Biggest news for Welsh theatre since...
... maybe ever.
If BRG is your first point of contact with the outside world today, before TV or radio or social media or town cryer have dragged you up to date with the ongoings of a muddled and busy society, (then, firstly, nice work) my humble (getting more humble by they day) newsletter will be the first to break this news to you. Michael Sheen is saving Welsh theatre.
Today it has been announced that Mr Sheen is setting up his own theatre company, to be called Welsh National Theatre. He’s putting his own money into it, and he is being very ambitious with his vision for it. In an interview he did with my BBC colleague, Welsh arts and culture correspondent Lorna Prichard, he is heard emphasising the size of his ambition. Big Big Big. He wants the productions to be big. He wants Welsh theatre to be big. What can I say… this might be exciting news.
Tonight on the Radio Wales Arts Show, I discuss these developments with a great panel of guests - Nick Davies (critic of all stagey things Welsh for The Stage), Gareth Llyr Evans (critic of all stagey things Welsh for The Guardian), Sharon Morgan (grand dame of Welsh thespianism), Chris Rickets (former top guy at the Sherman theatre, Theatr Clwyd, Theatr Brycheiniog, and formerly head of drama at the Arts Council - and current CEO of National Dance Company Wales), and the aforementioned Lorna. It’s a broad discussion that was originally going to be a rather morose debate on the future of English language theatre in Wales in the wake of the announcement in December of the final breaths of National Theatre Wales. But it inevitably, with Sheen’s intervention, ended up being something decidedly more upbeat.
The mood, then, has changed. The death of NTW was a fifteen month slide from the cut in funding from the Arts Council in September 2023 to the statement put out before Christmas that the company was to fold. But the fate of NTW, as inevitable as it was protracted, might have been seen to be holding back whatever - if anything - was to come next. The Arts Council commissioned a review into the state of English language theatre in Wales, which is to be published in the spring, but that all seems a bit of a waste of time now. Michael Sheen, in one fell swoop, has potentially injected the life into Welsh theatre that no hack report could ever do. He promises to showcase Welsh writing, as well as everything else. If he can make it happen (and I hope he can), it could utterly change the working nature of Welsh theatre, and who knows, given the recent report in the Guardian about how Welsh government holds Welsh culture in contempt, it might even dazzle the miserly gatekeepers down Cardiff Bay.
You can catch up with all the great work Lorna has been doing on the BBC website, and see her exclusive interview with Sheen.
And you can hear our discussion on the news at 6.30pm tonight on Radio Wales and then on BBC Sounds.