NATIONAL THEATRE WALES

In Port Talbot

Passion

April 2011

In partnership with
WILDWORKS

Written by
OWEN SHEERS

Creative Director
MICHAEL SHEEN

Michael Sheen returns to his home town to lead an epic contemporary revival of the town’s community Passion Play. Inspired by a year of story-gathering, poet Owen Sheers will give voice to the town’s tales of redemption, return, and faith in a three-day Easter event.

We are already gathering images and memories that can be found here

Passion background and booking information

One of Port Talbot’s most famous sons, Michael Sheen, returns to his home town to revive a lost tradition - the Port Talbot community Passion play which used to be staged every year in the town until 1998. Working with leading Welsh poet Owen Sheers, supported by professional actors, international designers and extraordinary musicians, Michael will guide residents and visitors in Port Talbot on a journey of rediscovery.

BOOKING OPENS MONDAY 6 DECEMBER 2010

Booking

April 2011

Michael Sheen, Actor and Creative Director

‘I grew up on the hillside overlooking the town proper. On a good day you could look out across the sea and glimpse the English coast, on a better one you only saw Port Talbot. The chemical plant cooling towers stood imperiously before me, turning the sky orange and spitting acid at the washing and the cars. The steelworks on fire and smoking woodbines. And always the sea, washing up its whales and submarines, failed kites and once reaching out with its roiling hand across the beach road and stealing away a child, never to be seen again in spite of all the car headlights. I first saw the Passion Play in Margam Park when I was about 12. I saw it a

few times over the years up until it stopped being done. It was a story I knew come to life in front of me. A ritual taking place before me. I saw the people of my town walking out of the forest and out of another time, children dancing and the old walking with their lost, following the man who had come back. The man who had been on a strange journey, who had suffered, had visions, and who returned. Something had been called to that place and was still there as we left. Something about a town telling a story to itself. A town remembering itself through a story. Sacrifice. Betrayal. Denial. Love. Passion.’

Passion: Port Talbot

A nightscape of dramatic Port Talbot with narration by Creative Director and Actor Michael Sheen.

WILDWORKS

When we started our journey there were no purpose-built theatres in Cornwall. We worked in schools, village halls and tents. We turned to the extraordinary wild landscapes and industrial sites of Cornwall, started to explore their potential for narrative and made some startling discoveries. Initially we simply did the shows we were doing indoors outside.

They didn't work well. The spoken word behaves differently outside. It doesn't carry narrative well and is better used for lyric effect or as texture. The story has to be carried by physical action, visual effect and music. Sets that were designed for studio theatres looked puny against landscapes and blew over. So a whole new thread of work was born.

We learnt to relish the vagaries of the weather; audiences seem to have a huge resilience to inclement conditions providing the show is good. It binds them somehow, and some stories benefit hugely from a degree of wildness in the telling. Some of our best shows have been in horizontal Cornish weather.

The changing light became central to the event. Many shows are timed to sunset, with the thread of the narrative moving from light into darkness.

We learnt to celebrate incidental gifts; the school of dolphins, the timely rumble of thunder, the innocent passer by stumbling onto a scene. And we began to explore the effect on audiences of being in the open air, in twilight, together they were more active, had more commitment to the narrative, were more aware of each other, became more vulnerable, sensual and emotional.

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