Narcy Calamatta has been treading the boards for some 60 years now. He says he still gets the adrenaline shooting through him as it did that first time and believes that the world is a revolving stage, where “innocents” like him are tolerated and indulged. When it comes to acting “Everyone should try it someday, somewhere”, Narcy advises. He did it all and loves it all from school plays, circus (at home), cabaret, street theatre, classical, experimental, mime, marionettes, opera, musicals, cinema, TV, underwater (though he admits that this last is only a dream) and in the air on a Cesna. He still has to try flying on a trapeze if he can find a pair of tights to fit. He waxes lyrical and says it has been fun and still is and he has been imparting all he has learned to anyone who cares to put up with his insistence. “Some have crossed over to our dream-world with no regrets,” he says feeling pleased with his world.

This year he was debuting at St James Cavalier with a play which is unusual to his repertoire. However, he finds Mark Ravenhill’s Some Explicit Polaroids to be a very well written play and an interesting challenge. You will be able to see it at St James Cavalier today and on 13, 14, 15 October. (Please see column on the left for further information).

How old are you? Star sign and date of birth?

As old as necessary for the part. They say I am a Thirtyniner, an amphibian crustacean that walks backwards and sideways but not forwards.

What would you like to be doing in 10 years’ time?

Giving birth to the new artistic messiah.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

A transposed audience of non-theatre goers (young and old) cheering at the wonder of our performing art.

What is your favourite occupation?

Dreaming up artistic

creations while lying in bed eating ice-cream.

What is your greatest fear?

Moving machinery you cannot reason with or improvising lines to help fellow actors who have dried, when in reality I would be the one who has dried.

What is it that you most value in your friends?

Their weaknesses, which test my generosity and make me feel needed.

How would you like to die?

Like Molière in “Oh Calcutta!”

(If this is not an original try – Like Abraham Lincoln watching Wagner’s “The Valkiri” in drag, them not me.)

What is your greatest extravagance?

Dredging my nostrils while driving or learning my lines without reading the script.

What is your greatest regret?

Not being a hermaphrodite like Dionysius.

What is your most treasured possession?

An unbreakable toothpick.

Which talent would you most like to have apart from the ones you already have?

Being a trapeze artist, singing like Sinatra and dancing like Astaire, playing a jazz trumpet like Satchmo, cooking like my mother and painting like Caravaggio and … and …!

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Disbelief in God when you are destitute.

Where would you like to live?

Surrounded by family and friends in a leper colony.

What is your most marked characteristic?

My humility.

Who are your heroes/heroines in real life?

Mons Victor Grech and a pregnant illegal immigrant.

What is it that you most dislike?

People disliking me.

What is your motto?

“Laugh and the world laughs with you.”