Lucrezia Borgia

Lemonhead Productions are presenting Lucrezia Borgia, an original drama piece written by Bryan Muscat which starts today at St James Cavalier. Director Noel Tanti writes in his blog Nigredo's Notebook:

It's theatre time again. Well... almost. Next production is going to be Lucrezia Borgia, written by Bryan Muscat and this time to be directed by yours truly. It's going to be staged at the St. James Cavalier in Valletta sometime around the end of November and the beginning of December.

As always this is going to be quite something. As a person I am quite hard headed when it comes to the arts, and my usual approach to things is 'jew kif nghid jien jew mur tnejjek' ('it's either my way or go to hell'). Which is quite good when you're doing things on your own for your own gratification; or when you're philosophising on the purity and chastity (whatever these mean) of the arts... sorry Art; or if you're rich enough to be able to afford everything you need without having to negotiate anything with anyone...

..Even the humblest, simplest, stupidest person might have something of value to impart, and I believe that true insight lies in being able to recognise such contributions. As someone once said: "Mediocre artists borrow; great artists steal." Of course, there are people who given a thousand years, still won't be able to come up with much. Tough luck. If you really know what you're doing you'd still be able to know shit when you see/hear it.

As far as theatre is concerned, I believe that the most important thing is to have clearly defined roles. When I had finished the script for Frankenstein, I submitted it to the director and that was it. He altered what he thought needed to be altered, added, removed, tweaked and whatever. Some things I liked and some things I didn't. But he was the director/producer and he had the right to decide these things.

To be fair, he wanted my opinion on most changes but I wouldn't have minded if he didn't. My job had been to write the script, and that was it. Fullstop. Then if the worst came to the worst and I saw that my vision was so compromised that it wasn't my vision anymore, I would have asked for my name to be removed from the credits. But then that would have been another issue.

So it is going to be something. I have to work with producers, actors, costume designers, prop managers, choreographers and all the rest. I have to transmit my vision of the script in such a manner that we'll all be pulling the same rope in the same direction. Phew! Fingers crossed...