facebook Page fb.me/GYATMalta