NATIONAL THEATRE WALES ANNOUNCES ITS 2018 SEASON - The Corner Shop ...
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Release Date: 0600 Thursday 23 November 2017
NATIONAL THEATRE WALES
ANNOUNCES ITS 2018 SEASON
• Kully Thiarai announces her first full season as the company’s Artistic Director
• It includes collaborations with female artists from across the south Asian diaspora,
Migrations, Quarantine, Junoon, Oily Cart, Gruff Rhys and Elis James
• Multi-artform work including new writing, contemporary dance, music, comedy,
sensory theatre and visual art
• Performances in hospitals, schools and theatres, on a boat, underwater and at
locations across Wales
• The company also welcomes its first ever Associate Artists; theatre makers Mike
Pearson & Mike Brookes, digital installation artist Shanaz Gulzar and television
drama executive producer Bethan Jones
• High-res, colour publicity images can be downloaded here
National Theatre Wales is today (Thursday 23 November 2017) announcing its 2018
season of productions, including a month-long festival to celebrate the 70th birthday of
the NHS, two productions reflecting on the migrant experience in and beyond Wales, the
first two productions in a three-year cycle of experimental works, and a work-in-
progress.
Making the season announcement, Kully Thiarai, National Theatre Wales’ Artistic
Director, said: “Our 2018 season is all about People and Places. We’re inviting audiences
to join us in locations across Wales and take a moment to walk in others’ shoes, be they
south Asian women or migrants from all over the world, NHS staff or patients past and
present.
“These productions will be experimental, political, diverse and provocative. All of them
will explore the human condition, what effect places have on our identities, and our
impressions of others’ identities. Join us next year for this exciting new season of work,
and see Wales, the world and its people through fresh eyes.”
National Theatre Wales present
THE STORM CYCLE
Created by Mike Pearson & Mike Brookes
2018-2020
Locations across Wales2
Theatre-makers Mike Pearson & Mike Brookes, who have created some of National
Theatre Wales’ most critically-acclaimed work to date, will join the company as
Associate Artists and begin an extraordinary, three-year collaboration with NTW in
2018.
The Storm Cycle will be a series of six productions conceived, designed and directed by
Pearson & Brookes. These multimedia works will be performed at different locations
across Wales, at a variety of scales and sizes, and will explore two key themes; truth and
testimony. They will culminate in 2020 with the creation of a major, new, large-scale
production for NTW’s 10th anniversary programme.
There is a storm coming…
We live in tempestuous times: an era of climatic and environmental uncertainty and of
social and political upheaval. Perhaps it was always so.
But what new forms can theatre develop and adopt: to engage with and to reflect the
temper of our times?
An urgent theatre: fit for purpose, addressing and expressing our present realities
Of living in the eye of the storm
The Storm Cycle will build on the approaches and techniques that Pearson & Brookes
have brought to their trilogy of groundbreaking NTW productions, The Persians (2010),
Coriolan/us (2012) and Iliad (2015), while also drawing on their own histories and
experiences as theatre-makers in Wales over the past 40 years.
The works will draw on dramatic, literary, mythological, cinematic and artistic sources;
historical and contemporary, local and international, fictional and documentary. They
will include original texts, specially-created soundtracks, innovative scenic designs and
novel physical activities.
Tickets for the first two productions in the cycle are on sale from today.
STORM.1: NOTHING REMAINS THE SAME will be a poetic yet cinematic reimagining of
the first two books of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
STORM.2: THINGS COME APART will be a vivid evocation of the Cardiff riots
of June 1919 – as reported in the local press ('Wild Scenes at Cardiff', South Wales Echo,
Thursday 12 June 1919).
Mike Pearson was a member of Transitions (1971-72) and R.A.T. Theatre (1972–73),
and an artistic director of Cardiff Laboratory Theatre (1973–80) and Brith Gof (1981–
97). He currently makes performance as a solo artist, with artist Mike Brookes as
Pearson/Brookes (1997–present), and with senior performers’ group Good News From
The Future. For NTW, he co-directed The Persians (2010), Coriolan/us (2012) and Iliad
(2015). He is author of Theatre/Archaeology (2001); In Comes I: Performance, Memory
and Landscape (2006); Site-specific Performance (2010); MIckery Theater: an
imperfect archaeology (2011); and Marking Time: performance, archaeology and the
city (2013). He is Emeritus Professor of Performance Studies, Aberystwyth University.
