WHEN THE SAINT COMES MARCHING OUT – THE CULTURAL PLAYING OF A MALTESE FESTA

Abstract

The Maltese festa - the celebration of individual Patron Saints in different villages and towns - constitutes one of the main highlights of the communal life of Maltese inhabited centres. Not all communities celebrate their festa with the same intensity, but within each community there is a core group of people for whom the festivity constitutes a basic factor in their raison d'etre. Within the context of playing culture the festa, a large-scale ceremonial spectacle, may be seen as a theatrical experience which spans the liminal area between theatre and ritual. This communal celebration is a form of cultural playing, where the cultural limits of play spill over into the religious domain. Through the playful qualities of this event, the festive 'staging' of religious symbols becomes the expression of identity of a small, tightly-knit community.The festa gives rise to a whole series of activities both indoors and out, which produce the spectacular effects that it is immediately associated with in the minds of one and all. It is composed of celebrations within the church which reach their climax in a solemn mass in the saint's honour and the final closing ceremony, as well as various festivities in the streets, which culminate in a solemn religious procession, and register a high affluence of people from the area and beyond. People who no longer frequent the church, or do so less regularly than in the past, still make it a point to 'go to the festa' and participate in its different manifestations. Outdoor celebration has grown considerably both in importance and dimension, as people abandon religious ritualistic celebration and turn more and more to public manifestations where altered behaviour, although not always publicly approved, is more or less tolerated. The main religious element linking church and street is the patron saint, as all forms of celebration are held in his/her name and dedicated to him/her. Symbolically, the saint denotes and reaffirms the community's distinctiveness, and in spite of the fact that religious fervour is on the wane, the festa is still a focal point of Maltese community life, precisely because its significance is firmly anchored within the community's social expression.Who is the actor and who is the spectator in a playing culture such as the festa, and how is his/her role defined? Willmar Sauter, who coined the term, defines a playing culture as a 'radical extension of the term theatre' and states that in this framework, the concept of theatre 'includes a wide range of cultural performances' (2004: 13). When Milton Singer first created the term 'Cultural performances', he was referring to things that 'we usually classify under religion and ritual rather than with the cultural and artistic'. Among the examples of cultural performances he lists: 'prayers, ritual readings and recitations, rites and ceremonies, festivals' (1972: 71). Although as in the case of the first three, these 'performances' can be carried out alone, they acquire a deeper dimension when performed within a group context. The connection between the religious and the performative indicates that cultural performance deals with public acts which are accomplished not only through the presence of persons doing the actions, but also through that of persons watching them. The link with 'playing culture' brings these acts into the liminal zone of social and performative action. This ambiguous cultural dimension is further reinforced by the concept of 'play'. A playing culture bears within itself characteristics of play that are embedded in a specific cultural context. Andreas Kotte underlines the importance of the relationship among the participants in play: 'From the very beginning, the relationship between actors and spectators has been central to the idea of play' (2010: 19).Playing is very serious business. The players invest their time and energy into playing, and through play, reveal something about themselves: personal skills, relations and attitudes as well as creative abilities, imagination and in certain circumstances, rigour in the way play is conducted. …