In our latest Playwright interview, the Director of Get the Chance, Guy O’Donnell meets Playwright Vic Mills, they discuss his career to date, his latest play ‘Sanctuary: The Secrets of the Gunter Mansion’ and his thoughts on career support for Playwrights in Wales.

So, what got you interested in the arts?

I came from a non-conformist chapel background, where both of my parents were public speakers, writers, teachers, preachers – so performance of the spoken word was part of what we lived and breathed from infant hood. Music too was central to life.  Both my parents were avid readers and we grew up in a home without a television so I read a huge amount – many of the classics before I was eleven.

Why do you write?

That’s probably changed  great deal over the years – from poetry as a teenager and young adult to writing for theatre from the time I was about 20.  I write because I enjoy the process and each stage of sharing and developing a script is incredibly exciting – the isolation in the first part of the process and then the development of a script with a team is nerve-wracking and exhilarating.  Then, right through to the first performance the piece continues to develop and is still changing and hopefully improving until it’s last performance.  The chemistry with my director, Neil Maidman, and recently with the Contemporancient Team of poet Dr Kevin Mills, composer Stephen Preston and our actors is hugely exciting.

Can you tell us about your writing process? Where do your ideas come from?

Research around a specific subject – like The Chartists, mental asylums in Wales, Dr Richard Price, ‘The Gunter Mansion’ in Abergavenny  – is the starting point – finding where the theatre is in a story, what might be relevant, challenging, inspiring, for contemporary audiences.  Then, like most playwrights, I build scenes around conflict.  I also search for empathy with every character I develop – they all have to have something of me in them – good, bad and appalling.

I have written theatre with a social and political drive, often linked to an aspect of Welsh history in the last twenty years and that continues to be my focus.

Whilst I usually produce what might be called ‘naturalist dialogue’ as central to a piece, the work itself is not usually naturalistic overall.  My great inspiration is Brecht and so music, poetry, ‘chorus’, multiple playing, non-linear structure, are all key tools in creating something meant to evoke intellectual challenge rather than pure entertainment.

Can you describe your writing day? Do you have a process or a minimum word count?

I usually spend a year or so reading around a subject and then write a first draft of a play obsessively and very quickly – maybe within 10 days.  I don’t keep any record of how much time I spend at it during those days – but writing comes easily when it comes at all and it usual flies out when it’s ready to.  It gets huge amounts of patient re-working for months afterwards, but the arc is there.

Do you have a specific place that you work from?

I have a study and a MacBook Air.  I write notes in proper notebooks with a fountain pen.  I like fountain pens a lot.  I really like fountain pens.  Once I start writing the script – its straight on the MacBook though.

Your latest play ‘Sanctuary: The Secrets of the Gunter Mansion’ plays at The Borough Theatre, Abergavenny at 7.30pm on Wednesday 21st June.

“This new play with music tells how, for more than 400 years, Abergavenny has provided sanctuary for those in danger – here the horrors and joys of their secret stories are told in thrilling theatre and music.”

Can you tell us more about the background to this production and your hopes for its production?

This started with reading an historical text about two leaders of the Jesuits being caught in a priest hole in Worcestershire in 1605 and exploring the idea of people being hunted, tortured and killed for their faith but also willing to do the same things to other people, with only marginally different faith.  This seemed incredibly relevant to life for people in many parts of the world today so worth exploring.  We have worked with ‘The Plas Gunter Mansion’ in Abergavenny, where these priests probably hid in the months prior to be caught – we have linked that with the story of Syrian refugee woman in Abergavenny today – she is not an historical figure but is based on stories of real Syrian refugees in Wales.

We’ve worked with Syrian musicians and our composer to bring the cultures together in music and explore the idea of sanctuary in Abergavenny and in Wales across the ages.  It’s a play about the Welsh nation being made up of people from around the world and about the importance of tolerance.  But there’s a lot of difficult stuff in the play about people’s willingness to suffer for their beliefs and to make others suffer who do not share them.

