Summer 2024 - The Beginning

The Inspiration behind Duel Citizen

An Interview between Director & Writer

Where does the idea for a new musical come from? In the case of Duel Citizen, the answer is complex. The inspirations behind the show are spread across a lifetime of lived experiences, relationships, memories, and questions of identity. Some arrived in fleeting moments; others are defining memories that shape who we become.

Director Gemma May Maddock sat down with the creator himself, book writer Joel Parnis, and spoke about the inspirations behind the musical and why its themes continue to resonate today.

Gemma: Let's start at the beginning! When did the idea of this musical first come to you?
Joel: It honestly began as something far less ambitious. I’d been working in the German-speaking theatre market for many years and was craving an artistic outlet in English again. There’s a comfort to singing in your mother tongue that I hadn’t experienced for a long time. 

At first, I thought maybe I’d put together a one-night cabaret show somewhere, so I started looking for repertoire. But then I found myself asking deeper questions: What kinds of songs do I connect with? Why do I want to perform them? Those questions quickly led me into ideas about identity, heritage, language, and belonging. 

Eventually, I realised there was a much larger piece inside me that needed to be written — and so in late summer 2024, I began to write what became Duel Citizen.

Gemma: The show explores migration, memory, identity, and generational sacrifice across several decades. How did your own personal experiences or family history shape the emotional world of the piece?
Joel: I come from a family of immigrants — as virtually all non-indigenous Australians do — but on my father’s side, that migration history is still quite recent. My Nanna and Nannu emigrated from Malta to Australia in the 1960s to build a better life for their family, and now, two generations later, I’ve moved back! Now I'm splitting my time between Malta and Germany and I love it! But it does come with its challenges.

The show asks questions about what “home” actually means and whether a “better life” is ever as simple as we imagine it to be. Learning German and now Maltese (somewhat later in life than is recommended...) I've learned how much language plays a role in building that sense of belonging somewhere. When my family arrived in Australia in 1963, the goal was assimilation - becoming as Australian as possible. Unfortunately because of that, Maltese wasn’t passed down to the next generation and while I don't resent my family for wanting to "become Australian", I do feel it's such a shame to have lost that connection with my heritage. 

When I first moved to Malta, it was such a strange experience arriving in the place my name comes from and not knowing how to pronounce it correctly — having locals correct me on my own surname. There was something both funny and confronting about that! All of those experiences informed the writing of this piece. They're complex ideas and emotions and this show really lives in the grey areas of all of it.  

Gemma: Europeans often romanticise Australia. As an Australian living in London, I get asked a lot, "Why would you ever leave?" Do you hear that a lot as well?
Joel: Absolutely — all the time! And look, I love Australia. It’s an incredible country, and I’m deeply grateful for the life and career I was able to build there. My Nannu left Malta to create opportunities for the generations that came after him, and Australia absolutely made that possible for my family. 

But identity is complicated. Australia also has a very complicated relationship with masculinity and with ideas about what it means to be a man. Because I had the opportunity to live in different countries as a child and later in my twenties, I began questioning those ideas more deeply. 

As a queer man, the marriage equality plebiscite in 2017 became a real turning point for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm so happy that Australians voted with a huge majority in favour of marriage equality, but the debate leading up to it was extremely divisive and damaging. Putting the rights of a vulnerable minority group up for debate in the most public of forums with so much room for misinformation and dangerous rhetoric is always a move I will always struggle to understand or support. Even more disappointing was the realisation that many members of the sitting government at the time were the ones fanning the flames of that rhetoric. It really did create a sense of rupture between myself and the country I was born in. 

That internal conflict is actually where the title Duel Citizen comes from. I liked the play on the phrase “dual citizen,” but also the idea of “duelling” with oneself — the feeling of being emotionally pulled between places, identities, and versions of yourself.

Gemma: Gender is also a major theme of the piece, particularly the role of women. I've heard you describe the show as "a love letter to the women in my life." Could you elaborate on that? 

Joel: Of course! As I began developing the piece, I started interviewing family members about our history, and I learned so much about my Nanna and my Mum — particularly about the sacrifices women make, often in silence. 

My Nanna was someone I often struggled to connect with growing up, and one of the great joys of writing this musical has been discovering her again as an adult and seeing her with completely new eyes. She gave up so much to build a life for her children. Writing this piece is my attempt at bringing visibility back to her story. 

I’ve also come to understand my Mum’s sacrifices differently. Due to big international moves, she also had to set aside parts of her own identity to support opportunities being given to my father, to me, and to our family as a whole. She did it incredibly selflessly, but I now understand that it came at a personal cost. 

And then there’s Connie, my singing teacher growing up and one of the central characters in the show. She’s still one of my closest friends — basically family. I honestly struggle to think of anyone more generous. She gives endlessly to the people around her: her students, her family, her community. I watched her balance teaching, family life, and caring for her husband Bob while he was living with dementia. She handled it all with extraordinary grace and compassion while also preserving his dignity through that process. She really is an inspiration, and I’m so grateful she plays such an important role in this story.

