NTW 2O19
National Theatre Wales’ 2019 season is led by four brand new productions, all made with leading Welsh and Wales-based artists and companies.
The season features new work by Ed Thomas, one of Wales’ leading playwrights, a first time collaboration with pioneering theatre company Hijinx, an international collaboration with Wales in Venice and the next instalment of the Storm Cycle.
2019 also features a tour of Wales and Ireland with four productions created as part of the NHS70 celebrations.
Creative Conversation
National Theatre Wales
Sunday 3 March 2019
Cardiff
The season kicks off with an open event. National Theatre Wales invites everyone invested in theatre in Wales to take part in a big, creative conversation about its future, and NTW’s role in that future.
As NTW approaches its tenth year, we’re in robust and thoughtful conversation with artists who care deeply about their nation’s theatre. Join us on Sunday 3 March 2019, in Cardiff, as we take the opportunity to widen that conversation and throw open the doors.
What is your dream for theatre in Wales in the next decade? What do artists and audiences need now and in the coming years? How can we all play our part? This wis a free and open event with a warm welcome to all.
Storm.3: Together and Alone
Part of the Storm Cycle
National Theatre Wales
Created by Mike Brookes
March 2019
Newport
In the third instalment of The Storm Cycle, theatre-maker Mike Brookes explores some of the assertions, emotions and questions that have bubbled away under Wales’ recent social and political unrest – and that seem to have been pushing us, as well as much of Europe and the US, towards arguments about who ‘we’ are, and how we assert and protect ‘ourselves’. It will be made and performed in the weeks before the UK’s planned withdrawal from the EU.
STORM.3: Together and Alone features text inspired by Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, an extraordinary collection of essays written by Simone de Beauvoir amidst the desolation and optimism that followed the Second World War, at the birth of the Europe in which we now live.
Splish Splash
National Theatre Wales & Oily Cart
Written & Directed by Tim Webb
March 2019
On tour in special schools across Wales and England
Splish Splash is a multi-sensory, watery wonderland; a magical space where every sense is delighted, specially created for young people aged 3-19. There are three versions: one for those with profound and multiple learning disabilities, another for those on the autism spectrum, and a third for the deafblind.
Hydro-therapy pools across Wales are once more transformed by underwater lighting, clouds of bubbles drifting from below, curtains of perfumed spray, and live music played on floating pipes, with a sound that can be felt as much as heard.
Splish Splash was originally commissioned as part of National Theatre Wales’ NHS7 Festival in July 2018, when it toured schools and hospitals in Wales.
For further information, please click here
The Stick Maker Tales
National Theatre Wales
Written by Peter Cox
Directed by Kully Thiarai
April-May 2019
Touring Wales
Peter Cox’s one-man show, is a heart-warming and heart-breaking tribute to hill-farming communities across Wales and their strength, endurance and determination to survive, even when the odds against them seem impossible.
Shepherd Geth Roberts might be getting on in years, but he still lives alone, high in the Elan Valley. A born storyteller, he’s spent his whole life working his wild and windswept farm.
But now Geth faces his greatest challenge: his sight is failing and if he can’t see, then he can’t work the farm.
The Stick Maker Tales was originally commissioned as part of National Theatre Wales’ NHS70 Festival in July 2018, performed in Llandrindod Wells and Welshpool, Powys.
Cotton Fingers
National Theatre Wales
Written by Rachel Trezise
Directed by Julia Thomas
May-June 2019
Belfast & Derry, Northern Ireland
Dublin, Republic of Ireland
& Sherman Theatre, Cardiff
Aoife is hungry and in need of something to do.
Cillian makes a mean cheese toastie.
As Aoife’s boredom and hunger are satisfied by half an hour in Cilian’s bed, her life changes forever.
As social and political upheaval grips the country she loves, can Aoife regain control over her future?
Written by award-winning writer Rachel Trezise at the time of the historic referendum of the 8th amendment in Ireland, Cotton Fingers takes us on journey from Belfast to Wales.
This bold coming of age story was originally commissioned as part of National Theatre Wales’ NHS70 Festival in July 2018, performed in Aberaeron, Ceredigion, and Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire.
