Back to What's onDoSEL 4-Day Pass – Covers: 16, 18, 20, 22 April
Ir-Rebħa tal-Ħuta Li Ttir
16, 24, 25, 26 April – 7:30/6:30pm
Teatru Malta + English sirtitles
Ir-Rebħa tal-Ħuta Li Ttir by Carmel S. Aquilina is a powerful historical drama presented for the first time at Teatru Manoel.
Written by one of Malta’s most significant theatre directors, the play was submitted to the Premju Francis Ebejer two decades ago but has never been staged. Now, six years after Aquilina’s passing in 2020, this striking work finally reaches the stage.
Inspired by real events from Malta’s colonial history, the play centres on the 1807 rebellion at Fort Ricasoli, when a regiment of Greek mercenaries revolted against the British authorities over poor pay and harsh treatment. The uprising ended violently, with the revolt brutally suppressed and several rebels executed.
Against this turbulent historical backdrop, the story follows Constance, a young British woman whose imaginative inner world begins to unravel as she encounters the realities of colonial power and resistance. Blending history with symbolism, Ir-Rebħa tal-Ħuta Li Ttir explores the clash between empire and identity, and the sacrifices demanded by the hope for change.
Tekst Telesa (Text of the Body)
18 April – 7:30pm
Theatre Kranj + English sirtitles
Text of the Body by playwright Anja Novak is a powerful and contemporary drama that explores how the body carries the marks of personal and social history.
Awarded the Grum Prize for Best Dramatic Text at the 2023 Slovenian Drama Week, the play places the body itself at the centre of the story. Through illness, symptoms and physical experience, the body becomes a medium that reveals the world around it and the relationships that shape it.
The work traces three generations of women: a grandmother confronting questions of female pleasure and social expectations, a mother dealing with sexual abuse, and a daughter struggling with anorexia. Their stories reveal how the pressures of society, gender roles and power structures leave deep traces on the body.
Blending narrative and theatrical experimentation, Text of the Body explores the idea that illness can be the body’s response to a damaged environment. The play invites audiences to listen closely, reminding us that when silence prevails, the body eventually speaks for itself.
Always Be Like a Dragon
20 April – 7:30pm
Croatian National Theatre + English sirtitles
Always Be Like a Dragon by multi-award-winning playwright Espi Tomičić is an intimate and powerful drama that moves between memory, imagination and reality.
The play follows Petar, a trans man in therapy, as he revisits fragments of his childhood. Through conversations with his therapist and a chorus of voices from past and present, Petar reconstructs memories of a defining moment in his life, when he was still Matea. These memories unfold in shifting layers, where documentary realism blends with poetic reflection.
At the heart of the story is an abandoned apartment where Matea, her mother Jana and her siblings seek refuge from poverty and homelessness. Within this fragile space, the children invent a game of war, transforming the empty apartment into a military base. But beneath the playfulness, deeper tensions emerge. The children begin to confront questions of identity, family relationships, class insecurity and the unspoken traumas that shape their lives.
Blurring the line between drama and therapy, Always Be Like a Dragon invites audiences into a theatrical journey through fear, memory and resilience. It is a moving exploration of childhood, survival and the ways in which imagination can help us face even the most difficult truths.
MEDIUM
22 April – 7:30pm
Estonian National Agency + English sirtitles
MEDIUM is the latest solo performance by choreographer and performer Mart Kangro, exploring the complex relationship between the body, media and the constant flow of information that shapes our lives.
Picking up where his previous work Pantheon left off, Kangro now places his own body at the centre of today’s overwhelming media landscape. Surrounded by a relentless stream of news, images and messages, he asks a simple but unsettling question: how much of who we are is shaped by what we consume?
Through fragments of movement, text and reflection, MEDIUM pieces together an unexpected narrative about the modern condition. As reality and imagination blur, Kangro examines the thin line between the physical world and the digital one, questioning what is real and who controls the stories we absorb.
Humorous, thoughtful and self-aware, MEDIUM captures the struggle of living in an age of information overload, where we are both critical of the noise around us and strangely addicted to it.
