St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity has been around for five years and Chris Gatt has always been the general manager.

We are, appropriately enough, having lunch at Inspirations, the centre’s coffee shop and pasta house, which because of its proximity to City Gate, is always busy with clientele.

No sooner are we seated than we are brought some starters: deep-fried olives and a platter of chicken satays with peanut sauce.

“I joined one year before it opened, to be precise,” says Chris. “I remember the workers left at 6pm and at 8pm that same night, the doors opened!” he laughs.

At the time there was a lot of scepticism about the need for such a place, but today it always seems to be buzzing with exhibitions, films, plays and musical concerts.

“It’s found its niche; we’ve created a different market and people who come here know they are going to see something a bit different. The theatre-in-the-round has also been a challenge for directors. At first, when they complained that it’s too small, I said: ‘fine, I’m going to do West Side Story.’ I wanted to show them that even a large-scale production can be done here, and what I enjoyed most was hearing people cry at the end. Recently we had breakdancing in the theatre: young people who had been given space to turn their dance into an art form. That is why we are a centre for creativity.”

Of course, creativity comes at a price, and it is no secret that St James is struggling financially. The maintenance of this historic 16th century venue bites into the administration’s budget in a big way. This summer’s Dramafest had to be relocated to another venue because there was not enough money to fix the air conditioning. It is open all day, seven days a week, so another considerable slice of the budget goes towards wages and salaries.

Ticket prices and the cost of hiring the premises are kept low to encourage new artists, but this means that the centre is not generating sufficient revenue through its activities.

Still, despite all this, Chris Gatt remains optimistic about the future of St James:

“We’re getting a lot of interest from the private sector, we’re always putting on new stuff, and there are a lot of exciting things in the pipeline.”

Chris squirms when he sees our photographer. He absolutely hates photos, insisting that he has none of when he was of a child, not even of his wedding.

He laughs at my expression of disbelief.

This in a way, encapsulates Chris’ character: someone who is so thoroughly engrossed in his passion for theatre that other things seem “trivial”. He has a tendency to come across as sounding pompous, but when you have spoken to him for a while, you realise that it is really just his voice which gives this impression – it is not his real personality.

His original career was very different: for eight years he worked with an accounting firm, of all things.

“My degree is in the university of life – you learn the hard way. After the accounting job I drifted from one thing to another, a year with Island Sound, two years with The People, four years marketing The Malta Experience. In a way, all the jobs I’ve done have given me a certain background which has come in very useful.”

Chris has been involved in the theatre for a long time, “20 years – can’t you see the grey hairs?” Initially he started off as an actor (“poor audience”), but his real fascination with the stage started when his parents gave him hand puppets at the age of six. He created a puppet theatre, designing the sets and writing the scripts.

At the age of 21 he joined MTADA followed by other friends of his such as Charlotte Grech, Pierre Stafrace and Alex Grech.

He went on to join MADC along with a host of other young actors who are still doing theatre today. It was an exciting time, especially when they put up Little Shop of Horrors, a rock and roll musical which was far removed from the MADC tradition of Noel Coward plays.

Although he won a prize for Best Actor, Chris quickly moved from acting to directing, primarily because he had such a poor memory for lines. It was soon apparent that he had found his forte.

“I don’t like being a puppet master, and I never block, which drives people mad,” he says of his directing style. “I think it’s important to get the actors to express themselves because they’re going to be more natural. I don’t like to tell them ‘stand up here’ and ‘sit down on this line’ because it does not work. It becomes me, and you end up with five or six Chris Gatts. Basically, a director is the captain of the ship, and your job is to avoid the icebergs.”

With musicals, he takes another approach entirely.

“Once a musical has been produced it has been through a process and the chances are they’ve found the solutions. So don’t pretend to be cleverer than them; they’ve done it before and they know it. A musical is mechanical, the music has a tempo and you’ve got to build to that tempo. If you know the song coming up has a certain opening which is big and brassy, it’s useless for the actor to come in slow. Obviously, you’ve got to have an ear for music. I always shock my actors when I tell them ‘you know the notes, now forget them. Tell me what the story is about, because if you’re just going to stand there and sing it, I’m bored.’”