Mike Brookes is an award-winning artist, director and designer, whose work has always3 bridged media. He co-founded the performance collective Pearson/Brookes in 1997, focusing on intermedial and located performance work, most recently co-creating a series of acclaimed large-scale works in collaboration with NTW. Over the past decade, his work has centred on the production of context-specific and interventional public art works within his long-term collaboration with artist Rosa Casado; their work together having been widely commissioned and presented across Europe, Asia, Australasia, South America, and the USA. Listings Information STORM.1: NOTHING REMAINS THE SAME Dates: 15-17 February 2018 Time: 8pm Location: Pafiliwn Bont, Pontrhydfendigaid, Ceredigion Tickets: £10, £7.50 conc and £5 for preview (15 February) STORM.2: THINGS COME APART Dates: 21-24 March 2018 Time: 8pm (plus 3pm matinee on 24 March) Location: The Tabernacl Church, Cardiff city centre Tickets: £10, £7.50 conc and £5 for preview (21 March) Box Office Online: nationaltheatrewales.org/storm1 nationaltheatrewales.org/storm2 By phone: 029 2037 1689 National Theatre Wales with Junoon present SISTERS Created by Kully Thiarai, Sameera Iyengar and other female artists from the South Asian diaspora Date: 20 April 2018 Time: 8pm Weston Studio, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Sisters is a conversation across continents about the richness, complexity and diversity of being a south Asian woman today. Stories recalled and half-remembered, embedded in objects, left behind on trains and in airport lounges. Journeys and conversations between women in India and Wales. Sisters is us at our best, our worst, our strongest, our weakest. Unadorned and visible, we just are. This all-female work-in-progress by leading British-Asian and Indian artists aims to hold a mirror up to life as a south Asian woman today, wherever she lives; the echoes and the contradictions, the (in)visibility and the comradeship, all told with playfulness, honesty and humour.
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Sisters is part of India Wales, a major season of artistic collaboration between the two
countries to mark the UK-India Year of Culture, and is supported by British Council
Wales, the Arts Council of Wales and Wales Arts International.
Director Kully Thiarai has worked in the performing arts for many years as a theatre
maker, Artistic Director and arts consultant. Her early career was largely in new writing
with national touring companies like Red Ladder Theatre Company and Major Road,
both based in Yorkshire. She has since led a number of organisations and companies
including as Artistic Director of Contact Theatre, Manchester, Leicester Haymarket
Theatre, Theatre Writing Partnership and Red Ladder Theatre Company;
commissioning, producing and directing work nationally and internationally. Kully has
been Artistic Director and CEO of National Theatre Wales since May 2016.
Sameera Iyengar is co-founder of Junoon, an organisation that focuses on creating access
to theatre and the arts. She is also currently Course Director of SMART (Strategic
Management in the Art of Theatre), a capacity-building course designed specifically
for theatre-makers in India, offered under the aegis of the India Theatre Forum (ITF). As
a core member of the ITF till 2014, Sameera was involved in diverse efforts to
strengthen the theatre environment in India. Previous to Junoon, as Director of Projects
at Prithvi Theatre, Sameera was involved with running the Prithvi Theatre Festivals and
Summertime programme of shows and workshops for children. She has co-edited Our
Stage: The Pleasures and Perils of Theatre Practice in India Today (Tulika 2009). Her
PhD thesis was Performing Presence: feminism and theatre in India.
