LoveReading LitFest, the recently launched, digitally native, subscription-based books and literature festival, has partnered with Newport Live – a charitable trust providing cultural and sporting activities in Newport, Wales – to support the launch of the critically-acclaimed debut novel Many Rivers To Cross by Dylan Moore at an exclusive event. The talk will be live on LoveReading LitFest tomorrow.
The author, who is the editor of thewelsh agenda, was interviewed about his new book by Sharif Gemie, with the session filmed at The Riverfront Theatre and Arts Centre, right in the heart of the city centre. Sharif Gemie is a former Professor of History. He mainly researched people on the move, whether refugees (Outcast Europe, 2011), Muslims in Europe (French Muslims, 2010) or hippy travellers (A History of the Hippy Trail, 2017). He lives in Newport and is currently writing a novel set among UN aid-workers in Germany, 1945—46.
Written following a period volunteering at the Sanctuary Project in Newport, and partly based on interviews with asylum seekers and refugees, Many Rivers To Cross traces a series of journeys – migrations across time and space – from the streets of Pillgwenlly, Newport to the ‘Jungle’ camp at Calais, and from Ethiopia to the island of Lampedusa. Described by Welsh novelist, poet and translator Siân Melangell Dafydd as “an essential story for an age of migration”, the novel takes the reader to places most of us have never been, and would never wish to go.
The event also featured contributions from two refugees originally from Ethiopia, now settled in Newport. Biniyam Birtukan talked about how his work as a freelance magazine journalist in Ethiopia became impossible due to issues around freedom of speech, his role in establishing the famous St Michael’s Orthodox Church in the ‘Jungle’ camp at Calais, and the satisfaction he has found working as a healthcare assistant since being granted leave to remain in the UK. Yohannes Obsi talked about his mixed heritage background and how his support for the formerly banned opposition group the Oromo Liberation Front landed him in government detention, from which he escaped to make a dangerous journey through Sudan, Libya, Italy and France to reach the UK.
Paul Blezard, Festival Director at the LoveReading LitFest, said: “Dylan’s powerful new novel does something extraordinary. It takes us beyond the screen images that have filled us with horror and compassion for too long and straight into the hearts, minds, hopes and fears of those who are forced, or choose, to undertake life-risking journeys towards safety and sanctuary. We are so honoured and privileged to host Dylan, Biniyam and Yohannes and to support them through this important event.”
Alan Dear, Head of Theatre, Arts, and Culture at The Riverfront Theatre, Newport Live said: “TheRiverfront is delighted to make this new partnership and as we start on the long journey of Covid-recovery we hope that literature will form a core part of our future programme. We now have the capacity to provide content digitally and hope that this will provide pleasure to our new and current audiences until a time when we can reopen our doors again.”
Many Rivers To Cross by Dylan Mooreis published by local publisher Three Impostors at £10
Hi Kate and Jo, great to meet you, can you give our readers some background information on yourself please?
Kate: I was born in London and spent my early years in Tanzania and Mexico before returning to the UK aged 11 to go to a quaker boarding school in North Yorkshire. After school I trained as a dancer at Thamesdown Contemporary Dance Studios in Swindon and then did a BA in Dance Theatre at Laban, in London. Then I started a feminist dance company called Nomads which ran from 1989 – 1995, doing performance and education work. When the company ended I spent a few years doing all sorts of things, car maintenance courses, creative writing courses, stunt training, delivery driving, caretaking. Then I got a job as a dance lecturer at University of Surrey where I spent 10 years. In 2010 I moved to North Wales to be in the mountains and feed my passion for rock climbing. I got a part-time job at Bangor University as a lecturer in performance. During the 10 years I have spent here, I began my own vertical dance company, Vertical Dance Kate Lawrence (VDKL).
Joanna: I’m an artist from North Wales, I grew up on the coast near Conwy. I left Wales when I was a teenager to study art. I ended up living in the USA, working in a really eclectic range of jobs that included furniture maker, running a market stall, selling pizzas, working in a shoe repair shop, photographer for the US government and then working in the art department of film and theatre productions. In 2001, shortly after September 11th, I got a job as a videographer on a sailing boat doing a global circumnavigation, as part of an pioneering interactive, online education project. That was a turning point that eventually bought me back to Wales and took me into working in documentary, in many different forms.
What got you interested in the arts?
Kate: I come from a family of professional musicians on my father’s side (although my father was an amateur) and my mother is a visual artist and potter so I grew up in an arty environment. I did a lot of dancing alone in my bedroom as a child – the pandemic has reminded me of this as I have returned to my bedroom as a dance studio. I think what I love about the arts is that it is really a way of thinking, a way of being in the world that is centred on experience, expression and communication.
Joanna: I grew up with a parent who had a severe mental illness. In the 80’s in North Wales mental health services were poor to non-existent, both for those with mental illness, and their families. In the arts I found a way to express ideas and connect with others that I hadn’t been able to previously. I specifically credit the generosity of the wonderful artist and teacher Dave Pearson who I met as a young art student, he saw some of the weight I was carrying at that time and encouraged me to tell stories with my work and experiences, and also to find playful ways to get it out into the world.
Kate I believe you are working on a new project called ‘Portrait and Landscape’ its described as “a series of online bi-monthly events for the international vertical dance community and beyond. It was conceived by Wanda Moretti incollaboration with Kate Lawrence and Lindsey Butcher. The series runs bi-monthly until the end of October 2021 “.
For those who may be new to the term what is ‘Vertical Dance’ and how did you come to be involved ?
Kate: Vertical dance is a newish term that refers to dancing in suspension – the dancer is suspended using climbing or access equipment, such as harnesses, ropes and abseil devices. Often this is against a vertical wall (hence the term vertical) which becomes the ‘dance floor’. So it often takes place in public space, on the sides of buildings.
I got involved with vertical dance when I started climbing in the late 1990s – as part of training to be a stunt woman (that never happened!). I found the movement of climbing very similar to dance and when I began teaching at the University of Surrey I asked if I could run a module called vertical dance. That began in 2001 and was the beginning of my development of the practice. I began teaching dancers to climb in the climbing wall and getting them to develop choreography from that and then gradually I introduced suspended dancing. In 2005 I embarked on PhD study into vertical dance and that led me to meet other vertical dance artists from around the world. The first two I met were Wanda Moretti from Venice and UK- based Lindsey Butcher, and we are still working together. I finally finished my PhD in 2017 – it took me a long time because I was working and creating at the same time!
