Monday 5^th December 2011

Having met at National Theatre Wales office in Cardiff, we hit the road for what would prove to be a week of learning, bonding, sharing and creativity.  Arriving at Amelia Trust Farm with lots of energy, enthusiasm, we quickly got settled in before a session of games, activities and general getting to know each other.  Games were played, stories were told and secrets shared, a lovely start to what promised to be a great…

Last MCE for the year was on Saturday.  We had a great bunch of people interested in joining next year come along for a taster workshop to see what Massive's all about.  Traditional start with a highly competitive round of Four-Square, then we did a bit of Mr Hit, skipping, Clear the Space, and some Flocking from which we made some short peices.  3 out of 4 groups chose the same music, and it was interesting to see how different the moods were of each piece even though they used the same…

I finally saw One Man, Two Guvnors on the weekend, and laughed every bit as I'd been warned I would. The relentless slapstick, bawdy humour and asides to the audience - at once old-fashioned in form but sharp and unexpected in delivery - make the production, as Michael Billington wrote in…

Great to read Susannah Clapp's feature in yesterday's Observer on The Best Theatre of 2011, which started by saying:

"The Passion was the year's revelation. Ranging over the whole of Port Talbot, bringing people out in droves, rousing them to cheers and reducing them to tears,…

Hi everyone,

To read the review please visit

www.hypercriticreviews.blogspot.com

Thanks,

Chelsey

Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff

Thurs 8-Sat 10 Dec

We are taught that prevention is better than the cure; common sense tells us that, to a large extent, this is true. Avoid alcohol and chances are you’ll live a longer

life. Stock up on vitamins and you’ll ultimately spend less time at the chemist’s. But when prevention moves far away from an apple a day, can we ever be said to take this rule too far? Indeed, as preventative…

Just wanted to draw your attention to a few  artist development & festival type opportunities that have come to my attention this week:

Firstly is Theatre Forum Ireland's MAKE programme which I went on last year. It's a week long residency in the idyllic Tyrone Guthrie Centre with a group of other theatre makers and mentors to work on your own project - I did it last year and it was fantastic - allowing me to start…

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/Scrooge-Farm/story-14006169-detail/story.html

Matt - you mentioned how NTW is inspired by theatre practice taking place in Brazil ... I'm keen to know more as I suspect  it could serve as inspiration for more than just you.

This Christmas, shoppers in Cardiff city centre can enjoy theatrical entertainment from one of Wales’ best known theatre companies as they hit the shops the week before Christmas.  From Tues 20 to Thurs 22 December, Hijinx Theatre will be transforming a shop in the Morgan Arcade into the setting for performances of its highly successful short play, The Snooks Brothers. 

The empty shop unit, generously loaned to Hijinx by The Morgan Quarter, will be transformed into a…

1st December 2011

Various locations on City Road, Cardiff.

Writers:

Duncan Macmillan

Beth Granville

Alan Harris

Aled Roberts

Marged Parry

It’s the 1^st December, so Christmas has come again, at least it was for Dirty Protest’s curious menagerie of plays last week. Presented with a Christmas card, sweets and tinsel the party atmosphere descends…

Working on The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning  - arguably NTW's most overtly political piece of theatre to date, I've been asking myself 'What is political theatre today?'  Is it a question of subject-matter - a campaigning play bringing an urgent issue to people's attention via a familiar medium.  Or is it as Brecht, Piscator and the 'real' John McGrath of 7:84 Theatre would have it, equally a matter of form - the shape in which a theatre piece comes - the ways in which it causes us to…

We've updated our community site and now we've updated our artist guidelines as well!

There aren't major changes just refinements, particularly around telling us about your work - where we're asking you to make use of the events section of the community to pubicise your event and invite us to it. Makes sense to us - hope it does to you too.

If you've got any questions or something's not clear either post the question here or send me a message through my profile.

To…

Firstly, apologies for raising this in a theatre-based forum.

(Although, if all goes according to plan, I’ll have a play on in Wales next year, but that’s not important right now.)

This is about “Yer Blues”, a novel which I wrote and self-published a few years ago.

“Yer Blues” is now available as an e-book in Amazon’s…

Well - December certainly crept up on me! Next week a lovely group of actors will be presenting a script in hand performance of Gary Owen's Free Folk for Michael Kelligan's O the Edge Season.  The cast have been a joy to work with and I am very proud of what we have achieved in such a short space of time - especially from one member of the cast who only joined us last week due to a 'last minute' recast!!

I think they all hate me at the moment though as I have put loads of extra…

The second round of applications for WalesLab is now open. For those of you who don't know what WalesLab is here's a brief description: 

Over the next five years, WalesLab will use the nation as a landscape for developing new theatre projects. Twice a year open calls will be published inviting theatre makers and artists from other disciplines, to apply for short residencies to develop an idea or piece of work. This is all thanks to significant investment from the Esmée Fairbairn…

‘Five new plays exploring the world of the office Christmas party.’

The concept behind the whole event was an extremely intriguing one: a small conveyor belt of original writing excerpts situated in different venues on Cardiff’s city road.  It was difficult to know what to expect, but this ambiguity transpired to be one of the attractions of the evening. Starting at the conservative club next door to Milgi, we were ushered inside and divided into three groups.  A choice of…