Play to mark 40th anniversary of border reopening

by Neve Clinton

The Theatre Makers are set to perform a new play, ‘In the Still of the Night’, commemorating the closed frontier years, on the week of October 13 in the Spitfire Hall of the World War II Tunnels.

Jackie Villa, playwright and director, told the Chronicle that she chose this space, inside the Rock, because it felt adequate to portray the sense of entrapment experienced during the time the frontier was closed.

She also appreciates the structure of this venue as a ‘black box’ in which a stage can be set up and the audience can enjoy the production ‘in the round’, with high quality acoustics.

This play will follow on from Ms Villa’s previous pieces; ‘Llevame Donde Naci’ and ‘Winds of Change’ on the Evacuation and the 1967 Referendum, produced under the White Light label, which has now merged with other local theatre companies to create Theatre Makers.

She said that, since ‘Winds of Change’ in 2018, they had planned to round up the trilogy with a third play, but the Covid-19 pandemic got in the way, and plans were halted and almost forgotten about.

“There was a lot of, well, what did the family do after? And then there were so, so many stories of the closed frontier, of what families went through, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We put rose-tinted glasses, but sometimes we need to take them off and have the hard-hitting truths.”

“I don't want to focus on them too much, but they have to rear their head a little bit, you know? So those events, the three of them together, is what I say was the final ingredient in the cauldron that defined us as a people.”

Ms Villa said her inspiration for this play was her own personal experience.

“That was my youth, I lived through that time and I’m a natural storyteller,” she said.

“So if I don’t tell the stories, I feel some part of me is missing.”

“There are many, many stories that need to be told. Many, many stories that I feel I'm leaving as a legacy to our youth and our children and grandchildren. Because if these stories are not told, they are lost. So I felt that was my responsibility.”

Her method of collecting information for the play has included conducting interviews, learning from the archives and reading old chronicles.

“I love just looking through chronicles and seeing what pops out, even the adverts. I love the adverts because it gives you such a good glimpse like: What did they smoke? What did they watch at the cinema?” she said.

“Because if you want to know the history, there's a book. But if you want to know what they would talk about...what a day-to-day experience would be, then those are the little things. A new shop opening. Oh, they brought the jeans. So those are my school books. The day-to-day, nitty-gritty, mundane things that make our day-to-day living so colourful.”

However, Ms Villa said that the process of writing ‘In the Still of the Night’ has been the most challenging of all, because it was not just one event, like the Referendum, but an entire period of 15 years.

She said that referencing what was happening locally and internationally at the time, as well as listening to countless interviews and discerning what to include has been “horrendously difficult”, because “everybody has a story” but they still had to be told through the lens of a family, friends, or a block of people, in order to reflect a realistic storytelling experience.

She also underlined that not everybody she considered interviewing was prepared to talk.

“For some people, the closed frontier was a very hard time and [talking about] it brings them to tears.”

Ms Villa said that her experience travelling on a world cruise for the past five months has been particularly beneficial to the writing of this play as it has helped her appreciate Gibraltar and its people from a different perspective.

“It's enabled me to have conversations with other people from other parts of the world who have similarities but great differences. And it's helped me bring more material to the forefront of things that were going on that maybe should be included,” she said.

According to Ms Villa the play touches on social and cultural themes, such as food being a central part of Llanito experience, as well as the historical and political context, not just locally but globally, including the recent WWII, the ensuing Vietnam War and the Falklands Conflict.

She said, although these may be considered drier topics, they are relevant, serious conversations that need to be woven in, and she aims to represent them through different, dynamic, dramatic tools.

Ms Villa added that the main thrust of this play is to inform the younger generations and leave behind a legacy through storytelling, while understanding and celebrating who we are as a people and the history that has shaped us.

The thread that runs throughout, however, is love, all kinds of love, she said, despite how cheesy it may sound.

“It's family love, parental love, relationship love. That is what strings all the seams together. Plus, love of our homeland, love of our people, love of ourselves. Sometimes we're very good at bringing ourselves down, but I think there should be a little bit more pride in who we are as a people. We're so unique.”

One of the crucial elements behind the scenes Ms Villa said, is coaching the teenage actors on the intricacies of the Llanito dialect; the lexicon, the accent and the Andaluz pronunciation of Spanish words.

As well as through the use of historically accurate “earthy” Llanito and juxtaposing politics spoken in English, Ms Villa hopes to evoke the sounds of the period through music, by playing songs from the era on vinyl in the background, rather than a streamed playlist on speakers.

She will also be incorporating original compositions played on guitar by musician Manuel Bonavia, a childhood friend and neighbour who she grew up with in one of Gibraltar’s many patios, where most of her stories, and memories, take place.

The aim is to evoke what it would have felt like to be there, “through sound, through a slow delivery, because the days felt longer”, and even though there was still stress, “it was a more relaxed society” that ran at a slower pace, she said.

Ms Villa also said that this will be the first Llanito, historical play done under the Theatre Makers flag, involving lots of people from the new crew as well as retaining the original cast from White Light as the trilogy of plays operates “like a soap opera”, following the same characters.

It's a good mishmash. It's a good set-up. It's a good cast and a good crew.”

Tickets for ‘In The Still of the Night’ will be available on buytickets.gi by mid-September, access to the WWII Tunnels will be made easy via a shuttle bus service included in the price.

The play will be suitable for all ages, with the aim to generate conversation, keeping people talking about this influential experience for generations to come, Ms Villa hopes that it will make Gibraltarians “ask questions about who we are”.