Dr Isabelle Gatt (Ph.D Exon), UM lecturer in Drama Education and in Creativity and the Arts in the Faculty of Education, has just returned from the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL) where, for one whole week, she lectured and delivered diverse workshops to BA and MA drama education students as well as seminars to staff.
This collaboration with the HVL Drama Education Department and the Faculty of Education, at the University of Malta (UM), has been ongoing since 2014 with Professors Katrine Heggstad and Stig Erikkson regularly visiting UM to deliver workshops and lectures to MTL Drama, Youth Studies and MA SPACE students. Dr Gatt has likewise been collaborating with the HVL through Erasmus+ exchanges for these years.
This year, in a seminar for staff at the Drama section, HVL, Dr Gatt discussed her research about her theatre practice in devising theatre with young people. She spoke about two theatre performances she has directed for the national youth theatre festival Trikki Trakki where she worked on adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone and Molière’s Don Juan as pre-texts. HVL students participated in two drama workshops led by Dr Isabelle Gatt. One explored the teacher in role convention using images and props. The second introduced creative processes starting from props to creating monologues.
Dr Gatt commented by saying, “It is always refreshing to work with international students from diverse cultural, academic and artistic backgrounds and see what they do with what you present them with. On the other hand, it was personally enriching that this year I also had the opportunity to see their work-in-progress of a Theatre in Education piece and give them feedback on their work.”