Kate, what is your ambition for Portrait and Landscape?
During the pandemic it has been impossible to do vertical dance practice for me and I spent 2020 doing other things – gardening mostly and some writing – this has been quite a healthy break from a very busy time. This series of events was the brainchild of my colleague Wanda Moretti and she invited Lindsey and I to collaborate with her on running it.
Wanda Moretti
The ambition is to bring international vertical dance artists – and anyone else who might be interested – together at a time when we are all isolated and distanced. The current time is an opportunity to connect across borders and learn about how different artists practice the form and also to keep our artistic minds working! My company, VDKL, has received some funding from Wales Arts International to support this project which means we have offered 3 bursaries to Welsh artists. It also enables us to explore making the series more accessible.
You are both working on a project researching into Dance for people who are blind, this sounds fascinating please tell me more!
Kate: Yes, Jo and I are working on a project called Yn y Golau/In-visible Light, which began in 2016 as a collaboration between myself and photonics scientist Ray Davies – a Synthesis project funded by Pontio.
Pontio
Photonics is the science of light – I didn’t know that until I met Ray. The project developed and in 2019 we did a research and development project funded by ACW with a couple of test performances. Our purpose was to make a show that tried to build accessibility for blind and partially sighted people into the creation process, rather than audio describing a finished product. It was a huge challenge and we were assisted by a visually impaired actor and aerialist, Amelia Cavallo.
Amelia Cavallo
We constantly asked ourselves: what would this experience be like if we couldn’t see? And this led to some new ways of working for me as a choreographer. Sometimes I would close my eyes and listen to the dance… It also reminded me that dance is a kinetic art form not a visual one. Sometimes I think we focus more on shapes we see than movements we feel. We invited blind audiences to the test performances and then interviewed them afterwards to get feedback on how successful our approach was. We then received further funding from ACW to develop a touring show, but the pandemic has made us change our plans. We are now working on a film and we also have some seed funding from Clwstwr to do further research into access for blind and visually impaired people to performance.
Joanna: Kate first asked me to work on Yn Y Golau as a documentary filmmaker. In my work in documentary I’m especially interested in how new technologies can be used in storytelling. In Yn Y Golau I felt there was potential to explore how to share the work in an interactive, non linear way, which might better enable us to think about how to move beyond the screen, and think more deeply about how the embodied experience, that was central to Kate’s live work, can be expressed or shared digitally. There are also a lot of documentary elements in the project, and we are exploring how the project audience can choose which aspects they want to engage with.
Prior to this project did you have any knowledge of areas such as audio description for theatre/dance?
Kate: Yes, I first started thinking about audio description back around 2008 when I was asked to do a workshop at an audio description seminar at University of Surrey. The topic then lay dormant for me for several years, and then in 2016 I was asked by Mari Emlyn to make a piece of work for the foyer of Galeri. It was the year of the centenary of Roald Dahl’s birth and so we made a new story built from the drawings of primary school children of their favourite Roald Dahl characters. The piece was called Omnibus and was performed in the foyer of Galeri with the dancers flying in the space overhead.
We created a bilingual (Welsh and English) recorded audio description alongside the soundscore so that everyone in the audience could hear it. From our current research I know that this is sometimes referred to as ‘open audio description’. The traditional method is that an audio describer is in a booth describing events as they unfold, straight into the ears of the visually impaired person, who wears headphones. Headphones can however be distancing, muffling and isolating so I felt it was important to search for ways in which to make the work with accessibility built in.
Joanna: Absolutely none, and that is really motivating me. When I started looking and learning about it, I am not proud to say, I realised how I had never really considered this aspect in any meaningful way. I know I was also, unfortunately, in a majority.
If a dancer wanted to stay and train in Wales and then pursue a career, what support system would you suggest they require in order to be able to do this?
Kate: I can only speak for North Wales, where it is virtually impossible at present for a dancer to train in the conventional, vocational sense – I think there is more capacity in South Wales, but even there options are limited. To make a career entirely in Wales I think it is necessary to take every opportunity available and to be very self-motivated and resourceful. VDKL employs mainly North Wales based dancers, who I have trained in vertical dance techniques. This is because I want to build a community here, however small it is! The dancers I work with have trained in dance outside Wales and returned. I also want to provide employment opportunities for local artists and persuade them to stick around! My company used to run affordable twice weekly training sessions of 3 hours each but we lost our space in 2017, and now with the pandemic training has become impossible. But we are hopeful for the future – the beauty of vertical dance is that we can go outside! In an ideal world a dancer building a career in Wales needs regular affordable access to dance training sessions and also affordable access to space to dance. A vocational/degree programme would also be very helpful.
Are there any examples of training systems or support networks that exist in other nations that Wales could look to utilise?
Kate: France has a great system of support for artists that pays them whilst they are ‘resting’ between jobs. This gives them time and financial support to continue their training and professional development. Many European countries have arts centres that offer space and residencies for artists. Access to affordable space to practice is essential and it would be great if each region of Wales had dedicated spaces or ‘homes’ for dance. I have been doing daily practice sessions during lockdown with Wainsgate Dances in Hebden Bridge, England and this is an excellent example of an artist-led initiative that has built a community of dancers who are now contributing to the provision of residencies for other artists at the centre.
Joanna: I’ve been very inspired by people who have built their own networks where none exist. I’m part of the Arts Territory Exchange project, it facilitates collaborations in remote locations that are cut off from the networks which usually sustain a creative practice. I think as an artist it’s very important to be part of a community of support, to develop and challenge your work and ideas, and to share skills with others. There are some great DIY examples out there, the Artist Residency in Motherhood set up by Lenka Clayton is another inspirational network
What does Wales do well in dance or cultural training and delivery?
Kate: In my experience support for the arts in Wales is a friendlier affair than my previous experience in London and the South of England. I have found local venue managers and programmers to be great collaborators and the Arts Council of Wales officers are approachable. I think cultural training and delivery in Wales is ‘on a shoestring’; the positive side of this is that it is extremely adaptable and mobile – it has to be due to the geographically dispersed activities. But it needs centres too, and not just in Cardiff. The bizarre thing is that it is quicker to get to London than Cardiff for North Wales dance artists looking for training.
