Due to the inflexibility of this blog (nice idea 1&1 but you need to update and add functions as technology moves on apace). All posts on this blog have been moved and are now available on http://www.artsmonkey.posterous.com
Today is November the fifth a day for plots and coup attempts, remember? Well today also marked the official launch of the National Theatre of Wales and boy did they do it in style. Not only were parties being thrown across Wales but Producer Lucy Jones and Artistic Director John McGrath shared the event online with people across the world. Let’s face it the Welsh know how to do Culture, in many ways they epitomise culture and ‘national’ they certainly know all about that, from fighting to retain their language and heritage, to forming their own Parliament to seeding their musicians, writers, actors and artistic talents across the world.
In fact, you have to wonder what kept them so long, well this was all explained at the launch and then we were treated to a filmic feast of what’s in store over the next year (2010) with live links to a school in Bridgend, an artist at the summit of Snowdonia another in a lighthouse and live chat from three young artists in the National Theatre social network chat room
http://community.nationaltheatrewales.org/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/8344309.stm
The long and the short is that it is all very exciting and inclusive, as work will be truly national and taking place all over not just city-centric. For us social media queens and geeks there will be digital technology aplenty as the NTW embraces new technology and new ways of taking theatre and art to the people - I can’t wait, the ‘For Sale’ sign is up, my bags are packed and I’m moving (unless that is, train tickets get cheaper in which case, I’ll just commute as I still remember how ‘incomers’ holiday cottages were vandalised and burnt in the seventies).
Whatever, good art deserves a chance and next year I will at the very least, be winging my way to Port Talbot for the finale - Michael Sheens collaboration with poet Owen Sheers who will be staging a contemporary version of the towns ‘Passion Play’.
London’s National Theatre is just that, in London. The National Theatre of Wales promises to be much more, much, much more.
.CrispAutumn.
Dead leaves hang from tree
like brown butterfly cocoons.
Seasons of nature. ©theboywyatt
This week sees National Poetry day come around again. I have a love/hate relationship with this day ever since I was asked to be part of a team delivering ‘poetry on the buses’ with mixed success. Our carefully picked mix of contemporary and classic poetry, read out between stops (by myself, an actresss, an actor and a storyteller) as we circumnavigated the citys’ bus routes, was more than once met with rage and fury. This was before i-pods and mp3 players and I often wonder how people would respond now (if at all). It could have been because we were butchering their favourite poem with our interpretation but I think it was about the invasion of their headspace, the precious time when they shut off and allow the bus to carry them, alone with their thoughts from A to B and not to be cruelly interrupted by caterwauling thespians! I still remember the look on the persons face who insisted the driver stop to let them off, so indignant where they, or maybe it was fear that they might be asked to join in? Either way – tough audience. I declined when invited to repeat the event the following year.
But I do love poetry. It started at school, by writing and swapping really, really bad song lyrics with friends in my class. By the fifth form it had evolved into poetry and our group had expanded - we became an ‘unofficial poetry club’. I wrote tons of the stuff, not much of it good. Although my English teacher did compare a poem I wrote about a ‘deer’ to Ted Hughes work once, which I grew to appreciate having gone off to find out who Ted Hughes was. And many years later, I met a man who recognised me because his daughter had been one of those ‘poetry enthusiasts’ and he told me how miserable she had been at school until she joined our ‘group’, how it had saved her. I had no inkling at the time but I knew what he meant. Something about expressing yourself through poetry and indeed reading other people’s poetry that goes beyond the depth of a play script, cuts through, creates a bond, a sense of place, of being.
At drama school I used to write people poems for birthday presents and each year I was entered in for the annual ‘Poetry Cup’, usually two days before the event because no-one else had volunteered. I never won. I rarely got through the whole poem without forgetting the words because unlike plays (in my head, at the time), performing a poem demanded a degree of skill and utter command on a far higher plane than simply inhabiting a character, and just like plays required far more rehearsal than I found time for. Hey ho. It got me and some peers invited to tea with a lady called Morag from Surrey Unversity who regarded us thespians as suitable fodder to showcase her students work, by putting us together for evenings of poetry, so we would look bad and her students would shine (sorry Morag, I’m sure it wasn’t your intention, it just felt like that). Which was funny because her students read their work like thespians and we read the poems like ‘shared truths’ which I think had more impact.
So back to National Poetry day, we’re seeing some inventive celebrations of it this year and I have two favourites; both invitations. Firstly on ‘Spoonfed’ http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/spooners/lowri-257/national-poetry-day-1555/ you are invited to share your favourite poetry, or write your own ‘off the cuff’ (just my kind of challenge) and the other a more daring sortie by The Southbank Centre, http://gps.southbankcentre.co.uk/ who are running *G.P.S Global Poetry System* subtitled Poetry. Find it, map it, share it – an excellent suggestion and I urge you to do so.
