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Alfred Buttigieg: The collected playsSelf-published, 2017 Alfred Buttigieg is one of a handful of Maltese authors who have established themselves as playwrights on the Maltese stage in the past half-century. A co-founder, with Michael Fenech, of the group AteOf national politics and social problems
Alfred Buttigieg: The collected playsSelf-published, 2017 Alfred Buttigieg is one of a handful of Maltese authors who have established themselves as playwrights on the Maltese stage in the past half-century. A co-founder, with Michael Fenech, of the group Ateatru in the last years of the Mintoff-Karm Mifsud Bonnici era, he was a strong believer in the use of theatre as a tool of social and political change. And it was his full-length play Ir-Rewwixta tal-Qassisin, based on a historical episode in Malta’s 18th century but meant to comment on Malta’s political condition in 1986 when the play was produced at the Manoel Theatre, that brought him very strongly to the notice of theatregoers and politicians. The three plays he has produced since then, all of them staged, have not been about national politics but about social problems and social change. They are notable for their skilfully written dialogues; his last play, Mela hawn xi Manikomju?, is known for its vivid characterisation of old women in a terminal hospital ward. The present volume contains English versions, none performed so far, of the four plays I have referred to. However, it contains none of his shorter pieces – such... Read more