Joanna: In my experience Wales supports it’s creatives well and gets a lot out of small budgets. However there are real impacts currently in relation to access to arts education, and the financial barriers for those who want to study. I feel strongly that this will further negatively impact diversity in the cultural sector. About the centres that Kate mentions, I’d say something about the impact of Covid this last year, there has been more cross Wales collaborative working, in my experience, which is great, but the Cardiff region still has a hegemony in terms of cultural projects, and I’d like to see that be distributed more widely across Wales.
Get the Chance works to support a diverse range of members of the public to access cultural provision. Are you aware of any barriers that creatives in Wales face? If you are what might be done to remove these barriers?
Kate: Well we are working on access for blind and partially sighted audiences. Our research so far is showing that provision for these audiences, particularly for dance, is very limited. A perceived barrier is that it costs of a lot of money to provide access and independent artists/small companies with very limited resources can’t afford to spend extra money; this is also true for the larger companies. I would like to challenge artists to see how they might begin to build accessibility into their work so that it can be appreciated by all. A big barrier for many in rural areas is getting to and from performances, so any schemes that provide transport can be really helpful.
Joanna: To build on my comments above, barriers to access can be many, including financial, but there’s also a lot of potential positive learning from the online way of working that’s been adopted because of Covid. Personally, as a carer and parent of a school age child I’ve been able to take part a lot more, due to events being online. It would be a shame for this to be abandoned when things open up physically, because in my opinion it’s cracked open cultural provision MUCH more widely. I’d like to see ways of live-online access being continued for people who can more easily engage in this way, and supporting people where access to stable internet is an issue.
With the roll out of the Covid-19 vacancies, the arts sector is hopeful audiences will return to venues and theatres. If theatres want to attract audiences what do you think they should do?
Kate: I think first and foremost, theatres need to ensure that they are safe spaces and then market that fact very clearly. Perhaps look at small, socially distanced audiences, and commissioning work for this kind of audience. Working outdoors is a great option for providing safer access to arts and this can then be a draw for people to return to the theatre.
If you were able to fund an area of the arts in Wales what would this be and why?
Kate: Dance of course! I think dance is always the Cinderella of the arts and tends to receive less subsidy. We all have bodies – we all move – and our physical and mental well being can be enhanced through dancing. I would love to see the creation of small dance centres around the country so that local artists and the community in general have somewhere to meet and dance. They don’t have to be for dance exclusively, but should provide the space necessary for dance – and rigging points for vertical dance of course.
Joanna: Really good interdisciplinary arts education. The studio based art college system that supported so much groundbreaking creative work across the UK has been decimated. Artists are great problem solvers, and skills in the arts are widely transferable.
What excites you about the arts in Wales?
Kate: I love the maverick nature of the arts in Wales. People are making work in the most surprising places and this gives rise to exciting new techniques and approaches.
Joanna: It’s collaborative & supportive, there’s some great, innovative work happening in cross disciplinary settings. The arts in Wales is embedded into our culture in quite a unique way, the Urdd does amazing work with children and young people. There were 12000 creative works across music, dance, spoken word and visual arts made by children who entered the online Eisteddfod T this year for example- That’s amazing!
What was the last really great thing that you experienced that you would like to share with our readers?
Kate: In our last Portrait and Landscape event San Francisco based choreographer Jo Kreiter shared with us her project called ‘The Decarceration Trilogy’ a long term project looking at the US prison system and its effects on citizens. It was a really moving and inspiring offering to our community and a great example of the power of dance and the arts in general as a tool for examining issues of social justice. Here is a clip of Jo talking about her work in general
and here is a link to a film of The Wait Room that she showed during our event:
Joanna: I am currently a research fellow at the Open Documentary Lab, MIT where I recently saw a presentation of Hatsumi VR It is an amazing project in development that uses virtual reality to allow participants to visually express experiences of pain, emotion and sensory experience in audio visual body maps.
With less to do during lock-down, Simon Kensdale has been resorting to the BBC i Player. He has noticed how many broadcast crime series consisting of murder enquiries. Some are truly horrific, like The Serpent, in the sense of being both true and frightening. It has made him wonder if there is a danger of TV audiences gradually becoming desensitised to violence. Simon explores these areas in the article below.
There is a secondary story in The Serpent about Herman Knippenberg. He’s a Dutch diplomat obsessed with tracking the killer – Sobhraj – down and his meticulous record-keeping finally results in success. His obsession costs him his marriage and threatens his career prospects. He’s odd, too, keeping boxes of paperwork with him wherever he goes, rather than throwing anything away. But at least Knippenberg’s activities are normal – ish. In following the series, through him we see a bit more of humanity than that of a unique, psychopathic killer who gets off on drugging and murdering young travellers in the Far East.
Knippenberg’s behaviour makes him similar to the average TV detective. We can almost predict – as yet another crime series kicks off with yet another discovery of the body of a dead woman – that there will be someone on the case who can’t let go and who also cannot maintain a private life. The detective will be divorced or uncommitted to a relationship. Recently several detectives have been shown on TV as also having problematic relationships with their daughters. Ironically, in The Investigation – the true story of a particularly bizarre Danish murder, committed on a privately-owned submarine – it turned out that the Head of Homicide really had been alienated from his adult daughter.
The Investigation
What seems to happen in all these series is that the main thrust of the narrative – the need to apprehend a killer – is cross-cut with ‘everyday’ human drama. The lives of the detectives and the supporting cast of police officers are presented as if they are representative of the wider community. I rather doubt that the professional upholders of law and order are as interesting as the TV companies make them appear to be, or even as interesting as Knippenberg, but I admit that this could be a personal bias. In any case, their personal dramas are never meant to be as important as the main story line. It’s as if no-one believes there’s any serious drama going on in human situations anywhere that does not involve a killing – or three, or nine. Everything that is not murder is soap.
But murder is rare in European societies. It is a comparatively easy crime to solve, as there is usually a connection between the murderer and his victim. Of course, recently the police clear-up capability has been speeded up by the information processing of computers and by the scientific advances which make DNA recordable, storable and traceable. The police can also monitor mobile phone usage and draw on the massive amounts of film footage accumulated by security cameras. But where there is no connection between victim and killer – as in the case of Sobhraj – or where there has been a professional ‘hit’ – the police are still ineffectual. They often have to wait for the killer to make a mistake – as in they did in the case of the Yorkshire Ripper – before they can solve the case.
