I guess I'm a Welsh activist by proxy of my husband, who stood up, was counted, went to court and was fined for his part in raising awareness of the Welsh language in the 1960s and 70s. He and his friends went around Wales underlining place names and road signs in English and writing 'Cymraeg?' It begged the question about the status and use of the Welsh language by the UK government, local authorities and organisations of the time.
Rhys never thought in his lifetime he'd such a radical transformation of what was a second class language to Welsh as a language of equal status with English, enshrined in legislation in an elected Assembly that manages many of Wales' affairs. When he started teaching it was in the first and only Welsh medium Comprehensive school in South Wales. There are now many primary and secondary schools in Cardiff alone, with projected growth as a bi-lingual education becomes more essential if you want to work in Welsh government. It's easy to forget the struggle that went on for decades to reach this place.
On Friday we attended a concert marking 50 years of protest by Welsh singer Dafydd Iwan. When I first came to Wales, I misheard Rhys talking about him and for many months I referred to him as 'Dafydd, the One!' But, there is only one Dafydd Iwan. More than any other Welsh singer of his generation he represents the struggle of a small oppressed nation. He stands tall with greats like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. Dafydd sang to a full auditorium in the Weston Studio of the Wales Millenium Centre, and in telling his story he made no compromise for any non-Welsh speakers in the audience. He's not a great guitar player and many of his songs have the same chords but the vigour and belief with which he sings is truly inspirational. His songs are irreverent, funny, witty, and will I'm sure stand the test of time.
Accompanying him was his own band, Heather Jones who continues to sing like a Nightingale and a group of three women calling themselves, 'Grug'. The audience sang with fervour, especially in what feels like a new national anthem - 'Ry'n ni yma o hyd.'
Monday 22 October 2012
Monday 8 October 2012
GREEN CANTERBURY TALES
On Friday October 5th 2012 members of the Glamorgan Seed Group met up to beach walk round Swansea Bay, telling and inventing stories, and later planning our route for next year's walk to Canterbury, part of a pilgrimage across Britain weaving new green tales for a sustainable world. Below is some background from the first meeting at Cae Mabon representing ten groups across Wales. Ours is a women's group of writers, poets, artists, and storytellers.
The pilgrimage is open to all.If you are interested in forming your own Seed Group look on www.greencanterburytales.org.uk for more information.
"Each group will be unique depending on the individuals involved and the nature of the journey given their geography. It may be possible to build on pre-existing projects, organisations and contacts. This could lead to potential sources of funding. Some Seed Groups will want to attract young people who can be mentored as storytellers and pilgrims. Such groups will probably need to be aligned to pre-existing groups and to tick boxes regarding health and safety etc. Other groups may simply consist of a handful of self-responsible adults. If groups become larger walkers may need to be asked to sign disclaimers.
•Initially the Seed Group will need to cultivate their repertoire of stories, agree on a starting date and an itinerary. They may organise a public performance in this first stage. We’d like each seed group to give a minimum of 6 days or 3 weekends over the 5 months for their journeys, not including the 2 or 3 days in Canterbury. This does not mean every individual does the full six days, just that the group as a whole does so. We expect many story pilgrims will spend longer on their journeys. Some may want to walk or cycle the whole way.
•The Seed Groups will begin their story-journeys in a place of sacred, historic, ecological or political significance. En route they'll exchange with each other and with people they meet stories, songs and poems on a broadly green or land-based theme. Later they may meet up and walk with neighbouring seed groups. So participants will fine tune stories; perform to audiences encountered or organised on the way; listen to and gather stories from other seed-groups or from people met en route; and tell the tales of their journeys.
•The third phase of the journeys will be the approach to Canterbury. One group will come from Southwark following the route of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The final weekend in Canterbury will be a mixture of festival and conference (Confest) where we explore the importance of storytelling on green themes, tell the stories of the journeys, re-tell some of the original Canterbury Tales with contemporary twists, tell some of the old and new stories gathered en route, and enjoy poetry and song."
The pilgrimage is open to all.If you are interested in forming your own Seed Group look on www.greencanterburytales.org.uk for more information.
"Each group will be unique depending on the individuals involved and the nature of the journey given their geography. It may be possible to build on pre-existing projects, organisations and contacts. This could lead to potential sources of funding. Some Seed Groups will want to attract young people who can be mentored as storytellers and pilgrims. Such groups will probably need to be aligned to pre-existing groups and to tick boxes regarding health and safety etc. Other groups may simply consist of a handful of self-responsible adults. If groups become larger walkers may need to be asked to sign disclaimers.
•Initially the Seed Group will need to cultivate their repertoire of stories, agree on a starting date and an itinerary. They may organise a public performance in this first stage. We’d like each seed group to give a minimum of 6 days or 3 weekends over the 5 months for their journeys, not including the 2 or 3 days in Canterbury. This does not mean every individual does the full six days, just that the group as a whole does so. We expect many story pilgrims will spend longer on their journeys. Some may want to walk or cycle the whole way.