Kevin, my brother, an academic and poet, has produced wonderful verse for the piece and has worked with Stephen Preston, our musician/composer to create stunning songs alongside our Syrian musicians.  We’ve worked with our close collaborator, film maker Chris Lloyd to deliver a multi-media piece, where film and visual imagery plays a huge part.  Our director and dramaturg, Neil Maidman, is someone I have worked with for more than 25 years so we shape a piece together, understanding each others strengths pretty intuitively by now.

We hope that through exploring our shared history, we will learn more about ourselves and those with whom we share our communal lives and spaces.

This will be performed during National Refugee Week and all performances will be free for refugees.

Sanctuary – Cast, Director, Writer, and Lyricist

What role do you think Theatres and Playwrights have in telling the narratives of the citizens of their respective nations?

You can tell from my previous answer that this is a central tenet of all I do as a writer and what this theatre company, Contemporancient Theatre, is all about.  Heb Hanes – Heb Hunaniaeth is our motto, and that is at the heart of what we do.

There are a range of organisations supporting Wales based writers. I wonder if you feel the current support network and career opportunities feel ‘healthy’ to you? Is it possible to sustain a career as a writer in Wales and if not, what would help?

I worked as a drama teacher, English teacher and Deputy Headteacher until I was able to retire at 55, and work full time in theatre.  I was able to write and get plays produced throughout that time and have had plays of mine produced and performed all around the world.  I have never made any money to speak of through that.  If a play of mine is performed I get about £50 per performance in royalties.

I spend a huge amount of time applying for funding – far more that I do actually writing or developing scripts.  If I had to rely on what I earned from theatre to live, I couldn’t.  I ensure that freelance actors, musicians, crew etc are paid union rates and I try to find some money in the budget for writing and script development.  I don’t know how anyone writing for theatre could make a living just by writing, unless they were hugely successful.

You are a member of the Get The Chance team yourself and have reviewed a range of productions. Why are you a member of our team of volunteer critics and what value does this opportunity have to you?

I watch as much live theatre as I can, and I usually have very strong opinions about what I experience.  Part of the joy of any art is the discussion it evokes – Get The Chance gives people an opportunity to formulate and articulate ideas about performance arts so it’s a vehicle for them and publicity for the event that have attended.  What’s not to like about that?

If you were able to fund an area of the arts what would this be and why?

One of my many causes is ‘working class people in arts’ and theatre specifically, of course. 

The tradition of great working class actors, playwrights etc that fuelled British theatre has been choked off.  I would love to see bursaries or grants for theatre practitioners of working class background to support their work, and organisations like ACW creating funding areas for projects delivered by practitioners from the working class. 

What currently inspires you about the arts in the Wales?

The extent to which good work continues to get put on despite the odds. 

What was the last really great thing that you experienced that you would like to share with our readers?

I saw Rosie Sheehy in Alls Well That Ends Well at the RSC Stratford last year.  Didn’t know her, or of her, at the time.  Stunning, stunning performance – by a kid from down the road.  Blistering and inspiring.  I love actors who can really speak verse – get verse.  Wonderful physical and vocal performance.  I love the fact that she was there and blew everyone else off the stage and that she’s a Welsh kid from an ordinary background.

Long before the shock of seeing Tracey Emin’s unmade bed as an exhibit in a gallery, or Martin Creed’s ‘Work No. 227: The Lights Going On And Off’, modern art has evoked strong emotions.

In this single-act play directed by Peter Harding-Roberts for Everyman Theatre at Chapter in Cardiff, the purchase of a blank canvas for a ludicrously high price pits pretentious Serge seeking to impress his friends against classicist Marc who scorns the work as a “piece of white shit”. When he asks “Are you going to have it framed?”, Serge laughingly replies “It’s not supposed to be framed. The artist doesn’t want it to be. It mustn’t be interrupted. It’s already in its setting”, echoing what Mark Rothko said about keeping his paintings frameless to increase their impact on the world, as part of the world rather than separate objects.