The fact that you and I know about these new developments is an indication of how many crime series we have swallowed down whole. We could almost all now write one ourselves. You open with a shocking and mysterious death, preferably in an unusual setting; you introduce in a handful of ‘interesting’ characters and some back story. When you feel the tension level flagging, you throw in some more bodies, as if adding fuel to the fire. (You needn’t concern yourself with the fact that with murders more is actually less, since the audience can’t keep on meting out its sympathy and will get emotionally confused as the body count increases, forgetting who got killed first.) You can enrich your material with a red herring or an unexpected clue and you must include a chase, on foot or using cars. You might even put in some comic relief before you wrap it everything up with a dangerous, ‘dramatic’ confrontation with the murderer. The over familiar narrative process is meant to reassure everyone that, however bad things appear to be, truth will out and justice will be delivered.
More than exciting an interest in the nastier side of life and the worst forms of human behaviour, I think there is a problem with this narrative form. Seeking to reassure a mass audience with a basic fantasy is a form of brainwashing. We are seduced into abandoning our rational awareness that murder enquiries are nothing like as tense and interesting as the way they are presented (The Investigation is an exception to this rule) because of the real time they take and because of the dull routine of the work involved.
More importantly, few of us live the experience of confronting a problem which gets solved, allowing us to we live happily ever after. Instead of having one large and horrific issue to grapple with we have innumerable minor difficulties that most of the time add up to make our life either frustrating or frightening. We know this situation is never going to change, that nothing we can do will make any difference and that nobody is coming to help. If we are not actually the victim in an unsensational case, we will be like the junior police officer expected to solve a crime with access to limited information and having no authority, struggling with a mountain of bureaucracy, against a background of incompetent management and competitive colleagues. Our family life may not be any more straightforward than our work life. It will be banal but it will consist of more than a communication difficulty with a daughter.
Given this reality, in my opinion what we need from the purveyors of fiction, is a constructive reflection on our circumstance – an experience exploring the outlines of the predicament we find ourselves in. This should be done in a way that is not escapism disguised as realism. The proliferation of crime dramas based on murder stories suggests that TV as a medium, despite the talent and intelligence of the people working within it and despite the quite astonishing technical facilities available to them nowadays, is not able to offer this kind of creative reflection. Maybe I am expecting too much from what can only ever be light entertainment. If I want the kind of imaginative experience I am defining, perhaps I have to read novels or go to the theatre.
I did appreciate the ingenuity of The Serpent, in particular the way the timing of the action moved backwards and forwards. I was suitably appalled by what Sobhraj did, although he was presented as being so perpetually cool and self-controlled that he seemed quite dull. Little space was given to exploring his capacity to be so charming and desirable that his partner and indeed his ex-wife both found him irresistible, despite their knowledge of what he was capable of. For me, the really interesting questions surrounding Sobhraj remains not what he did or how he got away with it, so much as why he did it and why others helped him.
Otherwise I thought the acting in the series was of a good standard – although Tim McInnerny hammed it up as a Belgian. The dialogue was credible and moved the plot on even if it didn’t say much about Sobhraj’s motivation. Since the series draws on a true story for its outline it only required the details to be coloured in carefully. The impressive settings for the action in Thailand, India, Nepal and Paris were like pages from a holiday brochure.
Tim McInnerny
Would a closer focus on Sobhraj have demanded too much of us? It would have required us to sit and pay attention and respond to words and phrases in conversations and note small gestures and aspects of behaviour in the way we do in front of a live performance. We would not have been able to just get up and go and make a sandwich or look at our texts or carry on with the ironing. We might, though, have been truly moved by what we were watching. We wouldn’t have wanted to either pause an episode or wait until next week for the sequel. The story would have possessed us.
Numerous people have said they ‘loved’ The Serpent. Personally, whilst I might admit to loving plays by Shakespeare and Moliere, or novels by Dickens and Tolstoy, I can only say the series temporarily distracted me whilst my options of doing anything else other than watching TV were limited by lockdown. Despite its expensive ingenuity it did not tell me anything new about the human condition and it did not give me that sensation of excitement that engagement with a work of art provides.
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The recent S4C series Fflam was a slow-burner. I came to it with much intrigue and anticipation given the concept and acting talent. The idea of a woman, Noni, seeing her dead husband, Tim, again, after years believing he had died in a fire, sounded like the perfect spark from which to ignite a gripping narrative. The fact that Gwyneth Keyworth (Bang, Craith/Hidden) and Richard Harrington (Hinterland, Poldark) played the lead roles only served to excite and offer high expectations. So it was with sadness and disappointment that I found myself ultimately underwhelmed by its delivery. It did manage to strike a few matches throughout its six, half-hour episodes. However, these failed to set alight a series that was full of promise but low on satisfaction.
The performance of Keyworth was central to giving the drama a certain kudos that it may otherwise have lacked. Her ability to convey Noni’s internal emotions onscreen was akin to that of Eve Myles in Keeping Faith. The difference here though was the oft understated way that Keyworth did this. She demonstrated the conflict between grief and passion going on inside through very subtle expression which, nevertheless, with help from the camera and editing suite, was full of depth. Her appearances alongside Richard Harrington, particularly those in a restaurant over dinner, provided some of the most enjoyable scenes of the series. The gentle charisma that Harrington brought to his mysterious character, opposite the romantic infatuation that Keyworth successfully tempered as Noni, helped create a sense of ease. It led to a free-flowing script that meant their conversations appeared natural onscreen. These moments became absorbing as a result, giving some required fizz to a drama that, outside of them, felt a bit flat and unengaging.
I wonder whether the drama would have benefitted from having a more compressed narrative in which its central premise was played with a lot sooner and the final twist in the series was incorporated a lot earlier. This would have contributed to the retention of dramatic tension that, instead, bubbles up and then peters out at several points throughout the series. It is not helped by the fact that the characters of Deniz (Memet Ali Alabora), Ekin (Pinar Ögün), and Malan (Mali Ann Rees) were underserved by a subplot that lacked the same level of emotional investment as the main thread. And even in respect of the lead characters’ encounters, the pull-and-push of their developing relationship, though understandable in capturing Noni’s reticence, became increasingly frustrating. It simply took too long to progress, with the undesired effect being that, at points, the series felt like it was playing for time. By the time the revelations started to come out in episode five, they did not elicit the same degree of interest as they might otherwise have done had the narrative been pacier. As such, Fflam would have benefitted from an adaptation that condensed its source material into much more flavoursome half-hour chunks than we get here.
