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Comment by Louise Breckon - Richards on January 29, 2012 at 5:08

I was thinking about putting an existing poem in my play but wondered if that would take away the original poetical language that I'm trying to create, as I think as an audience member, we love to hear the writer's voice in a piece.  I suppose when you hear dialogue in play  that has a rhythm, a beat, a soulfulness or other texture to it then, to me , it sounds 'Poetical' or yes 'Lyrical'  Tim, I think you manged in your recent play, Salt Root and Roe  to do that to a great effect and was deeply moved. Not a  welsh play, but I also saw 'Lovesong' last week by Abi Morgan with the amazing Sian Phillips, which also had a poetical flavour to it and mixed with Frantic assembly's physicalisation, the two worlds seemed to marry very well.  Also,to me,  in a poetical play,you can hear a music beneath the words which I also think is a very welsh  way of expressing.  On a completely different note, I think I need to get rid of one of my characters as they are not really serving much in a scene.  Any advice welcome.  Haven't got the guts to do it!!

Comment by meredydd barker on January 28, 2012 at 11:02

And there's lyrical...

Comment by Bethan Natalie James on January 28, 2012 at 7:28

On the subject of poetry/ performance, I have recently reviewed PechaKucha Night Cardiff #7 as part of the Young Critics’ Scheme.

This event was organised in collaboration with Chapter and Literature Wales, and eight poets did presentations of and about their work. Following on from Leona’s comment below that poetry is more than words in a particular form, there was an interesting combination of the literary, visual and aural throughout the evening.

My review can be found at: http://theyoungcritics.com/2012/01/28/pechakucha-night-cardiff/

Comment by Richard Huw Morgan on January 27, 2012 at 12:37

H'm, Poetry, Poetics, Poems, Poets. How words disintegrate under scrutiny. Anyway, to offer another memorable Welsh performance of Poetry from a little later than Brith Gof's Gododdin (1988), http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/52/19, is Volcano's adaptation of Tony Harrison's 'V' (1991) featuring fantastic performances from Eddie Ladd and Volcano co-founding member Steve Fisher alongside (i believe) Paul and Fern (please correct me if wrong, I can't find any cast info online to reassure my dubious memory).

Comment by National Theatre Wales on January 27, 2012 at 8:33

Love these examples - from Beuys to hip hop to Ntozake Shange and e e cummings to circus theatre.  I do think there's a distinction between the poetic (eg. the Black Watch movement sequences) and poetry in theatre - but it's probably not as easy a distinction to make as it may seem.  One of my most satisfying theatre relationships has been with poet Lemn Sissay, creating three theatre pieces, including Something Dark, one of the pieces of theatre I'm most proud to have directed.  Something Dark was an exploration of the life story behind much of Lemn's poetry - and structured like a huge poem.  However, we made the decision to have only one poem in the whole show - the rest was narrative prose, and wondefully opinionated riffs.  A production with a poet but only one poem. One thing that was crucial to us in staging the piece was finding the way that Lemn's movement could interact with his language. He's not a dancer, and I'm not a choreographer, so the movements were simple, but they we deeply felt and carefully structured.  I think the fact that he was a poet meant that we thought about each line of the script as having a particular shape and needing a particular physicality.  I guess that sense that poetic text demands a certain kind of performance was behind my question in part.  Though I'm aware that I'm getting lost now myself on the borderland between poetry and poetic....

Comment by Peter Cox MBE on January 27, 2012 at 4:34

John, you asked:  "What do people think have been the outstanding examples of poetry/performance interplay - in Wales and beyond?"

Many years ago in a land far away, (the Booth Theatre on Broadway in fact) I was lucky enough, as a young aspiring playwright and poet, to catch 'For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf', by the black feminist playwright and poet, Ntozake Shange.

It was a deeply moving and highly entertaining night at the theatre that had a huge effect on me. It convinced me that my own approach to my poetic use of language and images in my plays was, not only valid, but crucial to me unlocking my voice as a playwright - something I still do to this day. 

Interestingly Shange called her piece a 'choreopoem' which was one of the things that attracted me to it in the first place.