Our lunch arrives and Chris is definitely not bored now. He admits to loving his food, having completely given up trying to watch

his waistline.

He had the de-boned rabbit and I had the chicken cacciatore with mushroom sauce. Side plates of fried eggplant and roast potatoes are served, with fresh bread.

When did you realise that your future lay in directing?

“I think I was about 25 when I did the one-act play competition. I realised I knew how to get the best out of actors, which is what directing is all about, not to show how clever you are.”

Judging from his body of work, he is indefatigable, but he readily admits there were times when he did too much, “which is dangerous”. One year he did four plays back to back, something which he does not wish to repeat. He does not like to watch the play on the night either, because it’s too nerve-wracking to know there is nothing he can do about it.

He doesn’t mind discussing his failures either:

“When I did The Cherry Orchard, for example, which was not successful, I was too young. I had a lot of discussions with people about that. You may have had the right idea, but it didn’t come across. No matter how right you think you are, either people didn’t understand it or you didn’t get it right. The second option you have to accept. With the first option, you can either say ‘oh it’s their fault, they didn’t understand it’, or you can say, ‘I may have been right but I still failed because theatre is about communication.’ It could have been the wrong play, the wrong audience, or maybe it was ahead of its time. Either way you have wasted people’s money and, more importantly, their time.”

When I ask him whether he is difficult to be around when he has a play on, he is frank: “I say no, but other people say I snap at them. I don’t shout, and when I have shouted people are shocked. I don’t like creating tension in the rehearsal space; I constantly remind myself that people are doing this because they want to have fun. Of course, Pia will tell you that I pick on her more than others.”

Pia is his wife, actress Pia Zammit.

“Obviously it’s because I want the best out of her. If you speak to Charlotte Grech who did Piaf, she will tell you how I pushed her so that she would release all that emotion. People hold back in Malta because they’re so afraid of what people will think, so sometimes you have to get actors to push past that invisible barrier and get into that unsafe territory. Sometimes that leads to people getting upset.”

But Pia is also the person he goes to for an honest critique of his work, “she is very astute.”

Each genre has its own challenges: farce, with all the rushing in and out of various doors, requires meticulous timing and rigorous technical rehearsals. While when directing children, as he did in The Wiz, he is more careful.

“Let them be kids, see how they move, don’t treat them like adults, because then a natural energy comes out. See how they’re going to say a line, help them, but don’t change it too much because you’ll spoil it.”

In his next production The Pillowman, he is taking on a completely different subject.

“It’s disturbing because there’s no moral to the story. It’s about a writer who is arrested because there have been a number of horrible murders involving children, and the way the children are killed mimics some of the storylines in the writer’s books. It is written as a black comedy, a grim fairytale. It works on many different levels. The playwright is saying, ‘there is a lot of violence in the world but don’t blame the storyteller, it’s going to happen anyway. The reason we write about them is because we’re afraid.’ It’s a tough play for the actors, but we have a very strong cast: Manuel Cauchi, Alan Paris, Kevin Drake and Jes Camilleri.”

After weeks of rehearsals, once the play is performed, Chris gauges the outcome by how the audience reacts at the end.

“I don’t want them to come out of the play and say ‘what are we having for supper?’ If that’s the case, I’ve lost them. If they come out talking about what they liked and didn’t like, then I’ve touched them.”

CURRICULUM VITAE

• General manager, St James Cavalier

• Stage director

• Former accountant

• Trained with MTADA

• Joined MADC, and won the Best Actor in One-act Play competition

• Has directed over 25 different musicals, pantomimes, dramas and comedies: Little Shop Of Horrors, Rock Nativity, The Wiz, West Side Story, Chicago, Grease, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, A Slice Of Saturday Night, Side By Side By Sondheim, Jack And The Beanstalk, Puss In Boots, All’s Well That Ends Well, Betrayal, The Cherry Orchard, Knight Of Malta, Piaf, Crystal Clear, Memory of Water, A Small Family Business, The Vagina Monologues, Frankie And Johnnie in the Claire De Lune, Stones In His Pockets, Black Comedy, Look No Hans, Love Mouse