Overall then, Fflam has plenty of plus points to prevent it from being a damp squib even as it fails to set fire to the landscape of Welsh television drama. It is refreshing to see an image of Wales that is multicultural and inclusive played out onscreen, even if the presence of diverse characters only serve to circulate around a central narrative in which they play a limited part. Gwyneth Keyworth cements her status as one of Wales’ most exciting and talented screen actresses, with Richard Harrington and Mali Ann Rees again proving solid and reliable actors in their own right. If a second series is forthcoming, as expected, then Fflam has plenty of room for improvement. But it also still retains enough unrealised potential to warrant another chance.
To exist, socially, at this moment in time, we have to live online, disembodied and digitized, encased within the four corners of a Zoom call. Siloed away, with nowhere to go and no-one to see, it’s unsurprising that we’ve looked to social media as a sanctuary; a digital lifeboat in a shared storm. But while it might give the illusion of solidarity, it can also make you feel the most alone you’ve ever felt in your life, and the gulf between the digital self and the ‘real’ grows wider with every like, comment, and subscribe.
It’s a duality that Theatr Clwyd’s clever and inventive adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray revels in. Directed by Tamara Harvey and written by Henry Filloux-Bennett, this online play is an ambitious co-production between Theatr Clwyd, Barn Theatre, Lawrence Batley Theatre, New Wolsey Theatre and Oxford Playhouse, and features a star-studded cast including Russell Tovey, Alfred Enoch, Joanna Lumley and Stephen Fry (whose very appearance is something of an easter egg).
Not only does this version update Dorian Gray for the Instagram age, it sets most of the action in 2020 when its characters (and cast), like the rest of us, were in self-isolation. Sleekly made and brilliantly performed, it plays out in a series of FaceTimes, YouTube videos, Insta Stories, and interviews with the surviving characters. It’s an incredibly involving piece in the same vein as other internet-set mysteries like Catfish, Searching, and Unfriended, but with the kind of quality that you only find in a truly excellent piece of theatre.
This Dorian (Fionn Whitehead) starts out as a sweetly naïve English lit undergrad trying to make it big on YouTube, aided by his rakish BFF Harry Wotton (Enoch), family friend Lady Narborough (Lumley), and besotted benefactor Basil Hallward (Tovey). Basil, a closeted programmer who’s made little effort to conceal his feelings for Dorian, plies him with gifts – clothes, mobile data, a smart phone – and offers him a very special filter that will ensure his pictures will remain ever flawless and ageless: “a perfect digital Dorian”. There’s no catch, because the price is something that carries little currency in the digital age: your soul.
Filters give the illusion of perfection. They are insidious because they are invisible, and they make you feel as if being beautiful and happy and successful is natural for everyone in the world but you. Uploading a selfie to the digital panopticon takes deliberation, intent, and often deceit: the background, the lighting, the clothes, the hair and makeup, the filter – even the most spontaneous looking snap is a meticulously oiled machine. As Basil says, we spend our lives comparing ourselves to everyone else’s highlights. The greatest trick the influencers ever pulled was convincing the world that they woke up like this.
In many ways, the amorphous, abstract identity of social media is embodied by Basil himself, who becomes both the painter and the canvas. Basil, who we rarely see ‘in the flesh’, is simultaneously omniscient and insidious. Tovey, one of the finest actors working today, is characteristically magnificent here – but I’m not sure how I feel about Basil, rather than Harry, being Dorian’s tempter. In the novel, Basil didn’t want Dorian’s soul, he wanted his heart. But, perhaps, in order to translate the essence of the story, it’s necessary to share some of Harry’s original menace with Basil, turning the sombre, soulful painter of Wilde’s original into a low-key Svengali.
The mechanism of the Faustian bargain is reversed here too – the painting in the novel preserved Dorian at his peak, and grew more decrepit as his sins accrued, but here the filter enhances Dorian’s onscreen beauty while his flesh rots in the real world. The visual effects marking Dorian’s physical decline are brilliant and subtle – I truly couldn’t tell whether it was makeup or CGI – and Whitehead’s transformation into a Sargon of Akkad or Onision-esque shock jock is genuinely unsettling (the moment where he starts glitching between his two faces was particularly eerie). What’s less convincing however is his success as a social media influencer.
‘What if Joe Sugg became Jake Paul?’ That’s seemingly the question posed by the play, and we’re told from the outset that wherever Dorian goes, he charms the world – but that’s simply not the impression we get from the sweet, sensitive, introvert presented here. And his rapid rise to fame never fully convinces, because while his clothes get progressively fancier, his manner, home studio set-up, and even the editing style never rings true (the fairy lights on his shelf were a nice touch, though). Emma McDonald’s Sibyl Vane is far more authentic: McDonald captures Sibyl’s kindness and her fragility, and she really nails the Insta aesthetic right down to the dreamy line delivery and the flower crowns.
Sibyl tragically falls prey to the toxic celebrity culture normalized by Harry (Enoch), rebranded here as a louche Made in Chelsea-esque socialite who lives the decadent lifestyle of a reality star. Enoch gives easily the most entertaining performance in the play, not to mention the most authentic interpretation of his literary counterpart, sprawled across a velvet chaise-lounge and elegantly sassing the ‘incessant’ barrage of theatre livestreams in #Lockdown1 like a latter-day Contrapoints.
His scenes with Whitehead and Tovey are mesmeric; Filloux-Bennett transforms the subtextual queer yearning underscoring the novel into text, and even separated by a screen, a Wi-Fi connection, and who knows how many miles, the chemistry between the central trio is off the charts. Wilde once confessed that he could ‘resist everything except temptation’. Social media is a creature of temptation, luring you in with a clickbait headline or an exclusive tell-all. It promises everything and gives nothing. It can facilitate cruelty without conscience or consequence and lives have been ruined, lost and taken. And none of us can say it’s not our fault: responsibility is fragmented between everyone who takes part in and enables this vicious culture of competition.
Lumley, sublime as always, delivers a monologue on how social media is ‘viral’ in every sense of the word: a poisonous contagion that’s infected the whole world. But just as The Picture of Dorian Gray showcases the internet’s ugliness, it also illustrates its beauty: its ability to connect people from across the globe in the shared experience of storytelling. Far from the isolating spiral of the doom scroll, this production illustrates the joy of collaboration, of creativity, and of art persevering in the darkest of times.
The Picture Of Dorian Gray | Theatr Clwyd is streaming online until Wed 31 March. Tickets are £12 each (one per household) including a digital programme and 48 hour access that allows for flexible viewing.
