Making Hay
While the sun shines unashamadly down on the borderlands - I'm on the last leg of an early morning train n' bus trip to Hay on Wye - land of books. As a theatre type I'm used to Edinburgh. I've never done Glastonbury as I have a tent phobia (if God had meant us to sleep in tents he would have given us inflatable backsides) though I have promised to do the Green Man in I this year which does look fab and where they have assured me that the tents are actually small bungalows in disguise. Anyway, this Hay business doesn't seem like any of that. No-one at the bus stop appeared interested in convincing me of the virtues of their one woman show while juggling badly and while one elderly lady looks like she may be dealing mushrooms she's probably just brought her own teabags just in case. Anyway, the programme does look great. And serious! Serious is cool. Serious is the new ironic. I'm here to look around and think about connections for NTW. I'm going to meet up with Owen Sheers. We should have poets in our theatre and he's one of the best around. I'm also going to catch up with Lucy Neal. Lucy was the co-founder and director of the London Infernational Festival of Theatre - which changed the face of British TheAtre by exposing it to an extraordinary range of international work - LIFT introduced artists like Robert Lepage to the UK when the mainstram Theatres weren't interested. Lucy has family in Wales and her focus now is on theatre and the environment. So the bus trundles on and the gentle greens of the borderlands smile at me and I look forward to poets and serious conversation and a conviction that beautiful, troubling, bold language is worth a 7am train ride.
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Comment by National Theatre Wales on June 7, 2009 at 9:28
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Hi Kevin. I love the idea that the boy scouts invented Grotowskian theatre!! Re Lepage, while i would love to get him here, I'd like even better to be as good as Lucy Neal and Rose Fenton at discovering the unknown new Lepage and getting him or her to work in Wales!
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Comment by Kevin Lewis on June 1, 2009 at 21:39
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Maybe cos i was in the cub scouts when i was a wee lad I got into tents and canvas and contemplating the dew in the early morning - i have often thought that the games we played at night crawling around box hill and stealthily pursuing our prey is very like the sort of grotowskian (not sure how you spell it)theatre in the forests and mountains - maybe the scouts invented experimental theatre. Speaking of Robert lepage - i remember being blown away by the Dragon's Trilogy when Lift brought it over to the ICA in the ealy 80's - i went on my own and had to go back with a friend - it was so exciting. Any chance that the National Theatre can get Monsieur le Page to create something here with Welsh Theatre makers etc - it was interesting that Lypsynch involved various theatre makers in the North west of England alongside others from other parts of the world.
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Comment by Gary Owen on May 31, 2009 at 0:45
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Part of the journey of my thirties has been discovering I do have an inflatable backside. And thus I tent away happily.
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