The Malta of this feature is not an island surrounded by sea but a lake surrounded by land – the artificial lake created near the Polish city of Poznań for the World Kayak Championships of 1990. However, since that event, and the momentous political changes with which it coincided, the lake has become the annual focus for a quite different event: a festival of theatre that has earned a reputation for both hosting and initiating important experimental work which is none the less rooted in the need to maintain close contact with its ever larger and more enthusiastic audiences. A range of illustrations of some of the oustanding productions accompanies retrospects by two regular members of those audiences – Juliusz Tyszka, who outlines the origins and development of MALTA, and Ewa Obrębowska-Piasecka, who offers a personal response to the achievements of the festival and to the philosophy of theatre underlying them.