Don Juan u Sganarelle : addattament kontemporanju ta’ 20 minuta għal udjenzi żgħażagħ, ibbażat fuq Don Juan ta’ Moliere

Abstract

Don Juan u Sganarelle is a 20-minute Maltese-language contemporary adaptation of Molière’s Don Juan, created for young audiences and developed through a practice-based research approach. The work reinterprets the original text through highly physical, stylised performance and clowning techniques, positioning embodiment and play as central modes of meaning-making.

The adaptation concept, clowning style, participant framing, and dramaturgical direction were developed by Isabelle Gatt, with the script collaboratively written with André Mangion. All characters, with the exception of Sganarelle, are performed as clowns, creating a heightened theatrical environment in which comic exaggeration and physical expressivity foreground the moral and relational dynamics of the narrative. Sganarelle is constructed as a non-clown figure, functioning as the only “honest” presence and ethical counterpoint within the stylised world of the performance.

Through this contrast, the production, which was directed by Gatt explores tensions between deception and sincerity, authority and vulnerability, and performance and authenticity. The work functions both as a creative adaptation and as an inquiry into clowning as a pedagogical and dramaturgical strategy for engaging young audiences with classical texts.

The unpublished script was publicly performed at the Trikki Trakki Youth Theatre Festival at the Blue Box Theatre, Malta, in March 1999, where performance served as the primary mode of research dissemination.