In this latest interview, Get the Chance member Gareth Williams chats to actor and director Eleri B. Jones.
Eleri is a graduate of the University of Manchester and Drama Centre London. She is currently undertaking a traineeship with Theatr Clwyd as an Assistant Director.
Here, she talks to us about the traineeship; her involvement in Clwyd’s latest production, The Picture of Dorian Gray; a collaborative project with the North East Wales archives*; and representation and the arts in Wales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz2_z9fvnKA
To find out more about The Picture of Dorian Gray, including how to purchase tickets, click here.
*Below is one of four videos produced by Theatr Clwyd in collaboration with the North East Wales Archives as part of the project ‘Women Rediscovered…’. To watch them all, click here to access their YouTube channel.
Get the Chance supports volunteer critics like Gareth to access a world of cultural provision. We receive no ongoing, external funding. If you can support our work please donate here thanks.
This year has been the year of the audio. Scratchworks Theatre Company have brought their original stage play, written by Jack Dean to an audio tale with accompanied Science experiments for children.
Combined in a couple of audio sections, Faina and The Snow Beast features the tale of an Orphan, Faina, who dreams of becoming a scientists. Raised by the owl who found her abandoned, Maud, who believes in the magical and extraordinary, the two, with the help of Faina’s mother’s journal, undertake the most exciting adventure full of trials and tribulations to find The Snow Beast.
The story is very easy to get into. Able to download, you can dip and dive into the story whenever you want to. With the talented voices of Scratchworks, a range of different character’s are animated within our consciousness with the use of accents and skillful voice acting, evoking images and fueling our imaginations of the character’s and their adventure.
Known for their brilliant voices and musical styling, Scratchworks bring in magical yet homely and folk like music to accompany the story, making the atmosphere and the story feel sensational, with a Disney-like quality to the story in drumming up visions of the adventure.
Punctuated with their science pack, children are able to listen to the story and are encouraged and inspired to follow Scratchworks and make their own scientific experiments. The story highlights that science and the extraordinary are not necessarily different to one another. Maud states something along the lines of why should you only have the choice of belief in science or of the magical and unusual. By bringing the two together in a theatrical story telling and with science to attempt, children and adults alike can enjoy the magic of science and stories.
Faina and The Snow Beast aims itself at children, but adults are also fully taken away to far away lands, flying in hot air balloons and feeling the blizzardy atmosphere The Snow Beast creates. A joyous and sensational story.
Comisiynu graddedigion celfyddydau diweddar a chyn-aelodau Theatr Mess Up The Mess i gydweithio â phobl ifanc er mwyn creu gwaith gyda Chanolfan Celfyddydau Pontardawe i’w rannu’n ddigidol
Mae Canolfan Celfyddydau Pontardawe wedi comisiynu Mess Up The Mess i gydweithio â thri gweithiwr llawrydd sydd wedi graddio’n ddiweddar ac sy’n artistiaid sy’n prysur wneud enw iddynt eu hunain, er mwyn cefnogi datblygiad eu harfer cyfranogol a’u gwaith creadigol eu hunain. Yr artistiaid sy’n amlygu yw Cerian Wilshere-Davies, Callum Bruce-Phillips a Ciaran Fitzgerald, pob un yn gyn-aelodau o Gwmni Theatr Mess up the Mess.
Bu’r artistiaid yn gweithio gyda grwpiau o bobl ifanc er mis Ionawr 2021 ac maen nhw’n paratoi ar gyfer noson o rannu digidol, lle byddan nhw’n rhannu’r gwaith maen nhw wedi bod yn ei greu. Bydd Cartref / Home ar gael i’w wylio ar-lein ar 25 Mawrth am 7pm.
Mae Mess Up The Mess yn arbennig o gyffrous ynghylch gweithio ochr yn ochr â’r artistiaid ifainc hyn, gan eu bod nhw wedi bod yn aelodau er yn 12-14 oed ac wedi bod ar siwrnai o 10 mlynedd a mwy gyda’r cwmni.
Mae’r Prosiect – Cartref / Home yn archwiliothema ‘cartref’ a defnyddio comedi i gael hwyl gartref. Bu’r artistiaid a’r bobl ifanc yn creu eu mannau ffantasi eu hunain sy’n gwneud iddyn nhw deimlo’n hapus, yn ddwl, yn anturus neu’n ddiogel. Bu’r grwpiau’n archwilio ffantasi, chwedlau a’r mannau a’r bydoedd yr ydym yn eu dewis yn gartref, ac yn paratoi i rannu’r gwaith maen nhw wedi bod yn ei greu ar-lein.
Maen nhw wedi holi cwestiynau fel – pa dirweddau, gwrthrychau a chymeriadau fyddech chi’n hoffi eu rhithio yn eich lle chi? Pa fath o amgylchedd sy’n gwneud i chi deimlo’n gyffrous? Ym mha fath o amgylchedd ydych chi eisiau chwarae neu fod yn ddwl? Efallai mai natur yw’ch amgylchedd chi, lle gyda llawer o greaduriaid a phobl neu efallai man dan do yn arbennig ar eich cyfer chi. Efallai bod y mannau hyn yn heddychlon ac yn dawel neu efallai eu bod yn rhywle sy’n ddoniol iawn i chi.
Mae Callum Bruce-Phillips wedi ennill gradd mewn Astudiaethau Ffilm a Theledu/Llenyddiaeth Saesneg o Brifysgol Aberystwyth ac ar hyn o bryd mae’n gweithio tuag at ei radd MA mewn Cynhyrchu Ffilm. Mae Ciaran Fitzgerald yn awdur ac yn hwylusydd o Bort Talbot. Ysgrifennodd ei ddrama gyntaf yn 2013 i Mess Up The Mess, ac nid ydyw wedi edrych nôl. Yn 2019 graddiodd o Brifysgol De Cymru yng Nghaerdydd gyda BA mewn Sgriptio. Mae Cerian Wilshere-Davies yn hwylusydd, yn wneuthurwr theatr ac yn gomedïwraig, a graddiodd o Brifysgol Salford y ddiweddar.
