This year, the University of Malta’s Evenings on Campus is going to hit the road and hold three performances on a 40ft trailer at different locations around the island, apart from its usual campus activities. The out of Campus sites are St Julian’s, Cospicua and Zejtun. A concert will also be held in the courtyard at the University’s Cottonera Resource Centre at Fortini (Lorenzo Gafà School).
The festival will start off with a theatrical performance, We Live to Tread on Kings, in English, presented by WhatsTheirNames, a local, young and well-established company, directed by Philip Leone Ganado. With scenes, monologues and music from some of Shakespeare’s history plays, WhatsTheirNames Theatre will weave a compact and intricate tale of ambition, love, triumph, despair and the death of kings. This will be played out on the trailer in St Julian’s, Spinola Bay (in front of Scott’s supermarket) on Saturday, 27 July at 9pm.
The trailer will then move to Cospicua on Tuesday, 30 July at 9pm in the car park in front of the Sta Margerita College Primary School. This time, the scene will be set in ancient Rome in Vivamus atque Amemus. In Maltese, with a smattering of Latin, the audience will listen to a raunchy “lecture” with a difference. Professor Salutati will talk enthusiastically about Catullus’s love poetry and his obsessive love for Lesbia. Organised by the Malta Classics Association, the script is by Carmel Serracino who will also be acting along with Yanika Bugeja and Sean Briffa under the direction of Tyrone Grima, with visuals by Romina Borg.
The final trailer evening will be Kuntrasti, a musical-literary evening featuring an intriguing mix of works by both composer Ruben Zahra and author Trevor Zahra. It will be held in Zejtun, near St Gregory Church on Sunday, 4 August at 9pm. In the courtyard at the Cottonera Resource Centre, Akustika, a young and accomplished band will be playing Akustika Lehen Malta, an evening of popular Maltese music that has become part of the local pop culture, in acoustic mode.
In parallel with these off campus events, there will also be others happening on the main quadrangle at the Msida Campus. These will include repeat performances of Vivamus atque Amemus (Wednesday, 31 July at 9pm) and Akustika Lehen Malta (Friday, 9 August at 9pm) along with four other events.
The film Fight Club (18), courtesy of KRS Distributers Ltd, will be shown at the Sir Temi Zammit Hall on Monday, 29 July at 8pm with subtitles in Maltese. A brief introduction to the challenges of subtitling will be given by Prof. Anthony Aquilina and Simon Cassar.
On Monday, 5 August at 8pm, Paulo Friere (1921-97), a Brazilian intellectual and activist will be the centre of some reflections by a group of Zwieten who, last year, attended the Cirkolu Kulturali Freirjan (CKF). After a brief presentation by Maria Brown, co-coordinator of CKF, members will share their critical thoughts with the audience, using traditional folk singing, poetry and prose as their media of expression. Readings from Prof. Carmel Borg’s recent book on Freire – L-Edukazzjoni hi Politika: Kitbiet Freire will provide the Frierean backdrop for the reflections. CKF is a joint initiative of the University of Malta and the Zejtun local council.
At a Café Sci event, entitled Music and Earthquakes, Dr Matthew Agius, dance act U-Bahn member and seismologist at the University of Malta, will use his DJ talents to entertain the audience with his tracks while explaining the science behind music. The event will be held on Thursday, 8 August at 8pm.
The final evening, entitled Wiehed mill-Gentlomi, will be presented by VersAghtini to commemorate Frans Baldacchino, il-Budaj (1943-2006) through spontaneous folk-song (ghana spirtu pront), some original scores by Mario Debono and poems written in dialect. This will be held on Friday, 10 August at 8pm.
For more information visit www.um.edu.mt/events/eveningsoncampus