Today we had a great session with members of NTW's community TEAMs from across Wales. People who've been involved in productions as marketing advocates, as workshop participants, as Curtain Twitchers! (for the Beach), Coffin Carriers (in the Valleys) and overall National Theatre Wales enthusiasts, met at our offices to talk about what they'd like to see next in their communities and across Wales.
I agreed at the session to open a new forum on here talking about what shows could happen next.
For our launch year we had the Big Idea of a theatre map of Wales - twelve different shows in twelve different locations across the country. It's been a very exciting year so far and there's still half of the year to go.
But it's also time to think about 'what next'. Some of the ideas that came up in the TEAM session included.
- Taking shows from the launch year to new places
- Working more in the Welsh landscape
- Creating a new musical
- Pub Theatre
- Involving more dance
- New ways for amateur performers to get involved
- Stories from the communities that are most marginalised
- Keeping us laughing
- Build on our interactive shows and explore more audience participation possiblities
- Exploring Welsh culture now - the different ethnic groups that make up Wales today
- A space for political debates
- Young people's stories
- Lost gems of Welsh writing
- Themes that aren't Welsh at all
- A piece for the Olympics - maybe in a sports centre
One of my big questions for next year is - How do we get our shows 'on the move' to many places (e.g through touring, through digital transmission, or in other ways) while keeping the link to locations and communities that has been one of our strengths so far.
We have loads of good ideas from artists - we have about 40 possible projects in development. We will probably be able to do about 6 of them (our launch year of 12 shows joined up two years of funding). So there are going to be tough choices to make. However, it's a great position to be in - to have lots of good projects to choose from! And there's always room for more good ideas. So what are the things that you would like to see happen? What are the qualities that you feel a 'National Theatre Wales' show should have? Are there places that are a priority for us to go to, or stories that are urgent for us to tell? And what other kinds of activities (such as workshops, online activity, debates, etc) would you like to see going on?