Junoon seek to weave arts experiences into the fabric of society. Working closely with
artists from theatre and allied arts fields, they strive to build a world imbued with the
spirit of the arts, a world where curiosity, imagination, empathy, resolve, courage and
possibility are celebrated, nurtured and valued. Junoon is about creating access to
theatre and the arts. Bringing the arts into the spaces of our daily lives. Bridging the gap
between arts, artists and audiences. They do this through a variety of arts experiences
and engagements carefully designed and curated. Engagements include free public
programmes as well as programmes designed for specific audiences. Junoon work with
one eye on the present and another on the future, with a strong focus on sharing the
arts with children and young people as well. junoontheatre.org
The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for educational opportunities
and cultural relations. They create international opportunities for the people of the UK
and other countries and build trust between them worldwide. They work in more than
100 countries and their 8,000 staff – including 2,000 teachers – work with thousands of
professionals and policy makers and millions of young people every year by teaching
English, sharing the arts and delivering education and society programmes. The British
Council is a UK charity governed by Royal Charter. A core publicly-funded grant-in-aid
provides less than 20% of their turnover which last year was £864m. The rest of its
revenues are earned from services which customers around the world pay for, through
education and development contracts and from partnerships with public and private
organisations. All of its work is in pursuit of its charitable purpose and supports
prosperity and security for the UK and globally. wales.britishcouncil.org/en
For more information about National Theatre Wales, contact
Press & PR Manager Catrin Rogers: 029 2035 3070 / 07540 686 725 / catrinrogers@nationaltheatrewales.org5
Wales Arts International is the international team of Arts Council of Wales. It aims to
increase the value of international cultural exchange to Wales by facilitating and
supporting opportunities for international artistic collaboration and market
development. Wales Arts International work closely with Welsh Government, British
Council and other UK and international partners.
National Theatre Wales & Quarantine present
ENGLISH
with Wales Millennium Centre
Part of Festival of Voice 2018
June 2018
Dance House, Cardiff
English is spoken by 1.75 billion people worldwide – that’s one in every four. Non-
native speakers far outnumber first-language English speakers.
What happens to your sense of self when you move someplace where you don’t really
know how to say who you are?
It’s said that by the end of this century, we’ll have lost more than half the world’s
languages. In June, National Theatre Wales – which itself operates in a bilingual country
- will collaborate with Quarantine to create a brand new production exploring language,
migration and identity, how we learn to speak, and how we learn to listen.
Quarantine was formed in 1998 by artists Simon Banham, Richard Gregory and Renny
O’Shea. Over the past 19 years, the Manchester-based company have developed an
international reputation for their pioneering work in re-shaping who gets seen and
heard in performance, and are widely recognised as one of the UK’s leading
contemporary theatre companies. Working with a shifting constellation of
collaborators, the company makes theatre and other public events that are
characterised by their intimacy, fragility and a playful instinct to place everyday life
side-by-side with moments of rare, crafted beauty. Quarantine work with virtuosic
performers and with people who have never done anything like this before –
electricians, philosophers, families, soldiers, chefs, children, florists, opera singers and
countless others. qtine.com
Wales Millennium Centre is the nation's home for the performing arts, situated at the
heart of Cardiff Bay. One of the UK's top cultural attractions, the Centre showcases
Welsh creativity and talents, provides an extensive programme of world class
entertainment, partners with international artistic companies, and offers creative
learning opportunities that aim to increase accessibility to art and culture.
Created by Wales Millennium Centre, Festival of Voice Cardiff is an international arts
festival that celebrates the voice in all its forms. Festival of Voice is about discovery
through participation and immersion – about finding voices; bringing artists and
audiences together to hear and be heard. The festival commissions new work and
brings together unique collaborations in contemporary and classical music, opera,
theatre, talks and visual art.
For more information about National Theatre Wales, contact
Press & PR Manager Catrin Rogers: 029 2035 3070 / 07540 686 725 / catrinrogers@nationaltheatrewales.org6
NHS70: A FESTIVAL
July 2018
Locations across Wales
On 5 July 1948, one of the biggest ideas ever to come out of Wales was born. The
brainchild of Ebbw Vale MP and the UK’s Health Minister Aneurin “Nye” Bevan, the
National Health Service was a revolutionary idea, formed along with the Welfare State
during Britain’s austere post-war period, and under the principle of collective
responsibility.
