Acclaimed playwright objects to Valletta’s cultural capital bid

Valletta’s bid for the status of European Capital of Culture 2018 – a status the city would share with an as yet undecided Dutch town, if Monday’s submission is successful – has been called into question by a number of local and foreign artists, including award-winning Canadian playwright Ben Fraser.

Fraser, whose critically acclaimed works include ‘Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love’, argues that countries which actively censor plays and other works of art or literature should be disqualified from such accolades.

“There is no place for artistic censorship in a civilized society,” he told this newspaper. “Any country that stifles the alternative ways of looking at the world is undeserving of any creative recognition at all. Adults are completely capable of deciding for themselves what they do or don’t want to see. Censorship is the first sign of a corrupt regime.”

Fraser’s objections are largely connected to the controversial ban on Andrew Nielson’s play ‘Stitching’ in 2009: deemed too offensive to be staged locally by Malta’s Stage and Film Classification Board, chaired by Therese Friggieri (though less than a year later, the same play was staged with a ‘14+’ age certificate at Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival).

Other recent examples include productions like Christopher Durang’s Laughing Wild, Howard Brenton’s Paul, The Reduced Shakespeare’s Company’s The Abridged Bible, Patrick Marber’s Closer and A Day In the Death of Joe Egg by Peter Nichols, all of which have suffered at the hands of the national censors.

Brad Fraser himself is no stranger to such controversy. In 1991, the board of directors of Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, Ohio, temporarily cancelled the production of his play Poor Super Man, because it was believed to contain obscene references. Following a public outcry, the decision was overturned and the play was in fact performed.

However, a similar, albeit smaller-scale public outcry failed to overturn the blanket ban on Stitching, which has since been upheld by the Constitutional Court.

In his ruling, Mr Justice Joseph Zammit McKeon argued that “a civil, democratic, and tolerant society could not allow its values to be turned upside down simply because there was freedom of expression.”

Furthermore, in the ongoing appeal, the office of the Attorney General recently submitted in court that Malta ‘cannot be compared to other European countries’ like Germany and the UK because of our ‘cultural values’ which, the AG argued, ‘need to be protected’.

If this is the case, the question remains: how can Valletta also expect to serve as ‘cultural capital’ to those same countries, when there is so much evidence that we clearly do not share those countries’ values?

Karsten Xuereb, project co-ordinator of the Valletta 2018 foundation, acknowledges the apparent contradiction, but argues that opposition to Valletta’s bid for capital of culture (V18 for short) would be counter-productive to the long-term aims of the censorship lobby.

“V18 is an opportunity for change which we believe should be taken, rather than missed,” he told MaltaToday.

“The need for a Maltese city to be designated European Capital of Culture is real: Valletta running for the title may enable the debate on censorship and measures like classification to move towards the necessary changes needed in such legislation at a faster pace”.

Xuereb pointed out that the bid also echoes the National Cultural Policy, launched in July this year, which makes ample reference to cultural rights which need to be addressed and implemented.

“The National Cultural Policy states specifically that ‘in terms of freedom of expression, the Ministry responsible for culture shall initiate the process of updating Maltese legislation in this regard to make it reflect 21st century reality. This will commence by placing the responsibility of the classification board within the Ministry responsible for Culture’,” Xuereb observed.

“We understand work is currently under way by the Parliamentary Secretariat for Tourism, the Environment and Culture to review the current system of classification, in the light of the recently launched National Cultural Policy, which enshrines the freedom of artistic creation, and which gears towards a forward-looking system not only in the light of Malta’s bid to host the Capital of Culture for 2018, but even beyond that, for the growth of the artistic community in Malta,” he said.

However, in accepting the bid on Monday, parliamentary secretary for culture Dr Mario de Marco significantly stated that “classification of literature still has to be determined by what society considers to be obscene.”

Drama is in fact not the only victim of Malta’s increasingly censorious approach to culture. The recent prosecution of award-winning author Alex Vella Gera and editor Mark Camilleri, over an ‘obscene’ short story published in a campus magazine, illustrates that the issue goes well beyond the arbitrary decisions taken by the Film and Stage Classification Board.

In this case, both author and editor had been reported to the police by University rector Prof. Juanito Camilleri Р who is today one of the directors in charge of V18 itself.

Vella Gera and Camilleri were acquitted by the Magistrates’ Court, but the Attorney General has since filed an appeal against the verdict, arguing that “there is God above everything and above everyone, and God is certainly bigger than the biggest of egos of even more famous writers.”

Even while the original case was still ongoing, government enacted legislation to increase the penalties for the same offence by almost 600%.

 “Personally I don’t really care if Valletta wins the bid or not,” Vella Gera said when asked for his reaction to the bid yesterday. “Although I do think that the Maltese government doesn’t deserve to be honoured in this way, for the simple reason that it is not an artist friendly administration. With regards to my case, being prosecuted in a country claiming to have the appropriate qualifications to be awarded the ECC2018 does not affect me in the least. I don’t find it surprising either. It only confirms my tried and tested opinion that as a writer I feel more at home lurking in the underground, for better or for worse, rather than aiming to be embraced by the ‘culturalists’.”