Icarus Performance Project (Malta) is presenting La Reina: A Vocal Structure, as part of The Malta Arts Festival – Summer 2006 and SUPA 2006 (Summer University of Performing Arts). Directed by Frank Camilleri, this contemporary theatre performance will be held on Friday 18 and Saturday 19 August at the MITP Theatre, St Christopher Street, Valletta, at 9pm.

The new Icarus vocal structure is inspired, textually as well as dramaturgically, by Don Quixote. Cervantes’s work has been amalgamated with material from other literary sources to provide a base for a dramaturgy that seeks to explore the carnivalesque. La Reina, Spanish for ‘The Queen’, is the first step in this performance project.

The La Reina vocal structure taps Maltese and Mediterranean sound patterns and vocal textures. The Project’s work in this area builds on the vocal qualities and dynamics of the Maltese language that were explored in Lamentations of Cain (2005).

True to its investigative nature and to the Project’s previous presentations, the aesthetic of La Reina is an open, evolving one. This kind of aesthetic gives the performance a dynamic feel of something that is alive. The performers of La Reina are Nicole Bugeja, Frank Camilleri and Karl Cassar, with Sandro Spina in charge of photography. For more information on the work of Icarus, visit the website www.icarusproject.info.

The Malta Arts Festival – Summer 2006 is organised by the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts and in collaboration with the Ministry for Tourism and Culture It is sponsored by HSBC Bank Malta plc, The Valletta Local Council, Bank of Valletta plc and The Westin Dragonara Resort. SUPA 2006 is organised by the Theatre Studies Division of the University of Malta and it is supported by the Manoel Theatre and the University Cultural Cooperative.

Admission tickets at Lm2 and are available from the Malta Arts Festival Information Stand, Freedom Square, Valletta. Opening hours are on weekdays 8.30am to 1pm and 17.00 to 21.30hrs, and weekends from 10am to 1pm and 5pm to 9.30pm. Tickets are also available at the door on performance night. One may also call on the Malta Arts Festival hotline 9999 0145 or visit the website www.maltaculture.com.