National Theatre Wales Community

Day 53 - Eddie Ladd Interview - Trace, Cardiff

I met with Eddie Ladd today, before being picked up by my house mate and driven back to Aberystwyth. We sat and drank coffee in the office above the gallery come performance space that she shares with her partner, the performance artist Andre Stitt. What does a National Theatre of Wales, dealing almost exclusively in the English language, mean to an artist whose work is rooted deeply in the Welsh language? This is not simply about translation it seems. Not simply a case of converting Brith Gof into English or Pinter into Welsh. It is about how a foreign tongue allows us to hear the words in a different way, to explore how a new language alters the performance, the performance the language.

Eddie's style of performance precludes her from working with Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, though she follows the theatre that they produce keenly. Her style of performance might be more readily acceptable to NTW and yet it would not be possible for her to create work purely through the English language. I wonder what the success of NTW might mean for Welsh language culture? The Persians might be Brith Gof without it's heart, or it might be that the English tongue allows us to explore this theatre in a different way, in a new context.