| “The Worst time to be a Welsh Artist" |
Culture in the Senedd |
| Alun Davies MS, Tim Price, Geraint Talfan Davies in Senedd & Media , Government & Public Culture , November 14, 2024 |
“The bag is whisked from O'Donnell's head and a harsh light in shone on him.”Tim Price opens his play “Odyssey '84”- praised at its Sherman production- with a scene of impact. His protagonist has fallen into the hands of interrogators who want to know all. The harsh light of interrogation is not a pleasant thing. It is relentless and allows no shadows. Critical life deserves to be conducted in civility. But it deserves a rigour as well. Its needs its searching light of scrutiny. The draining of a critical wellspring is a matter of observation. Roll the decades back and a critical life of Wales of a different flavour reveals itself. There was a liveliness in the age of print. Take a random dip. “This year's National Eisteddfod field was full of the great and the good wandering about looking baffled rather than angry as they scanned their copies of “Lol”, the once-yearly Welsh porno-satirical broadsheet.” “There is in Wales a set of middle-class intellectuals who see a way of making a good living by pretending to speak for the Welsh working-class.” These come from Arcade number 21. It was dated 4th September 1981. John Osmond was in the editor's chair. He was supported by a board of Robin Reeves, David Smith and Ned Thomas. Their magazine four decades on is a good read. It has cartoons of those in power. Its like does not exist today. Critical life now is more akin to mates a-meeting; the setting is like a comfy sofa; the ambience is nice; the lights are turned low. But this autumn the lights were turned up. In two places, in politics and the arts, there were voices who spoke candidly. * * ** Alun Davies is Member of the Senedd for Blaenau Gwent. He is also a member of the Culture Committee. It has a similar name to its counterpart in Holyrood but it diverges from that body in interpretation of its function. But at a session on 17th October Alun Davies struck a note that was not usual. “The Welsh Government has not funded the arts and culture sector in the same way as, say, Scotland or the Republic of Ireland, in terms of general funding over the last decade, and perhaps more.” He asked of the public witnesses: “So, do you think the Welsh Government actually cares about arts and culture?” And on the Executive: “We tick the boxes and I've never heard a Minister in the Welsh Government not talk about culture at some point; I've done it myself—but when it comes to voting on the budget, which is the real declaration of a government's values, the arts and culture sector is the easy target and is cut. “...that is not a recent issue since the pandemic; it's been the same going back over a decade. So, that tells me that the Government says one thing and does another.” * * * * Geraint Talfan Davies in his memoir of life at the top of pillar after pillar of Welsh life wrote: “It is not easy for small and close societies to escape from a limited comfort zone....Honest debate is already blunted by our very closeness.” “An alarmingly high proportion of supposedly independent people are in some way beholden to government. When combined with an historically well-attested aversion to direct confrontation, it is little wonder that Wales is too often the land of the pulled punch. “I lost count of the people who said they supported the council [Arts Council of Wales] fully but could not go public as they were chasing government grants of one kind or another.” * * * * The record of Tim Price does not have an equal: Pentabus, National Youth Theatre of Wales, the Donmar Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre, the Olivier, Wales Millennium Centre. In a symbolism of place Price has moved. But his travel has not been from Aberdare to Canton or Penarth but to England's Welsh capital, Liverpool. On 15th October he was subject of a profile by Jasper Rees. Rees' article, written for a London publisher, ran to 1300 words. Dirty Protest, a company that puts on theatre and is not deemed fit to receive revenue funding, was not included. In extract: Rees opened with a rhetorical question: “What is the future for Welsh playwrights working in the English language? On the new production: “His default aspiration is to tell Welsh stories on Welsh stages. “Odyssey ’84 is being premiered at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff. Once upon a time it might have been commissioned by NTW, and typically staged at a found space in the Valleys, but the company’s virtual demise has narrowed the options for Welsh playwrights in Wales. “In 2009, when the long-awaited National Theatre Wales (NTW) was finally launched, it could not have been brighter. Yet last year NTW lost 100 per cent of its subsidy from Arts Council Wales, whose funding comes from the Welsh government and the National Lottery. As a national company producing professional theatre that promotes Welsh stagecraft and serves Welsh audiences, it has effectively ceased to be. “Before it was defunded, NTW seemed to have lost interest in staging any form of professional theatre at all. Though not in the public domain, Price says it’s an open secret among Welsh creative artists that one year, on a subsidy of £1.6 million, NTW sold a total of 3,000 tickets. “They felt they were a theatre for social change. They viewed professionalism as a barrier to inclusion and audiences as a crass inconvenience and that’s how they operated. There was an air of superiority. We were coarse artists who wanted to fill theatres and sell tickets and they felt entitled to this subsidy.” “That’s a piece of our cultural infrastructure that has been and gone within 14 years,” says Tim Price. “Everybody could see it coming. It’s a total, total embarrassment.” [Note: The company continues to employ nine members of staff to produce no theatre. The Arts Council of Wales has continued to provide more money to the company in the current financial year, an arrangement not disclosed on the websites of either organisation.] * * * * Rees continued: “Price seems a quiescent type in glasses, flat cap and fair-haired beard, but when he gets going he simmers with reasoned rage. Take the appointment of artistic directors, who came and went at NTW. None was Welsh because, he claims, “Welsh boards are inherently prejudiced against Welsh talent. You can have 20 years making work in Wales or five years working in any theatre in England – the board will always choose that person from outside.” “They would surely have made an exception for the Rhondda-raised Daniel Evans, previously artistic director at Sheffield and Chichester and now co-running the RSC. “Can we get him to come back is the question. Why would he when he’s got the resources in England? That’s the problem. Our key talent goes and if they’re brilliant, which they are, they’ll succeed.” “Evans has had particular success staging big musicals such as My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof and South Pacific. “If you want a culture that makes people who act and sing you come to Wales,” says Price. “The West End has loads of Welsh people propping up their shows. The gap in Welsh theatre is ‘where’s our big musical?’” Price ultimately blames these troubles on the government in Wales, under whose aegis Arts Council Wales is currently attempting to turn Welsh National Opera’s orchestra into part-timers. “The land of song has been strangled by the Welsh Labour Party. Where we express our identity is through arts and culture yet we’ve been squeezed. It is the worst time in my living memory to be a Welsh artist. I have emerging artists asking for advice. For the first time ever I’m like, ‘You have to get out because the resources aren’t there.’” “The Welsh government, he adds, spends 0.15 per cent of its annual budget on the arts. Scotland, for comparison, spends 0.5 per cent (“and the arts sector is in uproar”) while the average across Europe is 1.5 percent. “The only bit of our culture that is protected seemingly is the Welsh language [which he studied to A-level]. I’ll lie down on the railway track for it. But when the cuts come, we can’t just have a strategy for one language. “Price argues there is another issue for Welsh playwrights. “We haven’t got a canon because we’re not being studied. We’re not reaching an audience because there’s not hundreds of thousands of kids studying our plays every year. “I’ve talked to the Welsh Joint Education Committee – they’re not interested. We’ve got great plays by Daf James, Kath Chandler, Gary Owen, Siân Owen. You’d only know about them if you’re a theatre nerd.” The full article can be read, by subscription, at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/nye-writer-tim-price-interview-odyssey-86/ Picture credit: Matt Writtle |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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