Their friend Yvan is drawn into the debate, whose appeasing nature suggests he may provide an opportunity for some resolution to their opposing views about modern art. More than the debate about the merits of the artwork though, ‘Art’ explores the art of friendship as the antagonists realise the fragility of their long-term relationships and question their validity, the painting itself a catalyst for amplifying hidden tensions in a longstanding three-way bromance.

Seasoned Everyman actors Brian Smith and Gregory Owens are joined by Michael Taylor Moran in Yasmina Reza’s 90-minute narrative, structured not in formal scenes but in pithy little episodes, mostly duologues between two of the three protagonists, punctuated by confessional asides that break the fourth wall. The action takes place in Serge’s apartment where two large off-white armchairs are separated by a settle that serves to prop the painting centre-stage as well as a seat when all three characters need to sit. The geometry of the minimalist and monochromatic set allows the three of them to keep their distance from each other which I believe helps accentuate their differences, although I heard someone saying they wished the actors got physically closer as one might expect of true friends. Yet others have criticised the playwright for failing to establish a solid emotional base for her characters’ friendship, that these men are just archetypes, but I disagree. We don’t need to know the origins of their friendship, just the characteristics that account for their differing responses to the artwork in question, and these are well-portrayed.

In the end there is a twist that leads to the suggestion that the canvas represents a man who moves across a space and disappears, a universal metaphor for life itself perhaps, in the same way Creed’s Work No. 227 is interpreted as signifying birth (lights on) and death (lights off). I will resist identifying which character interprets the white canvas in this way as it might spoil the enjoyment of a play I would recommend seeing, for its nonstop cross-fire of crackling language and performances by three actors who capably hold our attention throughout as their levels of exasperation rise and fall according to the strain of their characters’ efforts to keep their friendship alive.

In the programme notes, the director quotes the playwright who considered her play as much a tragedy as a comedy and challenges us to disagree. That ‘Art’’ won the Molière Award for Best Author and the 1998 Tony Award for Best Play suggests the play works, and this performance also, because it is both.

Art runs at Chapter until Saturday May 13th

There will be no new theatrical professionals in the future without development programmes. These programmes are problematic because the work that comes out through them is bound to be variable. Yet, just as investment clubs throw money at funds supporting collections of start-up businesses, in the hope that the one that comes good will offset the losses incurred on the duds, a theatre initiating a development programme hopes to be able to mine a new vein of artistic talent.

‘Truth’ or ‘Dare’ are representative of Theatr Clwyd’s investment in its local community. Each consists of five short plays, written by freelancers, performed by two teams of ten actors. The plays are given the full treatment, with two directors and two associate directors, two stage managers and two deputies and a good-sized creative team. No expense is spared.

You might think this would be high risk. Will anyone travel to see new work by unknown writers being staged on a Thursday night in a small town in north west Wales? Isn’t there a danger of having more people on stage than in the auditorium? This can happen but fortunately it doesn’t happen in Mold. Because of Theatr Clwyd’s reputation and its well established relationship with its audience, they turn out to see what is going on (including people who are still the right side of forty). Thus, on the Press Night for ‘Truth’ and ‘Dare’ there were well over a hundred people in attendance. The makeshift space, The Mix, Theatr Clwyd is using while its main house is being refurbished, was over three quarters full. The Mayor was there in person, too, wearing the chain of office.

The audience enjoyed the double bill. They laughed long and loud. They clapped vigorously. They cheered and gave the casts of both groups of plays a standing ovation. It was quite a night and refreshing to experience so much open enthusiasm and support. It wasn’t unlike being at a football match when the home team wins.

That said, I think what appealed most to the audience were the performers. The evening became a show case for the actors and the creative team behind them, i.e. they fully repaid the investment. I felt, however, that the performers were better than the material they were working with. I couldn’t understand the connections between the plays and Truth or Dare, for example, and I couldn’t find the comic centre or the joke in most of them. I missed the point of One Stop Short and didn’t see why a stuffed teddy duck had replaced a dog in This Time Next Week. I felt there was an absence of plot And The Crowd Goes Boom.

