What inspired you to adapt Henrik Ibsen's 'Peer Gynt' for a modern audience, and what aspects of the original play did you find most compelling to work with?

The direct inspiration came from the producer, Adrian Buckle. I've adapted Ibsen in the past (An Enemy of The People, Ghosts), and have had my eye on Peer Gynt for some time. But I was always aware of how huge an undertaking it would be. It's Ibsen's most epic play. It's also a deeply strange play, and I mean that in a nice way. It jumps through time, it spans the entire globe, and it crosses from the real world to the dream world without a breath in between. It's a play that asks huge, cosmic questions about the meaning of truth, the subjectivity of morality and the crux of being an individual person in a global world. Ibsen was certainly pushing himself when he wrote it, and I knew it would require a great endeavour to tackle it with a modern angle. I only began to realize how it could be done after Adrian invited and challenged me to consider adapting it for him and a Maltese audience.

How did you approach the task of modernising the story while staying true to the core themes of Ibsen's play?

In my limited and no doubt flawed approach to adaptation I always start presuming that the core themes of the play are already inherently modern and are already saying something to the world of today, and that's why I've decided to adapt it. When viewed this way, the role of adaptation is then to work out how to untangle the themes from the original's (perhaps) anachronistic style or form. This idea, and the limits of this idea, was explicit in my adaptation of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening that was on at Spazju Kreattiv in 2022. Though specifically with Peer Gynt, I found myself at my desk asking, "ok well if Henrik Ibsen was sat here in 2024 writing this play instead of 1867, what would he have Peer do next?" and then a lot of the modernising, a lot of the translation, felt straightforward. Ibsen involves Peer in a lot of the "current" preoccupations of his time, and so I thought well what the comparative preoccupations of our time are, and then set Peer on a journey through those.

Can you elaborate on how you integrated contemporary issues like Western exploitation and the migrant crisis into this adaptation?

Well travel is a huge part of the Peer Gynt story. He very literally globe-trots. And it's hard to speak to notions of travelling today, particularly from the Global North to the Global South, without confronting the many global crises we are currently facing - politically, economically and ecologically. What's more, Ibsen writes that Peer very explicitly ends up getting tangled in the violent world of slave trading and people trafficking and gets very rich doing so. As Europeans, Adrian, myself and Chris Gatt (the director) felt compelled to tackle this theme head on, using what Ibsen has given us as an opportunity to look closely at the current humanitarian crisis, the great displacement of people across the world, and those that look to exploit the situation. Ibsen himself was a very political writer, and I hope he would welcome this gesture.

What challenges did you encounter while adapting a classic play with such a complex protagonist, and how did you address them?

Well let's be clear, Peer Gynt is a fun guy. He's charismatic, charming, funny. He just happens to have no morals and is a complete egotist. Yes, he does awful things, but I think we're still compelled to watch him. I think audiences eat up this kind of complexity. Shakespeare's canon is littered with bastards - Macbeth, Richard III, Iago... - but they're still breathtaking to watch. And modern storytelling is no different. Look what's on Netflix now and there's Breaking Bad, Ozark, Narcos, whatever else, none of these protagonists are essentially good people, but they're fun to watch. There is something about us, as storytelling animals, that seem to like watching people do bad things, but that doesn't mean we judge their choices any differently. The job with this adaptation, as is the job with any adaptation, is to ensure that Peer's journey feels truthful, the gesture feels earned, and the story is engaging.

In your adaptation, how do you explore Peer's journey towards grappling with guilt and seeking redemption?

Ibsen writes the most brilliantly ignorant characters who end up learning exactly what's wrong with themselves at the very moment it's too late to do anything about it. And for that I think he's one of the most psychologically insightful playwrights in the West. He gifts his characters self-awareness at the most dramatically golden moments in his stories and that's very true of Peer Gynt. I don't want to talk through plot points here, but spoiler alert - Peer doesn't get away with it.

How did you ensure that the fantastical elements of 'Peer Gynt' are both engaging and relevant to a modern audience?

It seems if people know Peer Gynt, then they tend to know it most from its Troll Kingdom or Egyptian Sphinx or something like that. How we translate and interpret these fantastical motifs is up for the audience to discover. But I have to say I find Chris' and the creative team's ideas bold and exciting. We will be using everything at our disposal - set, sound, music, light, movement, dance and mime. It will be a production that matches the very bold invitation Ibsen set out with his wild play.

What was your process for developing the dialogue and language in this adaptation to make it accessible yet faithful to Ibsen's original tone?

Ibsen wrote the original in verse, which means in a weighted, poetic form. We've taken licence here to move from verse into more colloquial, general speech. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, I think if we're going to be strict about language and what Ibsen set down on paper then we would probably have to do it in the original Norwegian. Translation always requires a degree of interpretation and if we were making room for that, why not make room for stylistic differences too. Secondly, I always prioritise an audience's engagement with a piece of work rather than the literary merits of a piece of work, and so I think Peer should speak as an ordinary person. Peer Gynt starts his life in the real world and then moves (or descends) into fantasy. I wanted his linguistic register to remind us of that.

How do you hope your adaptation of 'Peer Gynt' will resonate with contemporary audiences, and what message do you want them to take away with them?

I don't think I know how Peer Gynt will exactly resonate with contemporary audiences; I just hope that it will in some way. I always find it most thrilling when a piece of work connects with an audience in a way I didn't expect. Feel what you like about this play, just please feel something!

Peer Gynt will be featured at Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta from 26 September to 6 October. Don't miss the chance to experience this captivating production.

For more details and to secure your tickets visit https://kreattivita.org/en/event/peer-gynt/2024-09-27/