National Theatre Wales will celebrate the NHS’s 70th birthday in July 2018 with a
month-long festival, inspired by some of the founders, staff and patients of this unique
institution. This countrywide tribute to the NHS will feature seven multi-platform
productions and events, made and performed live across the country and online:
1. Theatre company Oily Cart will create Splish Splash; a multi-sensory, underwater,
touring production for young people aged 3-19, performed in schools and hospitals.
There will be three versions: one for those with profound and multiple learning
disabilities, another for those on the autism spectrum, and a third for the deafblind.
Their aim is to present a watery wonderland, a magical space where every sense is
delighted. Hydro-therapy pools will be transformed by underwater lighting, clouds
of bubbles drifting from below, curtains of perfumed spray, and live music played on
floating pipes, with a sound that can be felt as much as heard.
Writer Tim Webb is Artistic Director of Oily Cart, and over the past 36 years has written
and directed over eighty shows for the company. Webb co-founded the company with
Musical Director Max Reinhardt, who has written and arranged the music in every
production and performed in many shows. Reinhardt has co-composed the music for
Splish Splash with percussionist George Panda, who will perform live on a specially
constructed, marimba-like set of tuned pipes that float on the water. Designer Jens Cole
will join the Oily Cart team again, having most recently worked with the company on
their acclaimed show Kubla Khan.
Since 1981 Oily Cart has been taking its unique blend of theatre to children and young
people in schools and venues across the UK. Challenging accepted definitions of theatre
and audience, they create innovative, multi-sensory and highly interactive productions
for the very young and for young people with profound and multiple learning
disabilities. By transforming everyday environments into colourful, tactile
‘wonderlands’, Oily Cart invite audiences to join them in a world of the imagination.
Using hydro-therapy pools and trampolines, aromatherapy, video projection, and
puppetry together with a vast array of multi-sensory techniques, they create original
and highly specialised theatre for young audiences.
2. Love Letters to the NHS will be a series of five, new, solo shows written by five
writers and performed in community spaces the length and breadth of Wales. These
extended monologues will be intimate, heartfelt love letters to an institution with
which all of us have had – or will have – a relationship, at some stage of our lives.
For more information about National Theatre Wales, contact
Press & PR Manager Catrin Rogers: 029 2035 3070 / 07540 686 725 / catrinrogers@nationaltheatrewales.org7
3. National Theatre Wales will team up with arts organisation Migrations, French
choreographer and dancer Julie Nioche and choreographers Filiz Sizanli and Mustafa
Kaplan from Turkey, to create Touch, a site-specific, interactive and tactile dance
piece about the therapeutic aspects of dance and the social place of the body. Made
and performed in a medical facility in north Wales, the piece will be made with local,
professional and non-professional dancers.
Founded in 2004, Migrations brings international contemporary arts to Wales while
developing innovative collaborations, commissions and partnerships in Wales and
further afield. To create unique experiences rooted in Wales, they collaborate with
challenging and inventive artists, local communities and groups, national and
international partners.
Migrations’ projects come in all sort of sizes and shapes, from large-scale site-specific
commissions to dance film production with 100 amateur participants and interactive
installations, variously using empty shops, rural landscapes and urban architecture as a
stage.
Julie Nioche created A.I.M.E. in 2007 with a team of teacher-researchers, community
leaders and active practitioners. The association’s mission statement speaks of its goal,
the creation of choreographic works and the development of a citizen art, consisting of
sharing and touring dance and the knowledge linked to this practice, notably somatic
practices in the socio-medical sector. Seeing another way of considering a space for
senses in our daily lives, she anchors her projects in different environments, so that
they may take diverse forms and be seen by as many kinds of audiences as possible. She
steps away from theatres in order to adapt to different spaces, producing many in situ
projects.
Choreographers and co-founders of TALdans, Mustafa Kaplan and Filiz Sizanly explore
what two, interacting, brave bodies could produce as mixed mechanisms within an
unstructured logic, while making cautious physical discoveries. They have produced
numerous works which have toured extensively internationally and share a special
history with Migrations as they launched its very first season, and performed again in a
site-specific performance for the landscape with Simon Whitehead in 2007.
4. Gruff Rhys will write, record and release a new song paying tribute to the NHS on its
70th birthday. Keep an eye on NTW’s website for more information about where and
when to hear it first.