Gemma: Dementia and memory are also very prominent themes in Duel Citizen, why was that something you wanted to explore?
Joel: Because my Nanna also lived with dementia and Alzheimer’s, Connie and I ended up supporting one another through very similar experiences.

But beyond that, watching my Nanna’s illness progress made me realise just how fragile the things we build can be — language, memory, identity. As children, having never learned Maltese, we only spoke English with Nanna. But as her dementia progressed, she gradually lost her English entirely, and suddenly her grandchildren could no longer communicate with her. I still find that incredibly sad.

At the same time, there was also something deeply moving about the way her memories shifted near the end of her life. In her final weeks, she seemed to return completely to her childhood — talking about the orange trees in the backyard of her family home in Birkirkara, speaking as though she were there with them again. Dementia is a devastating disease, but there was also something strangely beautiful and poetic in the idea that, in her mind, she got to return home and see her family again. That fluidity of memory became one of the central structural ideas behind the entire musical.

Gemma: Yes, the structure of the show is very non-conventional for a musical. How did you settle on this particular style of storytelling and use of music?
Joel: Yeah, it’s definitely not a traditional musical! One of the things that inspired the structure was learning how music can help people living with dementia reconnect with memory and emotion. I wanted to pay tribute to that idea. Throughout the show, existing songs help guide the audience through time. Music from particular eras and artists gives subtle clues about where — and when — we are in the lives of these three generations.

At the same time, I wanted audiences to have access to the characters’ internal emotional lives while still clearly distinguishing between present-day scenes and memory sequences. That’s why there are moments of third-person prose narration within the memories. It allows the characters to articulate thoughts and feelings they could never fully express aloud.

Within those memory sequences, original songs begin to emerge — often inspired by the musical styles and artists the characters themselves would have been listening to during those periods of their lives. In that way, the piece has become what I’ve been calling a “hybrid musical.” It blends naturalistic dialogue, memory narration, existing music, and original compositions into one fluid structure. And thankfully, some of the more ambitious aspects of that structure were exactly what our workshop audiences responded to most strongly! Hopefully audiences will respond just as warmly when Duel Citizen premieres at Spazju Kreattiv in February 2027.

November 2025 - The Workshop Reading

Our First Audience

On November 2, 2025, a small invited audience gathered at Kwinti Studjows in Ħamrun, Malta for the first public presentation of Duel Citizen: A Musical Between Memory & Migration. Accompanied by a musical director on piano, three performers presented the musical in its entirety through a full read-through and sing-through, with scripts and scores in front of them.

The Workshop Cast

Connie & Others — Rachel Fabri
Josephine, Robyn & Carmena — Sarah Naudi
Joel, Mario & Emmanuel — Joel Parnis 

Creative Team

Director — Gemma May Maddock
Musical Director — John Cutajar 

Although workshops and readings are common practice in theatre hubs like New York and London — with virtually every new musical undergoing some form of developmental presentation — many people still ask: what exactly is a workshop or reading?

While some workshops involve full staging, choreography, and design elements, the team behind Duel Citizen decided to focus first and foremost on the writing, structure, and emotional clarity of the piece. As a result, this presentation was specifically classified as a “reading.” 

In a reading, the creative team typically rehearses for around a week before presenting the material in a stripped-back format using music stands and scripts. In the case of a musical, performers also sing through the score. There are no costumes, props, choreography, elaborate sets, or technical production elements. The emphasis is placed entirely on the text, music, pacing, and storytelling.

But what is the purpose of a reading? As noted by Playbill, “Workshops, like readings, are a low-pressure way for producers, authors and actors to tinker with a script and flesh out characters away from the scrutiny of critics and the demands of a paying audience.”

In the early stages of a new theatrical work, there is often no better way to understand whether the structure, pacing, characters, and music are functioning effectively within the context of the complete piece. In the case of Duel Citizen, which intentionally embraces a non-linear structure and unconventional dialogue style, writer Joel Parnis and director Gemma May Maddock knew the only real way to test the concept was to experience the show in full with a live audience.

Selecting the audience for a reading is also an important part of the process. If only close friends and family are invited, it becomes difficult to gauge genuine audience responses. For Duel Citizen, the invited audience included a broad cross-section of people from across Malta’s creative and academic communities. The audience included theatre professionals from a range of disciplines — not solely musical theatre — alongside actors, filmmakers, television creatives, University of Malta students, academics specialising in Maltese diaspora studies, and selected family members and friends of the cast and creative team. 

Writer Joel Parnis also intentionally invited several theatre-makers known for their critical eye and high artistic standards, including many he had never previously worked with or met.

Equally important was the inclusion of audience members outside the arts industry. Since the general public ultimately forms the core audience for any theatrical production, it was vital to include people with little or no direct connection to the project itself.

Once a reading concludes, the next stage of development is gathering feedback. There are many ways creative teams can approach this process, but for Duel Citizen, the team chose to use a simple anonymous survey distributed immediately after the presentation. The anonymity of the survey was particularly important, as it encouraged audience members to respond more honestly and candidly than they might during an open discussion or Q&A panel.

