Today is a rest day...rather like the cyclists....Louie and Bianca take the Tour de Aber with Calamity watching on...

Day Two of rehearsals with the cast, director, designer and sound designer. 

The world of Welsh Noir is proving fantastically challenging. But great fun. With eight actors, and three creatives in the room, it is packed full of ideas and everyone is contributing. The challenge, of course, is to work out which ones we use in this mad world of murder and mayhem on the…

Aberystwyth Mon Amour..... We have been working with Abi Anderson and Malcolm Pryce on this now for a good two years, and we are very close to our presentation stages in The Grand and the Aberystywth Arts Centre at the end of the month. Malcolm's script, Simon Scullion's design, Tony Davies' sound designs (and not forgetting his smells) - getting all of the…

May Bank Holiday Monday...

This is going to be a great day - we've Extraordinary Little Cough on the Worm and then Reminiscences of Childhood in the sight of the worm. 

We have had some great feedback from the initial performances of Return Journey too:

'great performances', 'really enjoyed', innovative', to quote but three...

Also, we've had a great piece written about it in the Telegraph...…

Casting - Aberystwyth Mon Amour



Lighthouse Theatre seeks actors to participate in workshop performances of excerpts of Malcolm Pryce's Welsh Noir classic 'Aberystwyth Mon Amour'. The engagement is for 2.5 weeks of Research and Development, culminating in a performance of extracts at the Swansea Grand, Overall dates: July 16th - August 1st 2014 based in Swansea .



Louie Knight - M 30 - 45. Louie has matinee idol good…

Last night, we performed Reminiscences in Morganstwon Village Hall for the Radyr and Morganstown Festival. What a lovely evening. It's a great hall, a very appreciative audience and glorious hospitality. Thanks to all concerned.

Today was one of those days when you realise what it's all about. We have been working on our Dylan Thomas Centenary offerings for some time now, but today was the first schools' performance of Return Journey. We had a visit from Clase Primary School at the Waterfront Museum. They listened attentively, and asked some great questions: 'Why did Dylan call it an ugly, lovely town?', and 'What is a game called Cats and Dogs?' to name but two.

A radio play broadcast is not the easiest of…

It was a good day yesterday.

We rehearsed the piece in the morning and then in the afternoon we trod the route through Swansea...it was damp...but as you can see we were all in good spirits. One of our actors, Kevin johns, is also the chaplain of the Swans, so we were stopped along the way by a number of jubilant fans, rejoicing the fact that we have maintained premiership status. 

We spoke some of the words in situ. It was great see the interest from local and…

Today is the first day of rehearsals for Return Journey....old faces and new...can't wait to be honest. It's a wonderful piece and is up there with Do Not Go Gentle and Under Milk Wood for lyricism, loss and language. Re-reading it last night makes you realise quite how great he was. Marvellous Stuff.…

I drove into Mumbles last night with a slightly broken car, tired, but very happy. We had a read-through of the first draft of Aberystywth Mon Amour yesterday in a friendly village hall with a lovely group of actors who had given up their time and an afternoon to help us listen to Malcolm's first draft. It was great. For a first draft, we were very pleased indeed. It's very encouraging when actors spontaneously laugh out loud during a read-through, and Malcolm has done a great job of…

Over the last few weeks, we have had fun. Quite a lot of fun to be honest. Slowly, but surely the Dylan Thomas Centenary has been taking shape and our contributions have gone well. We have been lucky enough to realise that completely by chance all of our contributions have been in pubs...We have done pub tours in Mumbles and Swansea and a succession of Poems and…

So we've finally cast Return Journey. It was a really difficult series of decisions that we needed to make, but we have ended up with a great cast. We have also managed to find some people who could be great for other projects, so it was a successful day all round. By the end of the week, we have to issue contracts and establish people's availability for the performances in the summer. And if you think that is a bit previous, then we've been trying to get our heads…

We held auditions yesterday for our DT100 project, Return Journey.

All of our applicants contacted us as a result of a call that we placed on the National Theatre Wales website and I can safely say that there are a very talented bunch of actors on this site. Auditioning is the hardest thing that we have to do. We understand people's commitment and the sacrifice that they make in coming to see us and we appreciate all of that. Thank you everyone who came, it was great to meet you and…

After the relative quiet of the post-tour Xmas period, the madness begins again...but madness in a good way.

Our first event of the year (our first event of the DT100 year in fact) is on January 25th - a Dylan Pub Tour in Mumbles - so we are putting the final touches to that.

We are casting the Return Journey project at the end of the month, and we have had so many great applications from actors all over the country that narrowing down the field has been very difficult…

We are looking for actors to add to the pool of performers for this exciting ongoing project in 2014, the centenary year of Dylan Thomas' birth. 

Return Journey is a broadcast written by Dylan Thomas charting his travels though the streets of a blitzed Swansea. Lighthouse Theatre will present a costumed promenade performance through the streets of Swansea, culminating at Cwmdonkin Park.

As the show will be presented intermittently throughout the year, we need a pool of actors…

Does anyone know how to pipe smells on stage? We need a donkey, Ambre Solaire and Vanilla Ice Cream. Any suggestions gratefully received.

Last night our Xmas tour of Dickens and Dylan drew to a close in the wonderful village hall in Aberangell. 

Many thanks to all who came and NightOut for making it possible.

Merry Xmas - Nadolig Llawen.....God bless, us...every one!

We have been lucky enough to get a review on the Theatre Wales website for our Dylan Thomas tribute show.

http://www.theatre-wales.co.uk/reviews/reviews_details.asp?reviewID=3124

It never ceases to amaze me how much only a few miles north in Britain can alter the sunrise and sunset in Britain; it's darker that bit earlier and lighter that bit later in the run-up to the solstice as we settle in to our North Yorkshire section of our Christmas tour. This only serves to make everything just that bit more Christmassy; they do Christmas well up here. A great night in Knaresborough last night, thanks to all concerned. Four more shows to go...