Gruff Rhys is known around the world for his work as a solo artist as well as a singer
and songwriter with Super Furry Animals and Neon Neon, and for his collaborations
with Gorillaz, Mogwai, Dangermouse and Sparklehorse amongst others. The latest
album by Neon Neon, Praxis Makes Perfect, based on the life of radical Italian publisher
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, was performed as an immersive gig, produced by National
Theatre Wales and toured in 2013. In 2014, Gruff released his groundbreaking
multimedia project American Interior - book, app, film and album. American Interior is
published by Penguin and was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2014 and
shortlisted for The Gordon Burn Prize 2014. That same year, he wrote the soundtrack of
Andy Goddard’s film Set Fire to the Stars. More recently. Gruff wrote music and lyrics
For more information about National Theatre Wales, contact
Press & PR Manager Catrin Rogers: 029 2035 3070 / 07540 686 725 / catrinrogers@nationaltheatrewales.org8
for, and performed in, NTW’s The Insatiable, Inflatable Candylion, performed in Cardiff,
Christmas 2015.
5. Laughter is the Best Medicine will be a night of comedy, compèred by actor and
comedian Elis James, at the Lyric Theatre in his hometown of Carmarthen.
Carmarthen-born Elis James has been performing professionally on the UK comedy
circuit for over a decade. As well as a seasoned stand up, Elis currently can be seen
alongside Josh Widdicombe in hit BBC sitcom Josh. He’s also recently starred in his own
series on BBC2 with Miles Jupp (Jupp and James) plus numerous appearances on Mock
the Week, 8 Out of 10 Cats and Dave’s One Night Stand. Elis is also the co-host of the Elis
James and John Robins Show on Saturday afternoons on Radio X, and presented Elis in
Euroland for BBC Radio Wales in 2016.
6. Following National Theatre Wales’ 2017 listening project, in which they gathered
stories about people’s experiences with the NHS in Wales, one of the seven events
will be a participative, live event reflecting the breadth of experiences and stories
told from across Wales. This event will incorporate digital storytelling, sound and
music, and celebrate the human stories that put the heart into our National Health
Service. It’s not too late to send in your stories about your experiences (as a patient,
relative or staff member) of the NHS in Wales. Get in touch…
• by visiting nationaltheatrewales.org/nhs70 and filling in an online form
• by post to National Theatre Wales, 30 Castle Arcade, Cardiff CF10 1BW
• on Facebook at facebook.com/nationaltheatrewales, or
• by leaving the company a message on your preferred social media platform using
the hashtag #MyNHS70
7. And finally, NTW will commission a visual artist to make a brand new work inspired
by the volume of data generated by NHS Wales. This work could sit in a museum,
online, a found space, a hospital site or somewhere we have yet to imagine. More
information about this opportunity can be found at
www.nationaltheatrewales.org/nhs70-open-call-artists.
National Theatre Wales present
THE TIDE WHISPERER
Written by Louise Wallwein
Directed by Kully Thiarai
Designed by Camilla Clark
September 2018
Tenby, Pembrokeshire
An immersive experience written by poet and playwright Louise Wallwein, The Tide
Whisperer will tackle the global phenomenon of displacement and mass movement.
Record numbers are on the move all over the world. What is it like to leave your home,
and to live with the uncertainty of ever finding another?
For more information about National Theatre Wales, contact
Press & PR Manager Catrin Rogers: 029 2035 3070 / 07540 686 725 / catrinrogers@nationaltheatrewales.org9
The Tide Whisperer is full of stories, forever a nomad, having travelled the oceans and
been carried by the tide to fresh new shores.
On the shores of Tenby, the audience gathers. The tide is turning fast and a storm is
coming. The future feels uncertain – humanity is on the move and seeking refuge. Will
we be met by kindness or rejection; offered sanctuary or forced to survive the perilous,
treacherous sea?
The Tide Whisperer, in which audiences will take to the sea to explore the coast of
Pembrokeshire by boat, will be made with a leading Welsh creative team including
award-winning composer John Hardy, sound designer Mike Beer and theatre designer
Camilla Clark, who grew up in the area.
