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Theatre in WalesDateline: 2nd November, 2003Early in December the Wales Association for the Performing Arts is to hold a conference at Cardiff's Chapter Arts Centre on the future of English language theatre in Wales. And not before time, say I! If the forum on the Theatre in Wales site is anything to go by - and it is a busy forum, with many regular contributors - this is just one of the many contentious issues which seem (to this outsider, at any rate) to be be tearing Welsh theatre apart. If that sounds alarmist, well, so be it, but I honestly don't think I'm exaggerating. I'm a Theatre in Wales forum lurker - that is, I go there often and read all the posts with interest but don't make a contribution (well, not more than two or three times a year, anyway) - and it horrifies me to see the divisions between the many factions. Recently there was a posting in Welsh - which seems reasonable to me on a forum devoted to Welsh theatre - which evoked a reply entitled "Your incomprehensible post" which said, "Would it not have been more courteous to have written this in English so that we could all understand you ?" This evoked a diatribe, the least of which was the accusation of writing "patronising garbage" and which said, inter alia, "Duw, the cheek of these people coming into our country and demanding that we speak English so that they can understand. Go to France and demand courtesy goodboy!" Now I understand both writers' points of view. If you are Welsh but don't speak the language - and there are parts of Wales where Welsh is, to all intents and purposes, a foreign language, just as there are others where English occupies the same position - you are bound to feel left out if you are confronted by a Welsh forum post that you don't understand. On the other hand, it must be absolutely infuriating if you are a Welsh-speaker and you are made to feel that your language is second class. Slagging off Dylan Thomas, Emlyn Williams, Michael Bogdanov and the Wales Theatre Company, Terry Hands and Theatr Clwyd Cymru, Dic Edwards and other Welsh theatre luminaries is commonplace and the whole theatrical scene seems to be riven by disputes and schisms. Point-scoring over the opposition is rife and the divide between those who think you can't be Welsh unless you speak the language and those whose Welsh roots may go back years but only speak English seems unbridgeable. To an outsider the whole Welsh theatre scene as exemplified by this forum seems to be hopelessly fragmented. The equivalent forum for Scottish theatre is probably the SCOTS-NITS email discussion group. There's some resentment there against the English (well, there would be, wouldn't there?) but on the whole the "feel" of the group is one of mutual support and a pride in what Scottish theatre has achieved and continues to achieve. There are the occasional spats between individuals, of course, but the tone is generally constructive and helpful. There are even times when this outsider feels jealous that there isn't something equivalent for England! But of course the proportion of Gaelic speakers in Scotland is tiny as compared to the number of Welsh speakers in Wales, so that particular bone of contention is removed. However the big difference between the two is in the main focus of the contributors. For the SCOTS-NITS members it is theatre in Scotland; for the most vociferous of the Welsh forum contributors it seems to be Welsh theatre. There's a huge difference. The Scots are content to produce theatre without worrying about whether it is Scottish or not (and so do produce theatre which is distinctively Scottish: figure that one out!), whereas the Welsh concentrate on whether or not their theatre is distinctively Welsh, and get lost in argument and counter-argument and counter-counter-argument.. One might think that these different approaches should not make a difference, but they do. There is a great deal of excellent theatre in Wales at all levels, from amateur through small-scale to work produced by companies like Theatr Clwyd Cymru. I know because I've seen it: the best amateur performance I have ever seen anywhere was a production of Beckett's Endgame in Welsh by the Eglwyswrw Young Farmers' Club about thirty years ago, and children's theatre doesn't come any better than Theatr Iolo's Are We There Yet? which I mentioned in last week's feature. Ask anyone with an interest in theatre to list contemporary Scottish playwrights : you'll get Gregory Burke, David Greig, David Harrower, Abi Morgan, Rona Munro, Iain Heggie, and so on. Ask for contemporary Welsh playwrights and Gary Owen will spring to mind, possibly Frank Vickery. Dic Edwards? Possibly not outside of Wales. Anyone else? Does Dylan Thomas count as contemporary? So that leaves... er... Why? Because Welsh theatre is too inward looking and lacking in self-confidence, too tied up with internal squabbles, too willing to snap and snarl and chase its own tail, to get on with making the kind of theate which will travel not just to England but elsewhere in the UK and the world.. Come on, you Welsh! Stop fighting each other. Just make theatre. If a Welsh writer creates a play, it's Welsh theatre: it doesn't matter whether it's in Welsh or English, and it certainly doesn't matter if it doesn't deal with what it means to be Welsh. Articles Indices:
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