| A Look-back and Guide |
Theatre in Wales: Comment |
| Commentary , Culture of Wales , August 1, 2023 |
Commentary on theatre and culture below:20 July 2023: Writer Award for Connor Allen & Other Events “The Studio Theatre, central to the Sherman's big capital redevelopment, programmes cabaret, comedy and low-cost performances. It has a devised production promoted as “a call to action for audiences to think about privilege, activism and climate justice.” That is a clear message; audiences are to get didacticism in place of theatre art.” * * * * 13 July 2023: “We have the talent to do it. We don't have the conviction, the nerve and the leadership" * * * * 19 January 2023: Gary Owen & Gary Raymond Speak Plainly “Deafening Silence: The Weakness of Wales”. * * * * 16 April 2021: Diversity in the Productions of Welsh Theatre "The state of Wales, decades behind England, has great difficulty with diversity in theatre. This is a large topic and not an easy one. Diversity in theatre has different strands." * * * * 07 April 2021: Lockdown and the Insufficiency of Watching Television “The instant availability of everything you want at the click of a mouse turns out not to be the thing you want most; human contact.” Theatre is a place, a seeing-in-a-place. Its origin in Greek, “theatron”, denotes a spectacle or a place for viewing, Eisteddfod” is similar, its root “sedd”, a seat...Its first condition is that it be a place in the company of others. If it is an act of separation, done within a private home, whatever it is it has ceased to be theatre.” * * * * 23 March 2021: “Digital” Theatre & the Sensory Deficit “It contains nonsense like “digital information has the quality of pure computational potential, which can be seen as parallel to the potential of human imagination.” It is entirely lacking in reference to human being, our biology or our physiology. * * * * 02 March 2021: Diversity & Action among Welsh Companies “Writers are everything. If you can change the writer you change everything, they change the kind of story that is being told. “We have to change, who gets to tell the stories, how they are told.” * * * * 01 July 2020: The Collapse of Theatre “The extent of the ruin for the culture of the UK as a whole has been analysed by the consultancy Oxford Economics. The forecast is £74bn drop in revenue for the creative industries, 400,000 jobs gone, 119,000 salaried and 287,000 freelance.” * * * * 29 June 2020: Carl Tighe & New Writing in the 1980s “I sent the script and heard nothing for a year. When I rang to enquire what had happened to it I was told it was at that moment being read, and I was asked to ring back in a week. I rang as requested only to be told that they knew nothing of the script, that it had never arrived at the theatre. I rang back a week later to be told that the script had arrived over a year ago but had been lost and would I kindly send another copy. I sent a second copy....theatre claimed that this too never arrived.” * * * * 23 June 2020 Carl Tighe on the Crisis of New Writing “Theatre is one of the ways in which a nation is responsible for itself, its history and its future. Without doubt there is a deep and worrying conservatism at almost every level of Welsh theatre. Much of what has passed across the stage in Wales in the fifteen years has been frankly irrelevant to the lives of the people who live here.” * * * * 14 April 2020 Responses, Good and Ridiculous, to Pandemic and the Arts “Digital will be vital – virtual organisations will now come to the fore. Until now there have really only been tentative moves to online engagement, streaming performances and online museum tours.” This presumably is a recommendation that organisations not trouble themselves with filling auditoriums. “Attendance at live events has been falling for years.” No evidence is given. It is false." * * * * 11 February 2020: Theatr Clwyd Reporting on Itself "True self-confidence also comes with a measure of humility. The company has a good story to tell. 700,000 people saw a Theatr Clwyd production in 2019. Revenue has grown 40% in the last four years. It has a multiplier effect above one, its presence estimated as generating £9,400,000 for the local economy. An Olivier award helps." * * * * 10 February 2020 Sherman Lays Out its Intentions "A thumbs-up then for: Joe Murphy will lead on Sherman Theatre’s desire to embed a literary department at the Sherman to further enrich the canon of Welsh plays and to ensure a more diverse range of voices are heard in Welsh theatre." * * * * 25 October 2019: The Cybersphere's Loss of Common Place for Public Meeting "The Agora was the common space where citizens gathered to meet and to share. Two millennia on and humans have the greatest communication mechanism ever. Its fate has become very human, division into an infinity of private fragmentations. In place of the Agora the citizens of Cyberia gather in limited clusterings of the like-minded." * * * * 20 May 2019: A Cheer for Chippy Lane & a Writing Apprentice Wanted “Rebecca is pioneering opportunities for women writers from Wales to champion their abilities and break through the boundaries and stereotypes of writing they have previously been confined to.” * * * * 07 May 2019: Ffion Jones & Not Enough Laughter in Welsh theatre "I applaud Ffion Jones. I applaud the candour, the vitality, the emotional openness, the self-belief, the brio, the lack of jargon, the unabashedness of the Welshness, the relish for theatre. I applaud too the promotion of her show, the hunger to communicate, the will for an audience." * * * * 15 April 2019: David Adams on the View from 2003 ”And I haven't even started on the subject of playwrights - the people who would ideally be