A renowned and award-winning poet, playwright and performer from Manchester,
Louise Wallwein has made a name for herself as an explosive artist that detonates her
audiences’ imaginations. Louise was brought up in 13 different children’s homes and
wrote her first play at the age of 17. Her career took off in 1998 when she performed an
award-winning one-woman show on the wing of a World War II Shackleton
reconnaissance aircraft, and her various experiences as a cleaner, club promoter and
dancer at the Hacienda and activist for organisations such as Anti-Clause 28 and Viraj
Mendis’ defence campaign have undoubtedly shaped her. Three radio plays have been
broadcast by the BBC. Theatre includes Sydney Opera House, Royal Exchange, Contact
Manchester and HOME mcr. She has written several outdoor spectacular shows for
Walk The Plank. Glue, her acclaimed one-woman show is currently on tour was
broadcast this year, when Louise was a BBC Contains Strong Language resident poet in
Hull 17. Glue The Extended Remix published by Smith Doorstop is Louise's first volume
of poetry and is now on sale.
As well as Mike Pearson & Mike Brookes, television drama executive producer Bethan
Jones and digital installation artist, stage designer and producer Shanaz Gulzar will
become Associate Artists for National Theatre Wales. Bethan will be helping to develop
new writing projects and broadcast opportunities, while Shanaz will focus on digital
projects.
After training at RWCM&D, Bethan Jones worked as an actor in theatre and television,
eventually turning to theatre directing. As Artistic Director first of Dalier Sylw, which
evolved into Script Cymru, she developed and directed numerous productions and
collaborated with Theatr Clwyd, Paines Plough, the Traverse Theatre and Soho Theatre.
Theatre directing led to directing television drama for BBC Wales and S4C, and Bethan
joined BBC Wales in 2002 as Producer in charge of local drama output. From 2005, as
Executive Producer at BBC Wales Drama Department, Bethan worked on a number of
award-winning television dramas including Merlin, Sherlock, A Poet in New York, The
Long Walk to Finchley, Room at The Top, Hamlet, War and Peace and most recently
Aberfan: The Green Hollow. Bethan left BBC Wales in May 2017 and joined CUBA
Pictures, where she is developing new network drama.
Shanaz Gulzar is best known for creating work across disciplines to make innovative
and challenging interventions. She works as a digital installation artist and stage
designer also working as producer for specialist projects. Her work explores
For more information about National Theatre Wales, contact
Press & PR Manager Catrin Rogers: 029 2035 3070 / 07540 686 725 / catrinrogers@nationaltheatrewales.org10
interactions between new technologies, film, theatre, place and identity. She has a clear
and distinct artistic voice with a vision for producing ambitious, contemporary art that
is accessible to both arts and non-arts audiences. Recent work includes Made in India
(Tamasha Theatre), Mother Tongues from Farther Lands (at Alchemy Festival, The
Southbank), Calderland (509 Arts Outdoor site specific Community Opera at The Piece
Hall, Halifax) and HOME1947 with double Oscar-winning filmmaker Sharmeen ObaId
Chinoy for Manchester International Festival.
Notes for Editors
Follow National Theatre Wales’ 2018 season on Twitter:
#NTW2018
@ntwtweets
National Theatre Wales has been making English-language productions in locations all
over Wales, the UK, internationally and online since March 2010. It operates from a
small base in Cardiff’s city centre, but works all over the country and beyond, using
Wales’ rich and diverse landscape, its towns, cities and villages, its incredible stories
and rich talent as its inspiration. National Theatre Wales is supported by the Welsh
Government and the Arts Council of Wales.
nationaltheatrewales.org
“If you’re looking for something completely different, National Theatre Wales can be
guaranteed to deliver it.” The Guardian
For more information about National Theatre Wales, contact
Press & PR Manager Catrin Rogers: 029 2035 3070 / 07540 686 725 / catrinrogers@nationaltheatrewales.org11
For more information about National Theatre Wales, contact
Press & PR Manager Catrin Rogers: 029 2035 3070 / 07540 686 725 / catrinrogers@nationaltheatrewales.orgYou can also read
