National Theatre Wales facts for kids

National Theatre Wales (NTW) is a theatre company known for its large-scale site-specific productions and its grassroots work with diverse Welsh communities. It is the English-language national theatre of Wales, and refers to Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, the Welsh-language national theatre of Wales founded in 2003, as its sister company.

NTW's current artistic director is Lorne Campbell, and its executive producer is Lisa Maguire. Its previous artistic directors are John E. McGrath and Kully Thiarai.

Productions

First season

In its inaugural season National Theatre Wales realised thirteen new productions, each located in a different part of Wales. Its founding artistic director was John McGrath. In terms of media coverage, perhaps the two most notable of these were The Persians and The Passion, both of which received critical acclaim and subsequent awards. The productions of this first season included, in chronological order:

• A Good Night Out in the Valleys
• Shelf Life
• The Devil Inside Him
• For Mountain, Sand and Sea
• The Beach
• The Persians
• Love Steals Us From Loneliness
• The Dark Philosophers
• The Weather Factory
• The Soul Exchange
• Outdoors
• Mundo paralelo
• The Passion

While audiences generally rated the performance they had seen very highly, there were some concerns raised about how the company's inaugural productions had related to the sites in which they took place.

Second season

In May 2011, after a successful first year, the company launched its second season, including the productions:

• The Dark Philosophers Tour
• The Village Social
• Nofit state tour
• A Provincial Life
• The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning
• Little Dogs
• In Water I'm Weightless
• Coriolan/us
• Branches

Third season

In March 2013, NTW launched its third season, including the following productions:

• De Gabay
• The Opportunity of Efficiency
• Things I Forgot I Remembered
• Tonypandemonium
• Praxis Makes Perfect
• Silly Kings

Fourth season

• Raw Material: Llareggub Revisited
• Mametz
• Green Man // Red Woman
• The Gathering
• Bordergame
• Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage

Fifth season

• Mother Courage
• {150}
• Iliad
• The Insatiable, Inflatable Candylion
• Before I Leave

National Theatre Wales Assembly

Alongside their main season of performances, the company has also developed the National Theatre Wales Assembly programme. This is defined as a series of 'rousing performance/debate event[s] that [respond] to local or global issues in a creative setting with time during the performance for the audience to debate and react'.

In their inaugural year, each Assembly took the form of a single event running alongside each of their thirteen productions. These centered around a question specific to each location. For example, in Barmouth (For Mountain, Sand & Sea, NTW04), the question that was raised was 'What's left after the summer tides?'. While the Assembly projects were facilitated by NTW Associates, the events themselves were largely led by local community members who often performed creatively in response to the specified question; such as by writing and reciting poetry, or performing musical compositions. The Assemblies also included a space for community people to sit alongside visiting audience members and debate these questions and other relevant issues, in the hope that such conversations might continue to reverberate after NTW's production team had left the area.

More recently, their second year saw the initiation of the next phase of the Assembly programme. The events were decoupled from productions, with people around Wales invited instead to submit proposals on 'the theme and location of the next Assembly'.

Wales Drama Award

In 2012, National Theatre Wales, in partnership with BBC Cymru Wales TV Drama, established the Wales Drama Award, the first writers award in Wales, to be awarded for a drama in any medium.

Notable productions

Among the company’s productions are:

• The Persians (2010) by Kaite O’Reilly, Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes. A reimagining of one of Europe’s earliest recorded plays on a military training range in the Brecon Beacons, which won the 2010 Ted Hughes Award.
• The Passion (2011). A 72-hour secular passion play created by Michael Sheen, which won the UK Theatre Award for Best Director.
• The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning (2012) by Tim Price. A fictionalised account of whistleblower Chelsea Manning’s teenage years in Pembrokeshire, which won the 2013 James Tait Black Prize for Drama.
• CORIOLAN/US (2012) by Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes. A multimedia reimagining of Coriolanus in a World War II aircraft hangar in St Athan, produced with the Royal Shakespeare Company as part of the World Shakespeare Festival.
• In Water I’m Weightless (2012) by Kaite O’Reilly. A provocative exploration of disability and the human body combining movement and live projections, co-produced with Unlimited for the London 2012 Festival.
• De Gabay (2013). An immersive production created by a group of young Welsh-Somali performers in Butetown, Cardiff, which was shortlisted for a Gulbenkian award.
• Mametz (2014) by Owen Sheers. Play commissioned as part of 14-18 NOW, which transformed an ancient woodland near Usk, Monmouthshire into the trenches and battlefields of the Somme.
• The Gathering/Yr Helfa (2014) by National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke, and Louise Ann Wilson. An exploration of the annual cycle of sheep-farming on a working hill farm on Snowdon.
• Bordergame (2014). An interactive production exploring migration and contemporary border regimes, which won the first Space Prize for Digital Innovation.
• Roald Dahl’s City of the Unexpected (2016). A Cardiff-wide celebration of Roald Dahl with 7,000 people performing, making and volunteering, billed as “Wales’ largest-ever cultural event.”
• We’re Still Here (2017) by Rachel Trezise and the people of Port Talbot. A co-production with Common Wealth Theatre sited in a disused steelworks which won a 2018 Nesta/The Observer New Radicals Award.
• NHS70 (2018). A season of one-person plays celebrating the NHS taking place in intimate settings all over Wales, including new work by Maria Fusco, Alan Harris and Elis James.
• Tide Whisperer (2018) by Louise Wallwein. An acclaimed immersive production on the shores of Tenby tackling the global phenomenon of displacement and mass movement.
• On Bear Ridge (2019) by Ed Thomas. A co-production with Royal Court Theatre which was named one of the U.K.’s five best new plays of 2019 by The Stage.
• Refrain (2019) by Sean Edwards. A radio play produced with Wrexham’s Tŷ Pawb as part of the Wales in Venice presentation at the 58th Venice Biennale.
• Mission Control (2019). A fantasy musical co-produced with Hijinx Theatre and created with Seiriol Davies, staged at the Millennium Stadium.