Michael Sheen's 'The Passion'

Image by Dave McKean

There was something different to walking along Aberavon Promenade on Good Friday afternoon; an electric atmosphere was building as hundreds of people headed to the furthest end of the promenade. It was to be the first of a weekend of events as part of The Passion, a play of enormous proportions. 

The Trial (Sunday)

Conducted over 72 hours The Passion started and ended on the beach but events took place across the town, from the scheduled events to ‘ad hoc’ scenes and musician’s that seemed sneakily placed to enhance to the atmosphere and get people talking. Talking, that’s what it’s all about, none of this was about theatre for theatre’s sake; it was about a community, a people and a place and bringing them together to step into the future. Port Talbot really has been ignored and belittled by so many – I rarely stop to take it in, always driving past for Swansea or further west and I should know better: my own home town often suffers the same style ridicule.  Listen carefully across the three days and you could hear neighbours talking as if they’d never spoken two words before and towns people who a second ago had been complete strangers.



Inside the Shopping Centre 'Memories of Port Talbot'

For all the fantastic community spirit and galvanised atmosphere I can only praise all those involved. Tackling such a huge project head on is a fabulous feat in itself but there were moments lacking certain clarity, noticeably more on the Saturday afternoon where what seemed the non-organisation of the three simultaneous events caused considerable confusion, people were unsure where to go or what to do. Throughout the Saturday I was disappointed: The Passion although advertised and intended as an open event - where you didn’t really need tickets and everyone could go and see – you couldn’t always see, for instance on Llewellyn Street it was primarily performed on the flat those at the back and some even with the ‘wristbands’ were at the back missing the bulk of the action. 

Having missed the Friday and Saturday evening events I feel that I can’t give an all round picture but one thing I do not regret is getting my hands on the novella’s created by the scripts writer Owen Sheer’s. Reading those whilst waiting on Sunday cleared up much of the confusion and provided a greater sense of involvement.

Throughout it was Sheen’s mysterious and often silent presence as ‘The Teacher’ that has enticed, encouraged and carried the production with ‘The Teacher’ listening rather than teaching it made it more about the town healing itself instead of it being healed. As if the town remembers its past, as The Teacher remembers his past and they heal together.

The Passion is the final feather in the NTW cap for their first year of productions and they have done what it says on the tin: creating community centred, often very ‘Welsh’ piece’s to draw together personal, unique stories against the backdrop of a larger concept.  They have ended the year with their biggest project yet; a production that at once frustrated, tugged at the heartstrings and tenderly reached out to everyone, hopefully leaving the Port Talbot community looking eagerly at an ostensibly brighter future. Following it as a Young Critic has been one heck of a journey so far and I am curious as to what rabbit NTW will pull out of the hat next!

Ian Rowlands Desire Lines with Sherman Cymru

Desire Lines e-trailer from Shermancymru on Vimeo.

Desire Lines is a play that pulls open the lives of individuals as they jaunt along on their journeys, analysing who they are in a country still coming of age.  We meet ‘Man’ on what is likely to be his final train journey around his ‘small country’ and as he travels his memory comes alive, taking us through the choices of his youth, middle years, his loves, losses and regrets.

‘Sorry’: such a small word that means so much, are we sorry we didn’t hear what you said? Or sorry because as a people that is what we have been conditioned to say? If so, what are we sorry for exactly?  There is something quite welsh about that, how an invisible border can affect so much and so little.

Younger Woman:

     I just want our child to grow up                    It’s time to go home, Adam.

    Not believing that he has to get our             Time to go home because I want our child to believe

   To be big;                                                           In himself,

  As you tried to be.                                              In his country,

  I don’t want our child to believe the shit        In his own language.

  you swallowed.                                                   Not to feel the constant need to ask for permission to ‘be’

                                                                                In their tongue

To be constantly sorry, sorry, sorry!

It stops with me!

With us...

With him

Along with these, there were other flashes of brilliant dialogue that that struck a chord, in a country still growing and with an increasingly greater voice; many of the younger generation find the need to ‘find themselves’, to prove they are capable of greatness. Yet there is greatness on their doorstep and many are simply too focused on the negatives to see it. The younger ‘Man’ is a perfect example of this as he leaves searching for the ‘big city’ only to come home later on. 

Trains are the perfect place for memories, stuck with little to do on a fixed track, thoughts and memories will take over. Rowlands has capitalized on this idea, layering his character’s dialogue over one another as thoughts. Whilst this technique does make it noticeably difficult to pick the language apart and understand what is going on, it does represent a level of reality. Those moments of audience difficulty are disappointing, in the face of such poignant other moments of heartfelt emotion and comedic brilliance. We are all forced to overhear inane and annoying conversations eventually on public transport and Man’s reaction is hugely comic, how many of us have wanted to grab that idiot’s phone and chuck it out the nearest window? Or scream at the idiot on the other end? Do we really travel alone on a train? Or are you with those passengers around us? Passenger interaction is rare but the surrounding chatter and noise ensures you are never left alone.

