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Have Theatre, Will Travel…Dateline: 2nd July, 2006Torch Theatre Artistic Director Peter Doran, looks forward to the part both he and his company will play in the long awaited revival of English language theatre in Wales. At the recent Arts Council of Wales conference, Alun Pugh, the Minister for Culture, Sport and the Welsh Language announced that he was putting a further £500,000 into English language theatre in Wales. He suggested that the Arts Council look at Boyden’s recommendations before they set about distributing the money. For those who don’t know or for those who have forgotten, allow me to recap. A few years ago the Arts Council commissioned Peter Boyden to report on the state of English language theatre in Wales and to suggest a way forward; apart from a few dissenting voices, the report was generally well received but sadly, the money wasn’t there to carry out many of his recommendations. A main feature of the report was that two of the building based companies (Torch and Sherman) increase their production capacity and make a commitment to tour their work to middle-scale theatres throughout Wales and beyond. It makes sense, both companies have the facilities, the staff, and the desire; we just haven’t had the funding in recent years. The Sherman Theatre Company is on the verge of a merger with new writing company, Sgript Cymru and is therefore still developing its future role. In the case of the Torch, their future role is about to start: With The Wales Assembly Government putting up £2 million for the arts outside Cardiff (matching the grant given for the running of the WMC), money has been made available for increased production for the thirteen regional hubs and, of these, The Torch Theatre is the only hub that is already producing its own work, so we are in a position to make an immediate impact on middle-scale touring throughout Wales. Although the Torch is no stranger to touring, in the past we’ve always operated on a smaller scale on tour then we have at our home base in Milford Haven; with the extra money being made available, we can now take our bigger shows on the road and the first of these is Terry Johnson’s wonderful comedy Dead Funny. Dead Funny was a play that I wanted to do for along time; I was very confident that the audience in Pembrokeshire would respond well to it and I was proved right; it practically sold out for the whole of its run at the Torch last November. At that time there was no plan to tour it but the beauty of the new funding arrangement is that if we have a particular success, then we can just apply for the money and take it on the road. We’ve won a number of production awards at the Torch over the past five years but none of those shows have ever been seen outside of Pembrokeshire, which is a great shame. People often say to me, “I hear you’re doing great things down at The Torch” - well, now they’ll get the chance to see! I can’t think of a better play to kick off this new venture. It is hilariously funny but also has the capacity to shock and the capacity to move its audience to tears; for a play to do that it really has to be special, its certainly one of the best that I’ve ever worked on. We need to produce much more English language theatre in Wales and the Arts outside Cardiff money and the further £500,000 is a massive help to get us on the right road. We’re already seeing exciting collaborations between Mappa Mundi and Theatr Mwldan, The Riverfront and Theatr y Byd, Wales Theatre Company and Swansea Grand and, like the Torch, these shows are available for the whole of Wales to see – its not quite everything that Boydon recommended but it’s a start. Dead Funny opened at the Torch on the 29th and
30th of June. This article first appeared on the Theatre in Wales website.
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