The Passion of Christ and war were linked in the Malta Drama Centre production of The Blind Darkness of Heaven, a Maltese version of texts from Mikhail Bulgakhov, John Masefield, medieval plays and the British War Poets.

The collage has been assembled to coincide with the Lenten season and this is the first time that the centre has presented a dramatised work on the Passion of Jesus Christ. The collage, directed by Carmel S. Aquilina was presented to university students and families of the student-actors taking a senior course in theatre skills at the Malta Drama Centre.

“The montage portrays war as a way to Golgotha,” explained director C.S. Aquilina, who also translated the texts into a mix of classical and contemporary Maltese. “The presentation is based on the Bible, but we transposed all the events and all the characters to a war scenario, where human suffering is raw and incredible”.

In this version, even Christ is a soldier, condemned to be pushed to the frontline, whereas his Mother and other women of Jerusalem nurse the wounded and the dying.

“At the Drama Centre we have mainstream and alternative studio productions alternating all the time,” said Mario Azzopardi, who currently directs the Centre. “But what we always accentuate is that the material which is explored should have contemporary significance and relevance.”

To prove the point, Mr Azzopardi explained that recent productions from the classics, including Euripides and Shakespeare, as well as modern playwrights, from Goldoni and Ibsen to Dario Fo, have all been given an interpretation that reflects the signs of our times.

“We are choosing material with characters that can be infused and inhabited with relevant meaning and certainly, Biblical characters related to the passion of Christ offer exceptional emotional, psychological, political and moral possibilities.