This could have been down to my lack of perception but what the actors were doing, on the other hand, I could relate to completely. They managed to extract every last drop of potential from what they had been given. Every traditional theatrical gag was included, up to and including ‘Take a Chair’ – (Exit with chair) (groan).

What the audience got was a high-octane display of the art of coarse acting which, in some cases, took farce to a new level. One feature of this was the incorporation of objects provided by the audience for the cast to use as key props. These objects had not been seen before the night, so the actors were required to improvise to incorporate them quickly into the scripts. Cue much mirth as a doorknob became a murder weapon and a toilet roll became a prized personal possession.

Perhaps it’s unfair to pick out individual performances, because the evening favoured the comics over their straight supporters, but Seren Vickers was astonishingly daft as James Bond in drag; Laura Dalgleish managed to do things with a dowsing stick that I can’t describe and Geraint Edwards managed to completely reinvent the whole business of sales and marketing. These three weren’t just over the top. They were somewhere else entirely. Leilah Hughes as an all singing, all dancing Barbie was not far behind them.

Whilst the plays themselves were a mixed bag of different styles and approaches, there were two – The Wake and Bwgan (The Ghoul) – which stood out by being more or less naturalistic. The former was a set piece in which two sisters argue over what they will each inherit from their (toilet roll fixated) mother. The latter was a kind of ghost story in Welsh, which provided Betson Llwyd with the opportunity to be suitably ghoulish and to perform a bravura solo monologue. The fluent Welsh she spoke added atmosphere and musicality to the story, as I don’t speak I inevitably had to look away from what was being done on stage to read the subtitles on the overhead screen. Lisa Jen Brown contributed a lot to the success of both these pieces.

The language of Bwgan and the approach adopted in the other plays, up to and including the audience participation, has its limits, however. I’m not convinced this programme could transfer or tour and enjoy the same level of success as it had at Theatr Clwyd. In the end, although it was enjoyable, it wasn’t very original. What I would like to see personally is the same level of talent and commitment invested in plays that capture the imagination. There are short comic plays by Chekov and O’Casey that would really come to life with this cast’s energy. The treatment could also be applied to work by Ionesco and more recent comic dramatists like Dario Fo. This creative team could easily tackle longer classic plays by Moliere or Goldoni.

Finally, it would also be good to see serious work – drama that is disturbing and intellectually challenging – replacing the preoccupation with going for laughs, which is something of an easy way out.

Of course, it’s not fair to compare the programme with material by the greatest European playwrights and it’s beside the point. What one would hope, though, is that Theatr Clwyd’s development programme does succeed in unearthing writers and scripts which will allow them to get beyond providing their audience with light entertainment and just tickling their fancies. On the basis of the good things that were in this double bill, that should be well within the theatre’s capabilities.

(5 / 5)

It’s only fair to take the time to look at these pieces as separate entities as, although as with the popular game we may have all played as teenagers, ‘Truth’ and ‘Dare’ go together hand in hand, these performances also offer the audience two different casts, a variety of plays and writers and a change in creative teams, all which must be applauded in their own right.

This concept has been built on Curtain Up, which was performed in September 2021, in response to the Covid pandemic. This production embraced many freelance artists and this time around, Theatr Clwyd has commissioned ten freelance writers to create ten brand new plays on the theme of ‘Truth’ or ‘Dare.’

Each of these brand-new plays is captioned in Welsh and English with the scripts being a mixture of English language, bi-lingual and Welsh language. It is so refreshing to consistently hear our native tongue throughout, yet it is easy to follow even for a non-Welsh speaker- and would be well suited to those learning Welsh.