Wild Scenes at Cardiff
National Theatre Wales and The Heritage & Cultural Exchange
Created and performed by Mike Pearson and Ali Goolyad
June 2019
Butetown Community Centre
‘Wild Scenes at Cardiff’ declared the South Wales Echo.
‘Blacks Hunted By a Furious Mob’ proclaimed the South Wales News.
National Theatre Wales and The Heritage & Cultural Exchange present an evening to mark the centenary of the Cardiff Riots of June 1919.
In mid-June 1919, our city was plunged into four days and nights of violent mayhem that left three dead, many in hospital, and buildings wrecked and burnt.
Its causes were a complex knot of post-war frustrations following demobilization – lack of housing, lack of jobs, lack of opportunity. But most shocking was the racial aspect, as local troublemakers, ex-servicemen and Colonial soldiers clashed with Yemeni, Somali and Caribbean seamen, in front of vast crowds of on-lookers.
The ‘Cardiff race riots’: one of those moments in a city’s history that lingers – in family stories, in popular myths – but for which there is no complete official record.
For further information, please click here
Wild Scenes was also performed at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, as part of their celebrate Black History Month in October 2019.
Refrain
A new production by artist Sean Edwards, in partnership with Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham for Cymru yn Fenis/Wales in Venice 2019
May-November 2019
Venice Biennale, Italy
November 2019
Cardiff and Wrexham
This new work is an experimental radio play, and forms a key element of Edwards’ solo presentation for Wales in Venice 2019, commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales and led by Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham.
The play is a poetic enquiry into place, social history and class, intertwined with the artist’s own personal history. The script is collaged from found text and real voices. The decision to draw on autobiography is driven by Edwards’ belief that you can create a greater connection with the audience through the inclusion of the most ‘honest version’ of yourself.
Through the work, Edwards captures and translates a condition of ‘not expecting much’ – a phrase he uses to evoke a way of living recognisable for a huge proportion of the population in Wales – a way of making do and getting by.
For further information, please click here
On Bear Ridge
National Theatre Wales & the Royal Court Theatre
Written by Ed Thomas
September-October 2019
Sherman Theatre, Cardiff
followed by further dates at the Royal Court Theatre, London
Ed Thomas, one of Wales’ leading playwrights and co-creator of hit television series Hinterland/Y Gwyll, returns to the stage with this brand new play.
“We’d offer you our whiskey, but we drank it all yesterday”
Winter on Bear Ridge
A ramshackle homestead selling meat, selling petrol
Nobody comes and no-one knows why
No-one knows anything
The village below is silent
Shotguns point at the low-flying fighter jets that
scream across the night sky
But no-one knows whose side they’re on
As the snow falls, those left behind wait…
The play forms part of a trilogy of deeply personal work. In addition to the trilogy, NTW is working with the Royal Court on a series of ongoing opportunities for writers in Wales around the production of On Bear Ridge.
For further information, please click here
Peggy's Song
National Theatre Wales
September – October 2019
Touring south Wales
Written by Katherine Chandler
Directed by Phil Clark
Katherine Chandler’s touchingly funny monologue explores an unexpected friendship between hapless hospital radio DJ Danny Walkman and tough talking patient Peggy.
After his radio show at St Bevan’s Hospital, Danny has a chance encounter in the Garden of Hope with Peggy. They’ve nothing in common, but in Danny’s world everyone likes music, don’t they?
Everyone’s got a song, and if there’s one thing Danny Walkman is good at, it’s getting people to tell him what their song is. Peggy doesn’t give much away, so it’s a race against time for Danny to find, and play, Peggy’s song.
Peggy’s Song was originally commissioned as part of National Theatre Wales’ NHS70 Festival in July 2018, when it was performed in Wrexham.
For further information, please click here
Mission Control
Hijinx & National Theatre Wales
Directed by Kully Thiarai & Ben Pettitt-Wade,
and created with Seiriol Davies & Tim Rhys-Evans
November 2019
Cardiff
Half a century after the first moon landing, Mission Control explores the dark side of the moon.
Performed by a cast including professional neurodivergent and learning-disabled actors, this immersive spectacle will re-create the atmosphere of fear, paranoia and optimism that led to two great powers believing they had to be the first to land a man on the moon.
A brand new production examining the nature of truth, propaganda, espionage, manipulation and the necessity and redemptive power of myths.
For further information, please click here