producing the work to be seen on the stages of the new national theatre. The principal new-writing company, Sgript Cymru, and the smaller Theatr y Byd are both starved of funds...Little support for new writers. No encouragement for emerging new work.” * * * * 22 December 2018 Gary Owen, Chippy Lane and a Call for More Ambition “Too often we have been shy of making work that will pull in big audiences. It is entirely normal for writers in Ireland and Scotland to write big plays that open on main stages that connect with a much wider audience. Because we have not connected to audiences on that scale we don't aspire to, we don't see that as theatre's job...continue to do work that will only appeal to a small number of people.” * * * * 07 December 2018: Wales Arts Review Look-back on the Year “Hijinx ploughed new depths of cheekiness and irreverence with “the Flop.” The audience I was in was near collapse with laughter. The chorus line on its main song is unrepeatable on a site that is open to all eyes.” * * * * 27 August 2018 Flying Bridge, Seiriol Davies, the Sherman in Edinburgh “Productions went on to be seen and to win nominations and awards. “Not About Heroes”, “the Revlon Girl”, “Sugar Baby” and “How to Win Against History” were in the lead.” * * * * 03 July 2018: Arrival of Radio Wales' “the Review Show” “The Review Show is a new monthly discussion about the arts in Wales. I think it also stands as a marker for a change in attitude from BBC Wales to the way arts is covered here. I was given a very clear brief, and it was to deliver a serious, thoughtful, engaged, but accessible show about the arts... Serious and accessible. Discussion that is worth listening to for it’s own sake, whether you have any interest in the subject or not.” * * * * 05 March: 2018: Neil Docking award for “Revlon Girl” "It has been a remarkable journey by any count for Maxine Evans and Neil Docking. Neil Docking's win shows that a play of Wales is capable of competing with the best of London. The reasons are several...the first is courage." * * * * 26 December 2017: In Praise of Theatre in 2007 “Wales has a theatre of a quality and a scale that belies its size. No community of three million in the world has a larger. It is a record in which all concerned should take pride.” * * * * 25 December 2017: Ten years of Reviewing “Seymour was played by another Aberystwyth school pupil, “geeky to his fingertips”. The review also noted a fine sense of timing. A year later the Cambrian News ran a story that he had won a place at RADA. Many an actor of Wales needs a name change for Equity purpose. The actor who played Seymour Krelbourn that year had a name that was distinctive enough not to require a change. Taron Egerton he was then and Taron Egerton he is now. * * * * 21 December 2017: Simon Harris, Matthew Bulgo, Meredydd Barker, Tim Rhys Speaking Matthew Bulgo: “there are so many promising playwrights in Wales and so few opportunities for them to get their work produced on a Welsh stage.” Meredydd Barker: “...there are communities in Wales that aren’t addressing their faultlines and if theatre can’t point that out then it doesn’t deserve to call itself art because art, if it’s about anything, is about saying the difficult thing.” * * * * 20 December 2017 Critical deficit in Wales a Result of Media Deficit “We have allowed others to set the terms of debate for crucial things (like bilingualism) that we should have framed for ourselves long ago. What’s heartbreaking and infuriating (in equal measure) is that we are better placed to frame an intelligent debate...Wales has insufficient self-confidence, belief and leadership to speak out and to challenge hideous misrepresentations in an effective and constructive manner.” * * * * 28 August 2016 Awards and Plaudits at Edinburgh “Thus the observer made no reference to acting, theme, direction, lighting, design or sound. In its place he inserted a rampaging solipsism. The words “I”, “me” and “my” featured thirty-one times. The review hovered on the borders of illiteracy with misspellings and the omission of capitalisations. Better then to follow the old precept: “if you have nothing to say then don’t say it.” * * * * 01 February 2016 At the Wales Theatre Awards Terry Hands’ award for the lighting of “Hamlet” is received by Lee Haven-Jones. Bizzy Day is a name so great it should be copyrighted. She is part-architect in 2015 of the work that took best production, best director, best male actor and best English-language playwright.”. * * * * 02 January 2016 Criticism Variety and Groupthink “A reviewer dredged up the notion of the passive audience. This is a piece of groupthink which promotes the bubble of a view that artistic superiority is conferred upon an audience on two legs. It relies on confusion. Mistake metaphor for reality and the result is muddle. The fourth wall is a metaphor and not even a good one given that a wall for instance does not permit the free flow of sound and image. Actors know whether an audience is passive or not.” * * * * 12 August 2015 Wales in Scotland & the Poor Quality of Online Writing "Gwyn Emberton: If the spirit of Caradoc Evans were to be granted a second term and he made a return in 2015 “the most hated man in Wales” would find plenty to do. His kind of bracing voice is but rarely heard." * * * * 19 January 2015 Meeting Kate Wasserberg and the Other Room "It’s such a vibrant and exciting city. And there is no fringe. I just didn’t understand. A pub theatre is the theatre where I trained, five years right at the beginning of my career. Pub theatre is a natural thing for me." * * * * 7 January 2015 Audience research by Arts & Humanities Research Board "The dominant mode of cyber-opinionating is unedited