Anton Bonnici is a teacher, playwright and dramaturge who aims to infect the world with as much enthusiasm for impactful play writing and theatre making as humanly possible. Over the past three years he has dedicated his creative efforts to develop the Not Theatre theory and practice in tandem with the Writing for the Stage courses. He also leads a bi-monthly online international writing group and travels giving theatre workshops with the intention of building an alternative community of purposeful theatre readers, writers and makers who are committed to bring about political change. More information about Anton’s projects may be found on http://www.writingforthestage.com.
Pornotopia – The Incomplete Texts
Feminist pornographer/filmmaker Ana Peaceful has devoted her life to revolutionizing the world of porn—helping to transform it from a misogynistic industry run by sleazy men into a liberated, artistic display of female empowerment. So why, then, has a young woman just shot her? And what do her closest friends and employees have to say about her in the aftermath of this tragedy?
In Pornotopia, a fragmented collection of interviews, conversations and lyrical sequences, you’ll enter a world you’re only used to judging from behind a screen…and cum face-to-face with the artists, performers and creators operating this fraught factory of desires. Not everyone will be ready to hear what they have to say…
Quasar Love – A Reenactment In Three Acts
Sometime in the mid-1990s, Terry Williams and Jennifer Cole, two deranged lovers, performed an experimental theatre piece. They ended the evening by shooting dead several members of the audience before killing themselves in a horrific double suicide. Today, two young performers want to take Terry and Jennifer’s original texts and restage Quasar Love-but what do the survivors of the original play have to say about it? And who would ever risk going to see this cursed show again?
This meta-theatrical play aims to explore the limits of extreme heteronormative toxicity whilst interrogating the boundaries of theatre and live performance. At what point does love become dangerous? And is everything put onstage a work of art? Who will be the judge? These questions and more are explored by two bold performers who dare to step into the dark minds of Jennifer and Terry, as they fall into the crushing, explosive void of a quasar love.
Yet So As By Fire – A Passion Play In Two Acts
Victoria Sultana, a respected religious woman on the island of Malta, begins to suffer inexplicably from the same holy wounds as Jesus Christ. On what Victoria assumes to be an ordinary Friday in May of 2010, she experiences the entirety of the Passion of the Christ and dies. Soon, her husband, family and friends are on television singing her praises, claiming that she was nothing short of a saint walking amongst us, but could there be more to her death…or was Victoria Sultana’s painful fate simply, and truly, God’s plan?
Yet So As By Fire takes a harrowing look at the dark side of this picturesque Mediterranean island, where hysteric religion, corrupt politics and twisted media coalesce to create a potent vortex of such proportions that it can perhaps only be undone by fiction.
When the Phone Rang
In this searing adaptation of Youssef Alaoui’s short story, “When the Phone Rang,” Alaoui and Anton Bonnici spotlight just how much authoritarian rule posing as democracy has continued to endure unchecked and on steroids.
Centering on a prisoner named Muhammad who is held captive for, in essence, “walk[ing] home with bread while being Arabic,” the surreal twists and turns of this one-act play will be as much of a head trip to readers (and viewers) as it is to the man being senselessly tortured. And all those before and after him who have been made to suffer without any just cause.
Corpus Dei
Two conversations on two different nights, one historical the other fictional, both enlightening and ultimately horrifying.
The first part presents a fictionalization of the conversation between the Marquis de Sade and Jean Testard as the infamous Marquis uses everything at his disposal to make the woman commit blasphemy for his satisfaction. The second part presents a retelling of the central chapters in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as the eponymous monster tells his tale to Victor in an attempt to convince the scientist to make him a companion.
Although seemingly different, there is a singular concern in both conversations, an interrogation into the very nature of humanity. This is the story of the corpse of God and what is left of it.
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