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National Theatre Wales Announces First Year's Work, Including "Lost" Osborne Play and Michael Sheen Passion Play
By Mark Shenton
05 Nov 2009
National Theatre Wales, a new national company without a specific building-based home but which aims to take theatre to all parts of Wales, has announced its first year's programming, to play between March 2010 and April 2011.
There will be one show per month, each month, taking place in locations across the country, that seeks to "theatrically map Wales," including the world premiere of an early John Osborne play, and the return of Welsh actor Michael Sheen to his hometown of Port Talbot to revive the lost tradition of the Passion Play there.
According to a press statement, "National Theatre Wales will create bold, invigorating theatre in the English language, rooted in Wales, with an international reach. It will produce theatre indoors and outdoors across spaces and landscapes in Wales. It will explore theatre as a space for debate and discussion, and develop [programming] to respond to current events happening across the road or around the world."
The season will launch in the South Wales Valleys in March 2010, when National Theatre Wales's artistic director John E. McGrath will direct Alan Harris's A Good Night Out in the Valleys. In their heyday, the coal mines created thriving communities and considerable wealth in the towns of the Welsh Valleys. Those communities were full of a sense of pride and spirit, something that was embodied in the creation of the Miners' Institutes which became their concert halls, theatres, meeting places and snooker halls. Over the years, the Institutes have become local arts centres or meeting halls. Others have fallen into disrepair. This new play, which emerged from visits by the writer and director to the local communities in which they were asked for their definition of a good night out, is touring to five of the existing Miners' Institutes over three weeks, from March 11 to 27, 2010, in Blackwood, Bridgend, Pontardawe, Caerphilly and Aberdare.
It is followed by Shelf Life, for which Swansea-based touring company Volcano Theatre and Welsh National Opera have recruited a choir of librarians to take over the evocative domed reading room of Swansea's Old Library. From April 6 to 25, 2010, they will guide audiences through the abandoned book stacks, to the accompaniment of a new score by multi-instrumental composer Peter Swaffer Reynolds.
The Devil Inside Him is a play that John Osborne wrote at the age of 18, but was thought lost until its recent discovery in the archive of the Lord Chamberlain, the stage censor, in London's Somerset House. It will receive its world premiere at Cardiff's New Theatre, beginning performances May 6, 2010, for a run to May 16, in a production to be directed by Elen Bowman, artistic associate at Cardiff's Sherman Cymru Theatre.
Marc Rees, one of Wales's leading exponents of contemporary performance and installation, has conceived and is curating For Mountain, Sand and Sea, to create a multi-sensory journey through the Welsh seaside town of Barmouth, running June 25 to July 10, 2010.
The Beach is a brand-new outdoor game, commissioned from three leading young artists Rhiannon Cousins, Carl Morris and Bethan Marlow, that will be played on the beaches of the North Wales Coast, from July 26 to Aug. 1, 2010.
Celebrated Welsh director Mike Pearson, best known for his work with theatre company Brith Gof, will direct a new version of Aeschylus' classic play The Persians by Kaite O'Reilly, that will be staged in the Ministry of Defence's Cilieni Village in the heart of the Brecon Military Range, an area rarely seen by civilians, running from Aug. 11-21, 2010.
Gary Owen, one of Wales' foremost contemporary playwrights, has returned to his hometown to research and write Love Steals Us from Loneliness, a new play that looks at what it means to be a young person growing up in Bridgend. John E McGrath's production, presented in partnership with Sherman Cymru, will premiere in Bridgend in October.
The Dark Philosophies celebrates one of Wales' most distinctive voices of the last century, Gwyn Thomas, opening in Newport in November.
David Harradine, artistic director of the company Fevered Sleep (an associate company of London's Young Vic), is writing and designing The Weather Factory, opening in Snowdonia in December. After a year collecting weather samples in the area, Harradine opens his weather factory to audiences for the first time.
Soul Exchange is being devised by a team of international artists working with the communities of Cardiff's Butetown, one of the most ethnically diverse regions of Wales where there is a Welsh-Somali population of around 10,000 – the largest Somali community outside Somali itself. It will play at Butetown's Coal Exchange in January 2011.
Berlin-based company Rimini Protokill are staging their first-ever U.K. production, currently listed under the working title of Outdoors, created with the farmers, environmentalists, rock climbers and landscapes of Wales. It will be performed in Aberystwyth in February 2011.
Welsh touring circus outfit NoFit State join forces with Milford Haven's Torch Theatre to stage Mundo Paralelo there in March 2011.
One of Port Talbot's most famous acting sons, Michael Sheen (whose Broadway credits include appearing as Mozart in the 1999 Broadway revival of Amadeus and as David Frost in Frost/Nixon in 2007) returns to revive a lost tradition, The Port Talbot community Passion play. Working with leading Welsh poet Owen Sheers, and supported by professional actors, designers and musicians, creative director Sheen will guide residents and visitors to Port Talbot on a journey of rediscovery, with performances telling a contemporary version of the Passion story enhanced by stories of local people. The Port Talbot Passion Play used to be staged every year in the town until 1998, and in a press statement, Sheen has said, "I first saw the Passion Play in Port Talbot when I was about 12. It was a story I knew coming to life in front of me. A ritual taking place before me. A town remembering itself through a story."
Finally, in addition to the 12 shows which form the National Theatre Wales' main programme, the company will produce two extra strands of work: the Debate programme will provide a forum for audiences to experience theatre as a space for exploration and discussion of ideas, while Respond adds space for something completely unexpected, in which teams of writers, performers, directors and designers will be asked to respond to events happening today.
For more details on all of the events, visit ww.nationaltheatrewales.org
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