The presence of some characters perplexed me, whilst capably performed by Joshua McCord the stereotypical intellectual youth and ignorant yob might not be out of place on a regular train but they have little place in the play. Except for the scene where he is seated next to ‘man’ for his exchange as the young gay man and the expert transformation into the son by ‘man’s’ invading memories, it felt like he was a bum on seat actor to represent a ‘typical’ train journey.

‘Old Woman’ stays silent for the majority of the play, following ‘man’ as he makes his way along. Occasionally her haunting, beautiful voice fills the space with old Welsh language tunes, bringing a feeling of peace that can only be found when a soul returns home. Between her and ‘younger woman’ they bring the voice of reason and truth that seems lacking in ‘man’s’ life and it is left to older woman’s ghost to bring man to his final stop, a journey he, inevitably, must take alone.  

Ian Rowlands attempt to objectify each place comes as a mixed bag. He almost universalizes the towns as ‘Dullage’, ‘Chavton’, ‘Our city’, ‘Ugly’ or ‘Bluerinse Bay’ and really, they could be any towns on any train journey. Although each name is a mischievous dig or a sneaky nod to places with certain reputations: ‘Our City’ is Cardiff, a vibrant up and coming cosmopolitan that makes us proud versus ‘Ugly’ and ‘Chavton’ as Llanelli and Rhyll respectively with reputations of dirty industrialisation and poverty.

Desire Lines is a play that brings out mixed opinions, heartfelt and emotional it had me welling up one minute and laughing freely the next yet those moments of laxness left me frustrated and wanting an explanation. It is at once a play of Wales and Welsh and a play of human life and its choices. It is up to the audience which piece of the play they take away with them.

Sherman Cymru

At Chapter Arts until 23^rd April on tour til 3rd May

http://www.shermancymru.co.uk/performance/drama/desirelines 

#Fly on the Wall

      

7th April, Weston Studio WMC

PROTEST.

So you don’t have to.

#Fly on the Wall: a Citrus Arts project grown from the support of Wales Millennium Centre as part of their incubator project. It was birthed in the aftermath of the G20 Summit and Iranian protests of 2009, but in its current form it is based more around more recent events examining the real voices in the protests. Citrus Arts have researched every angle of the protest world, taking genuine accounts from individuals involved in the protests and creating a cacophony of voices fighting to expose the truth. There are activists, anarchists and bloggers who all want to be heard; the police officers are doing their impossible job and calling it duty; the bankers and politicians display the power to ignore those at their door yet have a history of their own.

Politics is no longer in the hands of the politicians, far from it. As a mobile, digitally enhanced world we have the chance to voice our own opinions and make them heard. It is very much an age of the armchair protest: ‘#’ is an inconsequential piece of punctuation at the centre of debates, it represents this powerful change and even the smallest, quietest of voices can be heard in Twitter’s 140 characters or Facebook’s status updates and the myriad of Youtube video sensations and bloggers commenting on their world.

Pictures taken during WMC dress run, found on Citrus Arts NTW group page:  http://community.nationaltheatrewales.org/group/citrusarts

The show opens with the cast camping festival style, the night before the protest, along with the very Alice in Wonderland White Rabbit. As protesting has become a widespread activity for everyone it has developed a carnival atmosphere with singing, dancing, animal characters parading around making themselves noticed. There are poignant moments across the fantastic wire acrobatics, precisely choreographed moves and dancing. One cast member finds themselves wrapped by a stream of newspapers, trapped by the daily avalanche of information with nowhere to go, fighting to get out, tearing at the restraint. Another, suspended above us, tries to attract a politician’s attention and as the performer gets ever closer he also gets further away and the politician persistently ignores him, no matter how he shouts kicks or waves his flag: he is left spinning trapped by the wall of silence presented to him. The acrobatics involving the crowd barriers was cleverly done, representing a determined attitude to be heard no matter what or who stands in a protestor’s way.

With their own brand of physical theatre Citrus Arts have focused on their skills and idea’s rather than dialogue, although there is no need for structured dialogue and plot: environment and theme do all the work necessary to present a brilliantly developed piece about a singular ambition to get voices heard.

Protest? We do have to, who else does it fall to if we don’t give our opinions? If the general populace stays silent we cannot change anything, the hidden truths will never see daylight. For me #Fly on the Wall is a reminder to be determined, never losing faith in speaking up.

#Fly on the Wall will be at Galeri, Caernarvon on 13^th May

http://citrusarts.squarespace.com/  / http://community.nationaltheatrewales.org/group/citrusarts