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National Theatre Wales
National Theatre Wales (NTW) is an English language theatre company that was formed in 2009. It performs in a range of locations across Wales, these have included a military training village in the Brecon Beacons, a beach in Prestatyn north Wales, the the streets of Barmouth and traditional theatre venues.
History
editThe administrative headquarters are in Cardiff, however the company has no fixed venue for the staging of its production work. Much like National Theatre Scotland, which was formed in 2006, NTW has chosen to make its home in a variety of locations throughout Wales that would not normally be associated with theatre. Their first year of work began in March 2010 with the ambitious aim of staging one show a month every month for a year, each one in a different location and each one exploring a different genre of theatre.
Artistic Director
editThe first artistic director of National Theatre Wales is John E. McGrath, formally the artistic director of Contact Theatre in Manchester 1999-2008. McGrath was awarded a PhD with distinction in New York in the 1990's and he is the author of Loving Big Brother: Surveillance Culture and Performance Space
National Theatre Wales have set up an online community in which artists and audience members can talk about their performances. The site is hosted by Ning, a facebook style social network host. Users are provided with a profile, blog and other social networking tools. The site is a working archive in which the production processes behind NTW's performances are documented.
Theatre Map
editJohn E. McGrath explains that the thirteen performances that make up NTW's opening year will allow them to create a Theatre Map of Wales, "the whole will be a work in itself, our theatre map, a guide to future possibilities." [1] John E. McGrath, artistic director of National Theatre Wales, proposes in his 2009 article Rapid Response that "through a focus on location, and on several locations, in our first year, we will undertake a conversation about nation, moving away from the politics of identity towards the philosophy of place." [2]
Productions
editYear 1 (March 2010 - April 2011)
editIn their opening year John McGrath proposes that NTW will focus on place and that this will be done through a theatrical mapping of the country in a variety of locations both traditionally theatrical and those that are located outside the normal spaces associated with theatre. Each performance will be made out of and in response to its location and each location will play host to a different theatrical discipline, from theatre for children to ‘disturbing difficult work’ from text based to devised performance, and the locations themselves will include a variety of buildings and outdoor spaces throughout the country in order to facilitate a national conversation about ‘place’. [3]
Written by Alan Harris and directed by John McGrath this was the first ever NTW production. It explored the relationship between past, present and future in ex-mining communities in the south Wales valleys. The piece was created in response to workshops with community members in places such as Blaengarw and Blackwood, and was toured around miners’ institutes and workmans’ halls in the valleys in March of 2010
This was a collaborative project between Volcano Theatre Company and The Welsh National Opera Community Choir. Together they created a piece of devised physical theatre out of and in response to the Old Library in Swansea. The Old Library is a place that no longer functions as a library and instead has a life as a location for conferences, film and television shoots and theatre performances. This piece was staged in April 2010.
The world premiere of an early John Osborne play, directed by Elen Bowman, staged at the New Theatre in Cardiff in May 2010.
Performer and visual artist Marc Rees was the curator of a promenade performance in the town of Barmouth. Both he and a small group of artists explored and represented the last hundred years of the town’s history. This was played out in a series of scenes and sketches that made up a walking tour of the town in June 2010.
A collaboration between a group of three young writers and Hide and Seek theatre company in which audience members were immersed in a series of competitive games on the beach in Prestatyn in July 2010. Participants were asked to imagine and construct a future that might prevent the missing ‘twenty-something’ generation from leaving the town.
In August 2010 Mike Pearson directed an original version of The Persians by Aeschylus, re-written especially for NTW by Kaite O’Reilly. The play was staged in Cilieni, a replica eastern village in Mynydd Epynt in the Brecon Beacons that was built in the 1990’s in order to allow troops to practice urban warfare.
A play written by Welsh playwright Gary Owen and directed by National Theatre Wales’ artistic director John McGrath. This took place in Hobo’s rock club in Bridgend in September of 2010. This performance was placed within the context of the high profile suicides that took place in Bridgend in 2008.
Using the stories of Gwyn Thomas a small group of performers, under the direction of Paul Hunter, translated his stories and the story of the writer himself into a devised piece of physical theatre that was presented at the Riverside Theatre in Newport in November 2010.
Fevered Sleep artistic director David Harradine took over a small house in north Wales and installed the product of a year of documentation of the weather in Snowdonia National Park. Each room had its own micro-climate and unusual representation of the gathered documentation.
January 2011
NTW11: Outdoors (Working Title)
editFebruary 2011
March 2011
April 2011
References
editExternal links
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