In 2002 the Government of Gibraltar put out a call to the community asking them for ideas as to how best celebrate/commemorate the Tercentenary of British Gibraltar in 2004. I wrote to the Minister for Tourism with my proposal of a theatrical production charting the evolution of the civilian population over the preceding 300 years. I would write it and then find a director to produce it using local actors. He liked the idea so I was sent away with a task to create an historical full-length play. After months of research, interviews and hand-written drafts The Civil Garrison was sent by email to the Minister. There followed a long period of painful silence, calls and emails ignored.
Friends suggested I speak to
Leslie Zammitt the well-known local director and school-teacher. Terrified at
the prospect, I looked him up in the telephone directory and placed a call.
Leslie asked me to email him the play and within two weeks had set up a meeting
in Sacarello’s Coffee House; he loved my work and wanted to collaborate. We had
an instant rapport and started developing the The Civil Garrison for the stage. We’d meet on Sunday mornings over
coffee at The Eliot Hotel and in the costume room above the now Gibraltar
Savings Bank. His advice and guidance improved my work immensely.
Finally after months of chasing
and waiting, the Minister replied saying his assistants were reading the piece
and would revert. They never did so I forced the issue and insisted on a meeting.
The Minister then revealed there was no money left to fund such a project. I
was dismayed and crestfallen; all my hard work was for nothing. The government
never attempted to produce The Civil
Garrison in any shape or form and the Tercentenary was ‘celebrated’ with
dancing girls and singers performing cover-versions on a garish open-air stage,
not a whiff of history or heritage. I self-published the play (under my
then-name Rebecca Faller) and it was
printed in Malta and launched in December 2004, at least my efforts had
something tangible to commemorate them. Leslie and I decided to plough on and
get The Civil Garrison to the stage
but then tragedy struck. The news of his sudden and accidental death permeated
through Gibraltar; our much-admired and much-loved Dr. Zammitt was taken far
too soon. I put the play away and consigned it to history.
In 2014 I was approached by
Anthony Pitaluga, head of the Gibraltar Archives. He was part of a committee
who had been asked to organise celebrations for the 75th anniversary of the evacuation
of Gibraltar’s civilian population during the Second World War. Anthony had
read The Civil Garrison and wanted it
produced and the committee was in agreement. I contacted director Jackie Villa
who was familiar with my work and she agreed to take on the challenge along
with her friend, theatre producer, Andrew Dark. Jackie had one condition: I had
to re-write The Civil Garrison and
focus solely on the late thirties and war years as that was what 2015 was
celebrating. This wasn’t going to be easy.
The Civil Garrison is the story of the Ansaldo family who we see travel through the ages:
The Great Siege, Napoleonic wars, construction of the dockyard, Franco era,
WWII, political advances, closure of the frontier, ending at the 2002 Joint
Sovereignty Referendum. It is an ambitious and exhaustive work and would be
very expensive to produce so changes did have to be made. I set to work and
re-named the piece Llévame Donde Nací
after the famous song which already appeared in The Civil Garrison. Jackie is a teacher by profession and she
packed me off time and again to do my ‘homework’ and I sent her draft after
draft. Once she was satisfied with my end product she asked me to trust her and
hand over the script so it could be worked on with Andrew and the cast as they
went along. Auditions were held and things were gaining momentum; people wanted
to be part of this and it was extremely positive. I took a step back and did
not get involved, besides from a few script re-writes I saw nothing of the
production until I was invited to the last dress rehearsal. The play ran for a
week in November 2015 to sell-out audiences. Every night I stood at the back
with my young son Freddie and cried each time the evacuees sang the song. It
was a very emotional moment and very rewarding to see my creation, The Ansaldo
Family, brought to life so brilliantly.
In that interim period when
Jackie and I were working on the script many people asked me if they could read
it. I explained that it was my draft, completely in the English language, and
would not be what they would see produced on stage. One person in particular
was the musician Tim Garcia. He wanted to compose a song and perform it in the
interval on Gala Night so Jackie told him to speak to me. I sent Tim my original
script and he produced a beautiful piece called ‘In The Heat of The Night.’ This
was a love song inspired by one of the men who had been left alone in Gibraltar
during the war and had started up an affair with a girl from La Linea thinking his own wife would
never return from the blitz in London. Unfortunately this section was cut from
the final play but nevertheless Tim performed his song which sparked
interesting conversation about the darker secrets of that period of Gibraltar’s
social history.
The people who read my
original script and those who do not understand Llanito and Spanish have
since urged me to publish. This piece is the middle section of a metamorphosis.
It adds to the whole story of The Civil
Garrison which was bolstered by dear Leslie Zammitt, locked away for ten
years then re-invigorated like a phoenix by Anthony Pitaluga, Jackie Villa,
Andrew Dark and the amazing cast and crew of the 2015 stage production of Llévame Donde Nací. The final stage
script was published in 2016 and the production won the Gibraltar Heritage
Trust Group Award in the autumn of 2016. I urge you to read all three works and
immerse yourself in the social and political history of Gibraltar, an
interesting place which is much more than the average garrison.
The play is available on Amazon Kindle see link below:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B7S239LQ/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2YI036PW6T5QD&keywords=llevame+donde+naci&qid=1658927027&s=books&sprefix=llevame+donde+naci%2Cstripbooks%2C158&sr=1-2
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