We’ll begin with ‘Dare’ (mainly due to this being the first treat for audiences on this particular occasion). ‘Dare’ opens with ‘Barbie Butt’ written by Greg Glover and we go on to witness four other plays- ‘Show Us’ by Kallum Weyman, ‘This Time Next Week’ by Natasha Kaeda, ‘Annwn (Mold Gold)’ by Hannah Daniel and ‘And The Crowd Goes Boom’ by Bethan Marlow. It would be easy to give a summary of each play and choose the best bits but I encourage those reading this to go and experience ‘Truth or Dare’ for themselves as it’s clear that no one performance will be exactly the same each evening- not only dependent on the audience and their reactions but also down to the fact that audiences are encouraged to bring props for the actors to use in each play- changing up the delivery and the outcome of each piece every time! This provides a lot of laughter, not only for the audience but often for those on stage! Props during this evening’s ‘Dare’ range from a tin of Heinz baked beans to a fake, rubber poop! All of the performers must be praised, not only for their character work and scripted sections but also for their improvisation skills whilst dealing with an unknown item being inserted into the play with no prior warning!

‘Dare’ offered up so many laugh out loud moments- highlights being Geraint Rhys Edwards’ as ‘salesperson’ (absolutely hilarious and fantastic comic timing!) and Sara Harris-Davies’ poignant speech at the end of ‘This Time Next Week’- perfectly balanced reflection betwixt the brilliant comedy of the the rest of the piece.

After a slightly longer than usual break (which is a welcome change and chance for the audience to discuss what they have already seen as well as an opportunity to spin the ‘Truth or Dare’ wheel and pick the relevant card- my ‘Truth’ card asks ‘what is your guilty pleasure?!’ What a fun way to introduce some conversation starters to the interval!)

‘Truth’ commences with ‘One Stop Short’ by Alexandria Riley, ‘The Wake’ by Ceri Ashe, ‘Maternity Leave’ by Lucie Lovatt, ‘Bwygan’ by Melangell Dolma and ‘Two Parts Madness, One Part Mayhem’ by Christian Patterson. Where ‘Dare’ provides more laugh out loud moments, ‘Truth’ is more of a balance between sadness, darkness and ridiculousness! We move between themes of loss, bereavement, love and loneliness to the grand finale which certainly lives up to its name and is the icing on the cake! Again, there are lots of stand out moments and performances during ‘Truth’- Mirain Roberts and Lisa Jen Brown as feuding sisters who end up having to recapture a childhood performance from their days in the Eisteddfods at their mother’s wake to Francois Pandolfo as the over-the-top (but not TOO over-the-top!) grieving widow alongside Seren Vickers who just screams Rik Mayall! Again, audience props brought a unique flavour to each play- this time a window squeegee and a toilet roll amongst others!

‘Truth or Dare’ is a wonderfully entertaining evening at the theatre. A unique concept, an extremely talented cast and creative team and filled with moments of contemplation and plenty of giggles!

You can find out more information about the productions and book tickets here

‘Dare’

Cast
Ashley Mejri
Laura Dalgleish
Jake Sawyers
Victoria John
Kieran Bailey
Caitlin Drake
Leilah Hughes
Hefin Wyn
Sara Harris-Davies
Geraint Rhys Edwards

Creative Team
Director – Francesca Goodridge
Associate Director – Daniel Lloyd
Company Stage Manager – Cassey Driver
Deputy Stage Manager – Martha Davies
Prologue Writer – Matthew Bulgo
Set & Costume Designer – Millie Lamkin
Lighting Designer – David Powell
Sound Designer – Ben Morgan
Casting Director – Polly Jerrold
Producer – Jenny Pearce
Production Manager – Jim Davis

‘Truth’

Cast
Francois Pandolfo
Mirain Roberts
Gabin Kongolo
Lisa Jen Brown
Betsan Llwyd
Londiwe Mthembu
Elinor Larsson
Catherine Morris
Oliver Morgan Thomas
Seren Vickers

Creative Team
Director – Hannah Noone
Associate Director – Juliette Manon
Company Stage Manager – Alec Reece
Deputy Stage Manager – Amy Wildgoose
Prologue Writer Matthew Bulgo
Set & Costume Designer – Millie Lamkin
Lighting Designer – David Powell
Sound Designer – Ben Morgan
Casting Director – Polly Jerrold
Producer – Jenny Pearce
Production Manager – Jim Davis