Mae’r artistiaid yn hwyluso ac yn arwain datblygiad gwaith y bobl ifanc eu hunain, ochr yn ochr â chreu eu gwaith eu hunain. Cyfarwyddwr Artistig Mess up the Mess, Sarah Jones, sydd wedi bod yn mentora’r tîm. Roedd y comisiwn yn cynnwys dosbarthiadau meistr mewn meysydd sy’n gysylltiedig â’r prosiect creadigol; gweithio’n ddwyieithog gyda Bethan Marlow, gwneud ffilmiau mewn ffordd gyfranogol gyda Tom Barrance a dulliau cynhwysol o greu celf ddigidol gyda Taking Flight.
Meddai Ciaran Fitzgerald am y dosbarthiadau meistr;
“Roedd ein gweithdai gyda Tom Barrance bendant wedi cynyddu fy hyder yn gwneud ffilmiau byr. O’n i ddim wedi gwneud llawer o olygu fideos o’r blaen, a gydag arweiniad Tom dwi’n bles iawn gyda beth ‘nes i gynhyrchu, a fyddai bendant yn ei ychwanegu i fy ymarfer yn y dyfodol. Ar ôl ein sesiwn gyda Bethan Marlow, teimlais fod y rhwystrau i weithio’n ddwyieithog wedi cael eu chwalu. Roedd Bethan wedi neud yr holl gyd-destun yn gynhwysol iawn, ac wedi cyflwyno strategaethau defnyddiol iawn bydda i bendant yn eu defnyddio yn fy ymarfer yn y dyfodol. Roedd gweithdy Taking Flight ar sail cynhwysiant yn ddefnyddiol ac yn bleserus iawn. Dwi’n meddwl ‘naeth Elise a Steph atgyfnerthu pethau o’n i eisoes yn gwybod, ond hefyd ‘nes i ddysgu pethau newydd am gynhwysiant yn y celfyddydau, a hefyd falle herio rhai o’n canfyddiadau i. Dwi bendant isho gweithredu BSL a Sain Ddisgrifiad yn fy ngwaith yn y dyfodol.
Meddai Sarah Jones, Cyfarwyddwr Artistig Mess Up The Mess:
“Rydyn ni’n gyffrous iawn ynghylch y prosiect hwn am gymaint o resymau, gan gynnwys y cyfle i gomisiynu artistiaid sydd wedi dod trwy Mess Up The Mess. Dw i’n cofio cwrdd â phob un o’r artistiaid hyn a dw i wedi cael y fraint o ddysgu a chydweithio ochr yn ochr â nhw dros y ddeng mlynedd ddiwethaf. Rydyn ni’n aruthrol o ddiolchgar i Ganolfan Celfyddydau Pontardawe am y cyfle i barhau i gydweithio ar lefel broffesiynol gyda nhw i’w galluogi i fynd ar drywydd eu hymarfer ar adeg mor anodd i’r celfyddydau ac i bobl ifanc. Maen nhw’n bobl greadigol neilltuol sy’n llawn ysbrydoliaeth ac mae ganddynt y pŵer i ysbrydoli ac i ddatblygu lle diogel a lle sy’n meithrin ar gyfer ein cyfranogwyr ifanc er mwyn creu gwaith newydd a gofalu am eu llesiant.”
Mae Cerian yn hwylusydd, yn wneuthurwr theatr ac yn gomedïwraig, ac mae wedi graddio’n ddiweddar o Brifysgol Salford gyda gradd dosbarth 1af mewn Ysgrifennu a Pherfformio Comedi. Mae gan Cerian ddiddordeb mewn creu gwaith sy’n canolbwyntio ar dreftadaeth Cymru a mynegi hunaniaeth.
Callum Bruce-Phillips
Mae Callum wedi graddio o Brifysgol Aberystwyth gyda gradd mewn Astudiaethau Ffilm a Theledu/Llenyddiaeth Saesneg, ac ar hyn o bryd mae’n gweithio tuag at ei radd MA mewn Cynhyrchu Ffilm. Yn ystod ei radd israddedig, gweithiodd Callum gyda Chanolfan Ehangu Cyfranogiad, Cydraddoldeb a Chynhwysiant Cymdeithasol y Brifysgol, lle bu’n gweithio gyda phobl ifanc a phobl hyglwyf o gefndiroedd gwahanol sydd wedi eu tangynrychioli. Mae’r profiad hwn wedi ysbrydoli Callum i ddilyn gyrfa fel gwneuthurwr ffilmiau cymunedol sy’n canolbwyntio ar ehangu mynediad yn y diwydiant ffilm i grwpiau sy’n cael eu tangynrychioli ar hyn o bryd.
Ciaran Fitzgerald
Awdur a hwylusydd o Bort Talbot yw Ciaran. Ysgrifennodd ei ddrama gyntaf yn 2013 i Mess Up The Mess, ac nid ydyw wedi edrych nôl. Yn 2019 graddiodd o Brifysgol De Cymru yng Nghaerdydd gyda gradd BA mewn Sgriptio, ac ar hyn o bryd mae’n datblygu’r ddrama gyntaf i gael ei chomisiynu ganddo, sef ‘Chasing Rainbows’ gyda Chanolfan Celfyddydau Pontardawe. Mae gan Ciaran ddiddordeb mewn datblygu gwaith â chymeriadau cryf wrth ei galon, sydd wedi ei anelu’n benodol at bobl ifanc. Ag yntau’n siaradwr Cymraeg rhugl mae hunaniaeth yn agwedd allweddol ar y gwaith y mae’n ei greu, ynghyd ag egwyddorion allweddol mynediad a chynhwysiant.
Recent arts graduates and alumni of Mess Up The Mess Theatre commissioned to collaborate with young people to create digital sharing with Pontardawe Art Centre
Mess Up The Mess have been commissioned by Pontardawe Art Centre to collaborate with three recent graduate freelancers and emerging artists to support the development of both their participatory practice and own creative work. The emerging artists are Cerian Wilshere-Davies, Callum Bruce-Phillips and Ciaran Fitzgerald, all alumni of Mess up the Mess Theatre Company.
The artists have been working with groups of young people since January 2021 and are preparing for an evening of digital sharing of the work they have been creating. Cartref / Home will be available to watch online on 25th March at 7pm.
Mess Up The Mess are particularly excited about working alongside these young artists as they have all been members since they were 12-14 years old and have been on a journey of 10+ years with the company.
The Project – Cartref / Home explores the theme of home and using comedy to have fun at home. The artists and young people have been creating their own fantasy spaces that make them feel happy, silly, adventurous or safe. Exploring fantasy, folklore and the spaces and worlds we choose to make home, the groups have been getting ready to share the work they’ve been creating online.