•The Seed Groups will begin their story-journeys in a place of sacred, historic, ecological or political significance. En route they'll exchange with each other and with people they meet stories, songs and poems on a broadly green or land-based theme. Later they may meet up and walk with neighbouring seed groups. So participants will fine tune stories; perform to audiences encountered or organised on the way; listen to and gather stories from other seed-groups or from people met en route; and tell the tales of their journeys.
•The third phase of the journeys will be the approach to Canterbury. One group will come from Southwark following the route of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The final weekend in Canterbury will be a mixture of festival and conference (Confest) where we explore the importance of storytelling on green themes, tell the stories of the journeys, re-tell some of the original Canterbury Tales with contemporary twists, tell some of the old and new stories gathered en route, and enjoy poetry and song."
La bohème
It's only in the last year that Rhys and I have become interested in opera. I always saw it as an elitist hobby. In Wales, however, regardless of class or income, many people enjoy classical music and opera in particular.
We live next door to two musicians who work for the Welsh National Opera(WNO) and one of them is Rhys's guitar tutor. My counselling room backs onto their music room where they rehearse. Sometimes my clients are privy to our very own secret concert of cello and violin, giving a melodramatic backdrop to the action in my room. All the musicians' children are also musical. Before their eldest son went to uni, we would often hear his beautiful piano pieces and singing as he practised for the entrance exams. More latterly their younger son has taken up the trumpet. We now get the theme tunes from, 'Eastenders', 'The Last of the Summer Wine,' and 'Wallace and Gromet.' At least the latter usually breaks the tension and gets a laugh. When a client's just lost their husband or is suffering from post-traumatic stress there aren't a lot of laughs.
So having had all this for free for so long through our adjoining walls, we thought we'd like to see the performances that go with the music, and now we're rather hooked. What helps is the sur-titles in English and Welsh. It still seems to take an age to hear a performer singing that he enjoys a drink, fancies another man or is leaving his woman. At least now we know exactly what's happening. The other great thing for ignorant opera goers like us are the pre-show talks. On this occasion Dewi Savage, who I remembered as an actor in the days when I worked for Spectacle Theatre, did the honours in a self deprecating way that got laughs from the predominantly silver-surfer audience. In these half hour talks you get to know a bit of the background of the life and times of the composer, in this case Puccini, and a synopsis of who loves who, who falls out of love with who, who gets jealous and who dies of consumption- and there's still time for a G&T before the show starts.
This WNO production of La bohème is conducted by Simon Phillippo, directed by Annabel Arden with David Kempster as Marcello, Alex Vicens as Rodolpho, Giselle Allen as Mimi and Kate Valentine as Musetta. The opera is set in Paris's Latin Quarter at the end of the nineteenth century and as the title suggests is the story of a group of bohemian artists who fall in and out of love in a garret, get jealous, and sing over each other in magnificent voices as Mimi dies of consumption.
We didn't go away humming a well known ditty as we did for Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro. And we weren't quite convinced that the bohemians were in their early twenties-more like their forties, but we did enjoy the drama of the performances, the singing, the orchestra, and the atmospheric line-drawn set, pumping out smoke over the rooftops of Paris.
WNO is on tour with this production until the 1st of December 2012. www.wno.org.uk
We live next door to two musicians who work for the Welsh National Opera(WNO) and one of them is Rhys's guitar tutor. My counselling room backs onto their music room where they rehearse. Sometimes my clients are privy to our very own secret concert of cello and violin, giving a melodramatic backdrop to the action in my room. All the musicians' children are also musical. Before their eldest son went to uni, we would often hear his beautiful piano pieces and singing as he practised for the entrance exams. More latterly their younger son has taken up the trumpet. We now get the theme tunes from, 'Eastenders', 'The Last of the Summer Wine,' and 'Wallace and Gromet.' At least the latter usually breaks the tension and gets a laugh. When a client's just lost their husband or is suffering from post-traumatic stress there aren't a lot of laughs.
So having had all this for free for so long through our adjoining walls, we thought we'd like to see the performances that go with the music, and now we're rather hooked. What helps is the sur-titles in English and Welsh. It still seems to take an age to hear a performer singing that he enjoys a drink, fancies another man or is leaving his woman. At least now we know exactly what's happening. The other great thing for ignorant opera goers like us are the pre-show talks. On this occasion Dewi Savage, who I remembered as an actor in the days when I worked for Spectacle Theatre, did the honours in a self deprecating way that got laughs from the predominantly silver-surfer audience. In these half hour talks you get to know a bit of the background of the life and times of the composer, in this case Puccini, and a synopsis of who loves who, who falls out of love with who, who gets jealous and who dies of consumption- and there's still time for a G&T before the show starts.
This WNO production of La bohème is conducted by Simon Phillippo, directed by Annabel Arden with David Kempster as Marcello, Alex Vicens as Rodolpho, Giselle Allen as Mimi and Kate Valentine as Musetta. The opera is set in Paris's Latin Quarter at the end of the nineteenth century and as the title suggests is the story of a group of bohemian artists who fall in and out of love in a garret, get jealous, and sing over each other in magnificent voices as Mimi dies of consumption.
