I'm sure most people here will be aware the Cardiff City Council has mooted selling off both St David's Hall and the New Theatre.  I posted about this on Facebook this morning, and my post elicited several thoughtful responses, so I'm going to repost it here.  And see if the NTW community can do as well.  On Facebook I asked that my friends not lynch me: NTW community members should feel free to lynch me any time they feel like it.

"I'm just thinking aloud here, so please…

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Here's a little piece about the inspiration for my new play, PERFECT MATCH.  On in rep at Watford Palace Theatre from Sept 19th to October 19th...

‘Some time in 2009 I read about a rather odd experiment.  Scientists had put a few dozen strangers in a room, let them look at each other but not speak, and then asked each participant if they had found themselves attracted to any of the…

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BBC Wales' best kept secret?

 

Yes, it is. 

 

BBC 1 Wales, tonight, 9pm, then on the iPlayer.

 

gx

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NTW doesn't have a wikipedia entry yet -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Theatre_Wales

Anyone fancy starting one?

Of course you should never take any notice of reviews: if you pay attention when they say you've done well, it's hard not to pay attention when they say you just shouldn't bother any more. So it is not because I care, or because I take any joy that we get a four-star review right next to Southwark's three-star, but purely in the interest of helping the Sherman shift the handful of tickets remaining for the run that I draw your attention to… Continue

Given that we are apparently all engaged in an Agatha Christie style joint killing of the author in theatre, in favour of digitally-inspired collective craziness, this post (and the resulting discussion in the comments) on the role of the author… Continue

Bulletproof is a verbatim play I've been working on for Replay, a theatre company in Belfast. It's about mental health in teenagers, and is made up from the words of a number of young people I met there. I thought it might be worth sharing here the notes I've written to introduce the play.



Notes on Bulletproof



One problem of promoting mental health in the young is that the phrase itself, 'mental… Continue

I walk around old haunts in Bridgend. It takes most of the day. I make sure to loiter for a few moments outside an ex-girlfriend's house. I am gratified to see her mum has installed solar panels - it seems so optimistic and forward-thinking. Then I remember her mum follows a religion which expects the apocalypse to arrive any minute now and urges its followers to prepare for the… Continue

I'm writing a piece about mental health in young people for Replay Productions, so I spent last week in Belfast, getting to know a group of teenagers at the New Lodge Youth Centre. And had lots of cooked breakfasts from the cafe at the Spires shopping centre, just down the road from the bus station (£2.80 for five items, or £3.50 for seven plus a glass of orange juice, if you're keeping an eye on the old five a…

Bridgend Visit from Gary Owen on Vimeo.

Roger Burnell from Bridgend Youth Theatre takes John McGrath and me for a look at just some of the faces of Bridgend county… Continue

If you're heading up, I would like to whole-heartedly recommend Orphans by Dennis Kelly at the Traverse (though you'll have to fight for a ticket) and My Name is Sue by Dafydd James and Ben Lewis, at the Pleasance Courtyard. My Name is Sue was so good we saw it twice - Orphans was so good that I don't think I could bear seeing it again.

The house next door is only intermittently occupied, and their guttering has blocked up. Starlings use the gutters as communal baths, and I use the starlings to keep me from writing.

Some things are too frightening to write about. I'm supposed to write something soon that really scares me. But I've just managed to write the first few lines of a bit of a scene, simply by pretending to that I wasn't really writing the thing itself, but rather just scribbling a few notes towards the thing. It was easy, fun, and almost painless.



So I now have a new rule of writing, which means I have two rules of writing in total -



1. ALWAYS use your writing as therapy.… Continue

I saw - or rather, experienced - The Smile Off Your Face at the Sherman last Friday, and it was lovely. I was nervous as I waited my turn but once I was safely tied and blindfolded, I relaxed completely and surrendered to what was going on.



Then the touching started. One person I spoke to afterwards said she'd thought the touching was being done by a penis. I was fairly sure it was a nose. I was disappointed by the touching and the gentle shoving. It's very easy to create a sensation… Continue

1. Sweated out the last of the Magic Lagyr at the STAR Centre.
2. Scrubbed tomcat wee off the bin with a one part bleach to five parts water solution.
3. Went for a meeting about a TV project with the tallest man in Wales, who told me to cut 18 pages 'but none of the sexy fun! Keep all the sexy fun!'

I'm very impressed with the way the NTW's social network has censored my profile photo. Keep the bike and the slogan - lose the face.