The survey invited feedback on the script, music, lyrics, character arcs, pacing, and overall clarity of the storytelling. Audience members were also asked whether the balance between the characters felt effective and whether the emotional journey of the show was easy to follow. One particularly important question asked: Would you recommend Duel Citizen to your friends and family?

Beyond written feedback, another crucial part of the workshop process is simply observing the room itself. Experienced directors, writers, and producers learn to recognise shifts in audience energy throughout a performance. Moments of restlessness, disengagement, confusion, laughter, or emotional silence can all reveal important truths about how a piece is functioning theatrically. These instinctive observations often become just as valuable as written feedback when shaping future revisions to the work.

Once the surveys are collected, the creative team begins analysing the responses. The writer typically reviews the feedback first, looking for recurring patterns, consistent critiques, and areas of general consensus. From there, the writer collaborates with the wider creative team — in this case, the director and cast — to discuss the material in detail and determine where revisions and improvements should be made.

For Duel Citizen, the response to the workshop reading was overwhelmingly positive. To the writer’s relief, audiences strongly embraced many of the show’s more ambitious elements, particularly its non-linear structure and unconventional dialogue style.

The feedback also highlighted areas for further development, particularly around integrating and contextualising the original songs more deeply within the dramatic action. Several responses suggested refining some lyrics to make them feel even more character-specific and more organically embedded within the storytelling.

Based on both the anonymous survey responses and observations made during the live presentation, a number of edits and cuts were also implemented to improve pacing, streamline transitions, and strengthen the overall flow of the piece.

The workshop process is a vital stage in the development of any new musical, and for Duel Citizen, the reading proved invaluable in shaping the next phase of the production’s evolution. Further workshops focusing on the physical language and staging of the musical are planned for July and August 2026.

Theatre cannot exist without an audience to engage with it.

The entire Duel Citizen team would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the development of this piece so far. Your generosity, insight, and support have been invaluable, and we cannot wait to bring the full realised show to the stage on the 19th of February, 2027 at Spazju Kreattiv.

February 2027 - A World Premiere

Spazju Kreattiv

Launching as an official selection of Spazju Kreattiv’s 2026–27 season, Duel Citizen: A Musical Between Memory & Migration will celebrate its world premiere on Friday, February 19, 2027.

“The moment I first stepped inside Spazju Kreattiv, I was captivated by its extraordinary sense of history and the way it coexists so naturally with contemporary art and forward-thinking performance,” reflects show creator Joel Parnis. “It’s a building where past, present, and future feel beautifully intertwined, and I knew immediately it would be the perfect place to introduce Duel Citizen to the world.” 

Parnis describes receiving the news that the musical had been selected for the venue’s upcoming season as “one of the proudest moments” of his career to date. “I admire the venue and the work they champion enormously, and I’m thrilled for Duel Citizen to sit alongside such exciting company.” 

After years of development — including multiple public and private workshops — the creative team now brings together a blend of Maltese and international artists for the musical’s first full-scale production. 

“I’m incredibly happy that everyone from the workshop process has returned for the season at Spazju Kreattiv,” says director Gemma May Maddock. “Our cast — all either Maltese or Maltese dual nationals — bring an extraordinary breadth of experience from stages and screens across Malta and internationally. I can’t wait for audiences to see what we’ve created together.” 

The cast features acclaimed Maltese powerhouse actresses Sarah Naudi and Rachel Fabri alongside the show’s writer and producer, Joel Parnis. 

Sarah Naudi’s credits include In the Heights in London’s West End, Evita at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Foundation for Apple TV+, co-starring opposite Pierce Brosnan in The Last Rifleman, and By the Sea directed by Angelina Jolie for Universal Pictures.
 

Rachel Fabri is known for her work with the classical crossover group All Angels, as well as productions including Persephone at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Best of Rock Musicals hosted by Tim Rice, and Me and My Girl at the London Palladium. Popular with Maltese audiences, Rachel has also performed in such hits as The Last Five Years, Matilda, and Into the Woods.

Joel Parnis has previously appeared in productions including Les Misérables (Australian and international tours), My Fair Lady at the Sydney Opera House directed by Julie Andrews, Titanic (UK and international tours), and productions of Disney's Mary Poppins and The Hunchback of Notre Dame for the Thunerseespiele in Switzerland. 

Returning from the show’s workshop development are director Gemma May Maddock and musical director John Cutajar, who continue their collaboration for the premiere production. 

Ambra Anselmo, Programme Executive for Spazju Kreattiv, highlighted both the show's thematic resonance and its alignment with the venue’s artistic mission:  

“By examining identity, migration, and belonging across cultures, Duel Citizen not only provides artists with a platform to experiment and create new work, but also invites audiences to reflect on their own inherited histories and values. In doing so, it strongly reflects Spazju Kreattiv’s commitment to presenting work that resonates deeply with both local and international audiences.”

Spazju Kreattiv will launch their full season in September, 2026 at which point tickets will be available for purchase via the Spazju Kreattiv website.