We didn't go away humming a well known ditty as we did for Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro. And we weren't quite convinced that the bohemians were in their early twenties-more like their forties, but we did enjoy the drama of the performances, the singing, the orchestra, and the atmospheric line-drawn set, pumping out smoke over the rooftops of Paris.
WNO is on tour with this production until the 1st of December 2012. www.wno.org.uk
Thursday 4 October 2012
BEFORE IT RAINS
'Before it Rains,' is a powerful play written by Katherine Chandler and directed by Roisin McBrinn. It is a Sherman Cymru and Bristol Old Vic co-production. Set on an allotment and in the woods behind a tough Cardiff housing estate, it explores the relationships between an alcoholic, protective Mum, her autistic son and his street-wise, bullying friend. The violence we are told is occuring off stage creates tension on stage, slowly building, and erupting into a cataclysmic and explosive ending; in efforts to protect her son, the Mum provokes the wild friend (abused by his sadistic father) to take his own life. The event is truly shocking.
The cast of Lisa Palfrey, Craig Gazey and Harry Ferrier gave really convincing performances. The language felt authentic, but at times the script fell into 'telling rather showing' and there were some speeches that felt a bit too long. The set, designed by Alyson Cummins- a mound of earth, dug and re-dug by the autistic son, with pillars of the estate underpass doubling as trees in the woods, and ropes for branches, worked well and provided an evocative atmosphere. Pity the seating in Theatre 2 hasn't been updated with the rest of the building. Sitting for an hour and a half on a hard chair isn't great for one's concentration.
The play is on until the 6th of October at the Sherman. Under 25s are half price.
The cast of Lisa Palfrey, Craig Gazey and Harry Ferrier gave really convincing performances. The language felt authentic, but at times the script fell into 'telling rather showing' and there were some speeches that felt a bit too long. The set, designed by Alyson Cummins- a mound of earth, dug and re-dug by the autistic son, with pillars of the estate underpass doubling as trees in the woods, and ropes for branches, worked well and provided an evocative atmosphere. Pity the seating in Theatre 2 hasn't been updated with the rest of the building. Sitting for an hour and a half on a hard chair isn't great for one's concentration.
The play is on until the 6th of October at the Sherman. Under 25s are half price.
Tuesday 2 October 2012
PASSING THROUGH THE PAST
This weekend was one of our now irregular visits to the capital. The purpose of going was a school reunion. Eight of us have been meeting annually for the past six years. Last year it was at the Brighton races, this year it was at Petersham Nurseries, near Richmond. Reunions are funny things. You have a shared history. I knew these people intimately as a teenager, but our lives have all taken very different paths. It's fun to catch up but I'm finding that reminiscing over the same few memories that we seem to hold is starting to pall. I wonder about the meaning of the reunion to each of us. One friend, who I am in regular contact with, suggested I see the event as just a pleasant lunch with pleasant people and attach no deeper significance. Not sure I can do that.
So it seemed somewhat synchronistic that the following evening the play we went to see at The Royal Court Theatre by Caryl Churchill, called 'Love and Information' explored the different meanings that people in relationships (romantic and otherwise) attach to shared knowledge, memories and information. There were 57 scenes set in a white cube. Lightning scene changes accompanied by different soundtracks gave the piece momentum and vitality. The acting was superb, the direction by James Macdonald sharp and clever, the script quirky, funny and poignant.
The past featured heavily in the two visual art exhibitions we saw: Bronze at the Royal Academy of Arts and Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye at the Tate Modern.
'Bronze' presents a landmark exhibition of the finest bronzes from across the globe, from antiquity up to the present day, putting the spotlight on era-defining works by Donatello,Ghiberti,Rodin,Picasso and contemporary greats such as Jasper Johns and Jeff Koons.' As we opened the floor-to- ceiling doors into the exhibition, our mouths dropped at a half-limbed Roman figure, green with alabaster eyes, flying above us in suspension. Stunning drama to whet our appetite to a great show.
Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye' brings together his paintings, drawings, prints,photographs, sculpture and film to offer a new perspective on the Norwegian artist'. Much of the work was produced in the 20th century. His work was shaped by emotional and psychological states rather than a conventionally naturalistic representation of the world. There are a lot of self portraits and I found myself searching his face for knowledge of the inner man. His memories of a tragic childhood and his experience of ill health, nervous breakdowns, aging and a life of turmoil are evident in the colours, the distortions, the inter-play of the real and the spirit world in his work.
All this and a conversation with my brother about our childhood memories made me wonder about my own childhood memories, how much I may have suppressed, reshaped or distorted. I feel quite inspired to embark on a new phase of creativity to explore this through different artistic mediums. I may be passing through your past on my way. I would love to hear from you if you have any stories, thoughts or feedback on this theme.
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