On November 5th 2009, John E. McGrath, artistic director of the National Theatre Wales, announced its inaugural programme during a multi-media web-cast, reflecting the company’s determination to embrace the new technology in a bid to engage with artists and audiences.Later that evening, on BBC Radio Four’s flagship arts programme Front Row, whilst interviewing McGrath, Mark Lawson twice raised the spectre of placard-waving Welsh-speakers protesting at the new company’s work being performed in English. This suggested a metropolitan determination to cling to outmoded perceptions, and a shocking ignorance of the fact that a national theatre operating in the Welsh language – Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru – has been in existence since 2003. Mercifully, the Guild members whom McGrath addressed at Cardiff’s Chapter Arts Centre on 2nd December, in a meeting chaired by Roger Williams, were somewhat better informed. The announcement in 2007 of the establishment of the National Theatre Wales - funded by the Welsh Assembly Government with an initial grant of £3 million - followed hard on the heels of similar developments in Scotland, and brought to an end (or at least moved into a new, constructive phase) a debate which had been raging for over half a century. The company’s first-year programme boasts an ambitious range of work, commencing in March 2010 with Alan Harris’s A Good Night Out In The Valleys, to be staged in a number of South Wales workmen’s institutes; and climaxing with Hollywood heavyweight Michael Sheen’s takeover of his home town of Port Talbot as he revives the traditional Passion Play alongside poet Owen Sheers in April 2011. THE FULL REPORT IS AVAILABLE AT THE WRITERS GUILD WEBSITE. PLEASE FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW |
| The Writers Guild web site: www.writersguild.org.uk/public/008_Featurearticl/400_WGGBNewsNat.html |
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Monday, December 14, 2009 |
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