Theatr Pena is the result of a casual conversation in January 2008 with my friend, the actor and director Rosamund Shelley, regarding the lack of roles for older women and opportunities to work on challenging, classic plays.
Over the subsequent few months I floated the idea of staging a production of The House of Bernarda Alba with a number of friends and in May 2008 ten like-minded actors – including present Company Members Kathryn Dimery, Buddug Verona James, Betsan Llwyd, Hannah O’Leary, Christine Pritchard, Olwen Rees, Rosamund Shelley and Eiry Thomas – gathered to read Lorca’s classic tale of the tyrannical and sexually repressed matriarch Bernarda and her daughters. By the end of the evening we were determined to stage our own production of Lorca’s masterpiece. Joined by my long-time artistic collaborators and present Company Members, designer Holly McCarthy, lighting designer Kay Haynes and production manager Ian Buchanan, together we set about turning an idea into reality.
With the support of Nicolas Young, Theatre and Arts Director of The Riverfront Newport, we staged five performances in the Riverfront Studio in February 2009. The success of this our first production and the enthusiasm with which so many colleagues joined together to make it happen convinced us that there is an audience for challenging, classic and modern plays in which women take centre stage and the appetite for working on them.
When Nicolas Young invited us to return in February 2010 we chose Brendan Kennelly’s The Trojan Women by Euripides, one of the most powerful indictments of war ever written. This production was equally successful but it was Nicolas Young’s offer for The Riverfront to co-produce the Company’s future work and support offered by Peter Doran, Artistic Director, Torch Theatre, Milford Haven, which determined our decision to continue. Eligible to apply for Arts Council of Wales funding, we applied for a grant with which to stage a production of Jean Genet’s The Maids and in 2012 Genet’s stark portrayal of seething working class discontent was our first co-production with The Riverfront in association with the Torch Theatre.
In spring 2014 our second co-production with The Riverfront in association with the Torch Theatre was Frank Marcus’s 1960s ground-breaking comedy drama, The Killing of Sister George, a poignant and darkly funny exploration of emotional dependence and the gap between public appearance and private reality. In a new development for the Company, we also toured the production to Galeri, Caernarfon.
The seeds of our current production, The Royal Bed, were sown in spring 2013 when the Board decided that, after our trips to Spain, Ancient Greece, France and England, it was time to return home to Wales with Sion Eirian’s English language adaptation of the Welsh language classic Siwan by Saunders Lewis.
In October 2013 we were awarded an Arts Council of Wales Production Development grant which gave us the opportunity in the autumn of 2013 to test the feasibility of our plans for a national tour in spring 2015 and, with the support of Creu Cymru, to secure 12 provisional bookings and to develop ideas for staging and design and the integration of live music.
In April we were awarded our first Arts Council of Wales National Touring grant and preparatory work for our production of The Royal Bed began in June 2009. The level of funding we have been awarded by ACW has enabled us to bring into the Company a Producer, Ceri James, and a part-time Marketing Officer, Megan Merrett, releasing me from the responsibility of project and financial management and marketing which, like so many of my colleagues in project companies, I had to undertake on previous productions alongside directing.
Being able to focus solely on developing and realising the ideas generated in the production development with set and costume designer, Holly McCarthy, lighting designer, Kay Haynes, musical director, Buddug Verona James and sound designer, Mike Beer – and on exploring and staging the text with the actors in rehearsals, has been immensely liberating and I hope that Ceri will remain with us as the Producer of our future productions and Megan will return as our Marketing Officer.
The Royal Bed, our third co-production with The Riverfront in association with the Torch Theatre, opened in the Riverfront Studio on 11th February. The Company is a large company for Theatr Pena. Seven company members – myself (Director), Holly McCarthy (Designer), Kay Haynes (Lighting Designer), Ian Buchanan (Production and Tour Manager), Buddug Verona James (MD and Singer), Eiry Thomas (Siwan) and Hannah O’Leary (Alis) – have been joined by Brenda Knight (Assistant Director), Mike Beer (Sound Designer), Deryn Tudor (Costume Supervisor), Reva Callan (Scenic Artist), Christina McConnell (Design Assistant), Dan Sawyer (Re-lighter and Technician); Julie Towson (Stage Manager), Eirian Evans (ASM), Delyth Jenkins (Musician), Russell Gomer (Llywelyn) and Francois Pandolfo (Gwilym Brewys) as well as Ceri (Producer) and Megan (Marketing Officer).
Next week the touring company of 10 will take the production to a further 17 venues across Wales – we will be visiting 15 of them for the first time. We hope that after experiencing our production of this tragic tale of illicit passion, betrayal, revenge and broken dreams they will all want us to return with our next production in spring 2016, the American classic, The Glass Menagerie.
Whether or not we are able to stage Tennessee Williams’s powerful drama will depend on raising the required budget. But featuring as it does two of the most memorable and dramatic roles for women, we very much hope we can realise our plans.
Set in 1930s St Louis, this story about a family desperate to escape the constraints of their impoverished and mundane lives, is timeless and remains as relevant today as when it premiered in 1945. Lyrical and other-worldly, there is also a deep-rooted toughness in Tennessee Williams’s emotionally devastating masterpiece and it is my intention to craft a production in which all the elements combine to create a world as delicate and as fragile as the glass animals which Laura, the heartbeat at the centre of the play, obsessively collects but which is firmly placed in the gritty reality of the social, political and economic environment of 1930s America and the crippling force of the Great Depression.