From another poetry planet comes the somewhat unorthodox play HIM by the poet ee cummings.  Although I've never seen a production of it, on the page it is an extraordinary journey into the fertile imagination of this poetic genius.  Review comments include: "Mister Cumming's wit and his sense of the ridiculous are delicious... He knows, as James Joyce knows, how to make a single line of poetic nonsense express a whole state of mind."  Also: "The present reviewer cherished the notion that he was capable of understanding the English language: but his illusions were shattered.  At the end of the play, he did not know whether he or the author were crazy."

I'd call that a result for Mr Cummings!

One last thought about poetry / performance in Wales today is the evolving use of what's becoming known as 'Circus Poetry' in the work of companies like No Fit State.  Having worked as writer in residence with them on three of their Parklife shows in 2009 I can testify to the huge and exciring challenges that such site-specific poetic writing offered me and at the same time to the amazing effectiveness of it within the context of the show.

Comment by Leona Jones on January 27, 2012 at 3:57

I agree wholeheartedly that poetry is more than words in a particular form, or that poetry can only be conveyed in words.  I still think about the letter scene from 'Black Watch' too.  Sometimes poetry that's been intended for the printed page doesn't translate into the spoken world very well at all, and vice versa.  But both presentations are equally valid.  Context is the key.  One of my own inspirations re performance was the Bloodaxe theatre production of their 'Being Alive' anthology - three actors, beautiful visuals and sound, and words spoken with passion and belief and understanding.  Maybe 'poetry' is an encapsulation of something about being human - whether it's literary, visual or aural it's the  capture and communication of the indefinable and common that matter, and which make those moments live on.  We all know them when we feel them, as the references to the amazing performances below prove. Maybe the definition of 'dramatic' is also something that could be examined?

Comment by Kevin Johnson on January 27, 2012 at 2:29

I've always thought that poetry, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. To many, even maths can be artistic and dramatic, as was shown by Breaking The Code. Forgive me for being stereotypically Welsh here, but personally I hold Gareth Edwards' try against Scotland in 1972 as being as poetic as any Shakespeare sonnet.

 

To be more up to date, the speech on the cross in the Passion, relating Port Talbot 'icons', was poetry to me of a personal and historical nature. I too, remembered donkey rides on the beach, and it was strange to see such rites of passage twisted into an odd, resonating beauty.

 

Seeing Black Watch the moment that stood out for me (and there were many) was the scene about letter from from home, or 'Blueys', where the actors performed individual 'sign language' to their loved ones. Poetry? To me, yes.    

Comment by Sarah Mumford on January 27, 2012 at 1:57

The quote I've borrowed below (Three Weeks Magazine), is not in relation to 'Don't Step on the Cracks', but to a performance of Martins at the Edinburgh Fringe...just incase of any confusion!

Comment by Sarah Mumford on January 27, 2012 at 1:52

Hi John, writing in response to your comment about when poetry works in theatre. Back in 2004 I worked on a collaboration with spoken word artist/poet Martin Daws and cellist Peter Thewless, as part of Dance Bytes (WID). Seeing Martin perform sparked off the whole collaboration, and if I'm honest I struggle with poetry, but Martins work is fascinating, with strong hip hop influences, he creates a collage of rhythms, to steal a quote : "...new wave beat poetry, with a musicality that rolls out a rhythmical ribbon of resonant rhetoric and rant. I witnessed an expression of thought, released through verses...combined with regulated, syncopated rhythms and time..." (Three Weeks Magazine - Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2008)

It is difficult to judge your own work really, so whether it 'worked' would be a question for someone else to answer I think, but the final piece 'Don't Step on the Cracks' received good reviews and feedback, and also seemed to resonate with younger audience members!

What was interesting about the process, was starting off with a piece of Martins work that he'd written previously (mainly because it encompassed the issues we were exploring), and then during the process we began to develop new work, so the music/sound, poetry and movement all grew from that initial starting point, and that I think is when it becomes interesting.  

I think the question I would ask is whether using existing poetry works in theatre and how it can work, or is perhaps collaborative work, and developing the poetry as an integral part of the creative process the way forward?

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