Mario Azzopardi has introduced in Malta a series of methods that employ drama and theatre as catalysts for personal and social change

Mario Azzopardi has been involved in Malta's mainstream and alternative theatre scene for almost 40 years.
He has directed and experimented with a large number of classical and modern texts, from Aristophanes to Brecht, from Racine to Pinter, from Bernard Shaw to Sartre.
Since his early days in the theatre, he has always regarded drama practice as a slice of life, relating the theatrrical experience to day-to-day reality. Such a vision was intensified when Azzopardi became involved with the workings of the Drama Unit within the Ministry of Education and when he later became principal at the Malta Drama Centre.

More recently, Mario Azzopardi became intensely involved with training young people, teachers, social workers, community leaders and animators in methods using theatre as an instrument for personal and social change. He has gained a reputation as a dynamaic trainer-director and has been working regularly on projects within the European Union learning programmes. One such programme, Grundtvig has seen him conduct theatre workshops and offer consultancy services to organisations in Italy, Romania, Lithuania, Hungary and Poland. He also conducts international workshops for mutli-national participants at the Malta Drama Centre (see images).

Azzopardi's pedagogical work for the theatre is informed by Paulo Freire's "critical consciousness" theories on education for change and Augusto Boal's THeatre of the Oppressed. As a theatre trainer working in Malta as well as in several European countries, Azzopardi is heavily involved in adult literacy work, parental involvement in education, personality development, drama as therapy, social work in the community, non-formal education and programmes for the unemployed. He is also connected to the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice in Malta. His ideas on theatre, and specifically theatre in Malta, which draw on Freire and Boal, are best captured in his M.Phil. thesis.

Mario Azzopardi also teaches theoretical and practical drama at the Universiy of Malta, where he conducts forum-theatre techniques and lectures on the social and political implications of the theatrical experience in Malta and mainstream Europe.