We've had some great visits to National Theatre Wales recently, as well as taking a few trips of our own. One of the highlights has been a day at NTW with David Jubb, Artistic Director of Battersea Arts Centre along with four of his producers. We discussed the vision of Batthersea Arts Centre (their mission is 'To Invent the Future of Theatre'!) and the ways in which it supports the development of artists, companies and new ideas. BAC are very keen to work with National Theatre Wales, and though we are in very different locations, we all feel that there is a shared excitement about the future of theatre that makes it inevitable that we will collaborate. Watch this space for news of ways that Welsh artists can engage with the BAC experience!

I've also been out and about myself, with a particularly inspiring trip being a recent visit to the Midsummer Festival of the Senses in Cork(my favourite name for a festival in a while). It's a theatre festival that manages to bring together international and local work in a really coherent programme. There is a focus on work in unusual places, but also plenty of performance in theatres. I loved some of the site specific work, but my favourite show was a one-man performance in a traditional black box space: Mimic, by Playgroup, a relatively young company from Cork. The show was the story of a boy who is a brilliant mimic of music and voice, who has a surreal showbiz career and then returns to a futuristic Cork where plastic surgery is compulsory and riots are the norm. As someone who has directed a lot of solo performances, I know the particular challenges and excitements of the form, and I thought that the director, Tom Creed, did an exceptional job in keeping the staging suggestive, mysterious and engaging; rather than the kind of 'tour de force' that one-person shows can sometimes become. I was invited to the festival to see the range of work on offer and also to talk about our new model for theatre here. It was great to meet so many passionate theatre makers in Cork, and I think that future collaborations are a real possibility.

Talking about passion, there has been a wonderful, thoughtful, passionate debate going on in the Writers Group on this network over the past two weeks. I asked the writers what they thought the National Theatre Wales policy on new writing should be, and there has been a truly inspiring online discussion. We are going to create a draft policy over the next couple of months and put it online for more debate and improvement. The writers' group is really showing that many heads can be more visionary than one. Take a peek in the group if you have time: you don't need to join to have a look around.

Next week I will be talking about National Theatre Wales at the Manchester International Festival (a bit of a treat for me since Manchester was my home town before I moved to Cardiff, and I haven't had time to get back there much since starting here). They have an interesting programme, and I will be catching the new Punchdrunk Show and an evening of performance art curated by the legendary Marina Abramovic. The event I am speaking at is all about how we commission artists - something I am thinking about a lot right now!

And how is that commissioning stuff going, I hear you ask!! Well, Lucy and I are meeting with a lot of the artists and companies that could be part of the first year's programme to develop ideas a bit further and start hammering out the nitty gritty of where, when, how big and all that good stuff. Some projects are looking more and more likely for next year, some feel like they should take place at a later date. We hope to have a strong sense of the programme by the end of the summer, though we won't be able to make any announcements until early November. What I CAN tell you is that it is all going to be very, very exciting!

Okay, better stop before I start spilling the beans too early!!

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