narcissism. The opportunities for fakery are considerable. The top earner behind the writing of fake reviews makes twenty thousand pounds- that is a month." * * * * 06 January 2015 Planet Magazine on New Writing, the Sherman & National Theatre Wales "Tim Price. “devolution has liberated us as artists from having to eternally interrogate “what it means to be Welsh”. With the Assembly we have an institution dedicated to that question; it isn’t a question left for artists to ask." * * * * 05 January 2015 Cambria & New Welsh Review Theatre Coverage “Narrowness of description and aesthetic judgement” * * * * 29 December 2014 Playwrights Studio 36 page action plan “Factors that will influence the development of the company include: Anger and scepticism within the writing community regarding the sector’s commitment to new writing, its execution and scrutiny. A history of declining relations between funders, companies and playwrights, and the marginalising of the community on both sides.” * * * * 28 December 2014 Playwrights Studio planned Playwrights’ Studio Wales will support and champion a thriving community of playwrights, and provide a repository of knowledge and vision for time-poor industry leaders to re-engage with one of our key creative communities. PSW will provide a platform to a community lacking in confidence, opportunities and cohesion.” * * * * 19 December 2014 Dramaturg group formed at National Theatre Wales Tim Price "Wales is faced with being a nation without a single person in the subsidised theatre sector, paid to read plays, and meet playwrights...There is too little strategic oversight of new writing in Wales.” * * * * 18 December 2014 Writers Group at National Theatre Wales Community “Tim Price- how can NTW do something that is different to what already goes on in the community? Curating and resourcing interesting relationships is not enough for a national theatre. This group could potentially be the group who go on to make/ dramaturg/ commission the work that will change Welsh theatre forever." * * * * 31 December 2013 Phil Morris, Jon Gower, Dylan Moore at “Parallel Lines”, “Y Bont” & “De Gabay” “The fractured and unfocused nature of the production meant that such sentiments did not coalesce into a traceable political argument or coherent social critique...Few of the local community not involved in the project came out of their homes to watch these parades....cold and rain...poor acoustics and sightlines.” * * * * 06 January 2013 Devoted and disgruntled in Bangor “Ed Thomas was blunt: “There’s a stranglehold of mediocrity here in Wales.” The group discussed why so much welsh language theatre is so bad, which meant that when “Llwyth” was produced the community was so starved of good work it fuelled a two year run of the show.” * * * * 05 January 2013 The Disordered State of New Writing & Bad Editing “It is time to adopt a serious and integrated approach that offers proper support for the production of contemporary drama...the benchmark should be an increased number of original, full-length, commissioned new plays...Wales has no theatre space dedicated to new writing on a year-round basis...action should be taken towards the creation, or branding of a year-round dedicated centre for new writing in Wales.” * * * * 18 December 2012 State of Play: Where are the Stories from 2003 “The Writers Group continued to be the liveliest place in 2012 for theatre comment. Simon Harris summarised Sgript Cymru for a cohort of new writers.” * * * * 30 July 2011 Arwel Gruffydd, Rebecca Gould, Greg Cullen on New Writing “Bill Hopkinson, late of Wales, interpreted the role as one of visibility. He was to be seen on his feet at venues like Theatr Clwyd and the Dylan Thomas Centre, championing new writing as a moral cockpit.” * * * * 28 July 2011 Tim Price on new writing at NTW Community “The kick-off of Tim Price’s thread was no doubt one of genuine dilemma for Wales’ new writing champion. The Sherman may or may not at first have issued a fatwa of silence upon its staff.” * * * * 27 July 2011 Tim Price on New Writing and the role of the Sherman “Tim Price wrote seven sentences, one hundred and fifty-four words. Two weeks later his question had provoked responses that ran to tens of thousands of words.” * * * * 28 April 2011: National Theatre Wales Productions 1-13 "Impact and Innovation Beyond Expectation- “masterly”, “perfectly judged”, “significant”, “novel and unexpected”, “sublime Dionysiac theatricality”, “dazzling production”, “quirky, original, fresh and distinctive”, “spirit and good humour”, “joyful, enthralling and unexpected”, “sheer grace and delicacy”, “radiates joy”, “moments of wonder”. * * * * 27 April 2011: National Theatre of Wales Year One "Intellectuals are the last human beings that theatre needs to be pitched at. Enough said." * * * * 03 May 2010: John McGrath “A Good Night Out” McGrath also pinpoints what it is all for. “Theatre is the place where the life of a society is shown in public to that society...where that society's assumptions are exhibited and tested, its values are scrutinised, its myths are validated, and its traumas become emblems of its reality rather than a place to experience a rarefied artistic sensibility in an aesthetic void...It shows the interaction of human beings and social forces....Any serious piece of theatre scrutinises contemporary reality with a sense of history and without fear of engaging in politics.” * * * * 05 March 2008: Greg Cullen Interview "Wales has been very good at community theatre and theatre in education, but there’s a real gap in grown-up theatre, theatre for grown-ups." |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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