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Dateline:
8th November, 2009
National Theatre Wales Launches
After decades of discussion and at least two years of planning and
recruiting, the much anticipated National Theatre of Wales launched
this week.
At lunchtime on Thursday, 5th November the launch in Cardiff was broadcast
live on the internet at nationaltheatrewales.org,
apparently the first time a theatre has been launched in this way. Simultaneous
launch events were held at theatres across Wales, where the live web-link
was screened to the sound of clinking champagne glasses.
For Artistic Director, Mold-born John McGrath, who set his stamp spectacularly
on the Contact Theatre, Manchester, this is no PR gimmick. Theatre in
Wales is more poorly attended than elsewhere in the UK. With a relatively
small budget of £3m, to cover the launch costs and the first year,
and without a fixed theatrical home, McGrath's vision is to take the
theatre to the people.
The digital launch is a central part of this vision to gain a reach
a new audience for theatre in Wales . To this end, the NTW has also
launched its own social networking site, community.nationaltheatrewales.org
The programme for the first year is what McGrath describes as "ludicrously
ambitious": from March 2010, an English-language play every month
for twelve months, with a thirteenth thrown in as a grand finale. This
is NTW's "theatrical map of Wales", producing theatre that
is both well-rooted in the community in which it is staged and which
responds to current events, whether they happen down the road, or on
the other side of the world.
In addition to the programme, NTW's Debate and Respond initiatives
will encourage audiences to see theatre as a forum for debate, and will
challenge creative teams to come up with a rapid theatrical response
to current affairs, as they happen.
The Programme
March 2010
The season opens in March 2010 with the inimitable Alan Harris' A
Good Night Out in the Valleys, lauding the role of the Miners
Institutes in the Welsh Valley communities and premiering in Blackwood
Miners' Institute in Gwent before touring the Valleys.
April 2010
In April Volcano Theatre and Welsh National Opera gather a choir of
Welsh librarians to perform Peter Swaffer Reynolds' promenade piece,
Shelf Life in the evocative domed reading room of Swansea's
Old Library.
May 2010
May sees the only traditional theatrical piece at Cardiff's New Theatre.
Elen Bowman directs the world premier of a lost John Osbourne play,
discovered only recently in the archive of the Lord Chamberlain, The
Devil Inside Him. Set in a deeply conservative Welsh village,
the play pre-dates Look Back in Anger by six years or so, and was
Osborne's first play.
June 2010
Wales' leading exponent of performance and installation art, Marc
Rees, will take his audience on a multi-sensory journey around the
beaches of Barmouth, in June's For Mountain, Sand and Sea.
The coastal town where once Darwin wrote Origin of Species
and Ruskin and Wordsworth came for inspiration, but where now pound
shops and the inflatable detritus of the summer tourist trade threaten
the natural beauty.
July 2010
Through July Hide And Seek theatre company take holidaymakers through
fun and frolics on the beaches of North Wales in a brand new game
specially commissioned by the NTW.
August 2010
In August Mike Pearson directs Kate O Reilly's new version of Aeschylus'
The Persians in a 31,000 acre military village built into the
heart of the Brecon Beacons where special forces are trained to 'clear;
insurgents.
October 2010
Gary Owen returns to his hometown of Bridgend in October with a new
play, Love Steals Us From Loneliness. Staged in partnership
with the Sherman Cymru, the play will explore the Bridgend suicides
of 2008.
November 2010
A new adaptation of the ink-black comic tales of the Valleys in Gwyn
Thomas' The Dark Philosophers comes to the Riverfront in Newport
in November.
December 2010
The year ends spectacularly in Snowdonia in December with David Harradine's
The Weather Factory for family audiences.
January 2011
Soul Exchange will celebrate the rich history and the ethnic
diversity of Butetown, Cardiff in January 2011 at the Coal Exchange,
the site of the world's first ever million pound deal in 1901.
February 2011
Berlin's acclaimed Rimini Protokoll's first ever UK production will
be commissioned by NTW for February. Outdoors will be the product
of the new theatre movement, Reality Trend, for which Rimini Protokoll
are renowned. The piece spotlights the contrasting urban-rural geography
of Wales and examines environmental issues.
March 2011
Wales' renowned circus company, No Fit State Circus and Milford Haven's
Torch Theatre join forces in March for the edgy Mundo Paralelo.
April 2011
The NTW's finale sees one of Port Talbot's most famous sons, Michael
Sheen, reviving the lost tradition of the passion play. Sheen directs
and stars in The Passion, in collaboration with Welsh poet
Owen Sheers, which will unfold every night, drawing on the stories
of local people to stage a contemporary version of the Passion. Sheen
remembers the tradition fondly, "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."
Allison Vale
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