Asking questions like – what landscapes, objects and characters would you like to imagine up in your space? What kind of environment makes you excited? What kind of environment do you want to play or be silly in? Maybe it’s in nature, in a space with lots of other creatures and people or maybe it’s an indoor space that is just for you. These spaces might be calm and quiet, or they might be somewhere that you find really funny.
Callum Bruce-Phillips is a Film & TV Studies/English Literature graduate from Aberystwyth University and is currently working towards his MA in Film Producing. Ciaran Fitzgerald is a writer and facilitator from Port Talbot. He wrote his first play in 2013 for Mess Up The Mess, and hasn’t looked back. In 2019 he graduated from the BA Scriptwriting degree at the University of South Wales in Cardiff. Cerian Wilshere-Davies is a facilitator, theatre maker and comedian, recently graduated from the University of Salford.
The artists are facilitating and guiding the development of the young people’s own work, alongside creating their own. Mess up the Mess Artistic Director Sarah Jones has been mentoring the team. The commission has included masterclasses in areas linked to the creative project; working bilingually with Bethan Marlow, participatory film makingwith Tom Barrance and inclusive approaches to making digital art with Taking Flight.
Ciaran Fitzgerald said of the masterclasses;
“Our workshops with Tom Barrance definitely increased my confidence in terms of filmmaking. I hadn’t done much video editing previously and with Tom’s guidance I’m really pleased with what I produced, and will definitely add it to my practice in the future. After our session with Bethan Marlow, I felt that the barriers to working bilingually had been broken down. Bethan made the whole concept really inclusive and introduced some really useful strategies that I will definitely be using in my future practice. Taking Flight’s workshop on inclusion was really useful and enjoyable. It was really good to have a refresh on things that I already knew, but also to learn new things about accessibility in the arts, and perhaps challenge some preconceptions I had. I definitely want to implement BSL and Audio Description creatively into my work in the future.”
Sarah Jones, Artistic Director of Mess Up The Mess said:
“We are excited about this project for so many reasons including the opportunity to commission artists who have come through Mess Up The Mess. I remember meeting each of these artists and have been honoured to learn and collaborate alongside them over the last 10 years. We are hugely grateful to Pontardawe Art Centre for the opportunity to continue a professional collaboration with them and enable them to pursue their practice at such a difficult time for the arts and young people. They are exceptional and inspiring creatives who have the power to inspire and develop a safe and nurturing place for our current young participants to make new work and look after their wellbeing.”
Cerian is a facilitator, theatre maker and comedian, recently graduated from the University of Salford with have a 1st class degree in Comedy Writing and Performance. Cerian is interested in creating work that focuses on Welsh heritage and expression of identity.
Callum Bruce-Phillips
Callum is a Film & TV Studies/English Literature graduate from Aberystwyth University and is currently working towards his MA in Film Producing. During his undergraduate degree Callum worked with the University’s Centre for Widening Participation, Equality and Social Inclusion, where he worked with young and vulnerable people from different underrepresented backgrounds. This experience has inspired Callum to pursue a career as a community film maker, whose focus is widening access within the film industry, to groups currently underrepresented.
Ciaran Fitzgerald
Ciaran is a writer and facilitator from Port Talbot. He wrote his first play in 2013 for Mess Up The Mess, and hasn’t looked back. In 2019 he graduated from the BA Scriptwriting degree at the University of South Wales in Cardiff, and is currently developing his first commissioned play ‘Chasing Rainbows’ with Pontardawe Arts Centre. Ciaran is interested in developing work with strong characters at its heart, particularly aimed at young people. Being a fluent Welsh speaker, identity is a key aspect of the work he makes, along with key principles of access and inclusivity.
This year for International Women’s Day (IWD), The Riverfront Theatre & Arts Centre in Newport take their International Women’s Day celebrations online with a programme of events taking place on social media throughout the day on Monday 8th March.
As the theatre is unable to open due to government guidelines, The Riverfront have taken the decision to still celebrate International Women’s Day in these challenging times and showcase a range of wonderful activities that can be joined and enjoyed from home. The theme for IWD 2021 is Choose to Challenge, as a challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change.
Community Arts Development Officer and International Women’s Day co-ordinator Sally-Anne Evans comments ‘It’s fantastic to be working on International Women’s Day again this year as it is always a great opportunity to come together and celebrate. This year we want to highlight the amazing creativity in our communities, and we are sharing our event virtually with some amazing activities both on the day and throughout the following week.
We are focussing on our female artists, musicians and makers to share their work, as well as offering links to activities and workshops run by other groups and partners. A lot has happened in a year, but it feels good to be able to provide a platform for people to share and celebrate together. More than ever it feels like we need it.’
Throughout the day there will be a range of activities taking place from fitness to writing, crafts to music, dance to reflection. There will be the opportunity to dance along to the IWD 2020 Zumba routine choreographed by Newport Live instructor Mandy Knight and her Thursday morning FitSteps class, and there will be a live low intensity Functional Flow fitness class hosted by Newport Live instructor Erin.
Performance piece ‘Tripping Through Newport’s Underbelly’ which was devised and performed by Marega Palser will also be showcased. This BOSCH Observation piece is a journey through underpasses, subways and some of Newport’s in between zones that people move through rather than stay in. Spaces that are home for some, dumping grounds for others.
Digital events hosted by IWD partners will be showcased including a Therapeutic writing workshop, an IWD pub quiz and an informative talk and interactive singalong on the hymn ‘The March of the Women.’ The Riverfront also encourages you to take some time and think about what you Choose to Challenge this year, whether that’s calling out gender bias or inequity, celebrate women’s achievements or making a change in your own life to help create an inclusive world. Share how you #ChooseToChallenge on social media.
The Riverfront’s International Women’s Day celebrations will end at 7pm with a pre-recorded bilingual musical set featuring opera director and creative producer Rhian Hutchings performing alongside multi-instrumentalist and singer Stacey Blythe.
On Saturday 13th March The Riverfront is partnering with the Kotatsu Japanese Animation Festival to support the WOW Film Festival Women’s Film Club event Kotatsu Shorts: Women Make Animation. This free event will screen a hand-picked selection of animated shorts made by up-and-coming female animators working in Japan that are suitable for all ages. The ticket for this event will also include access to a live creative workshop on Zoom with Japanese animator and illustrator Chie Arai showing you how to draw a girl in a kimono.
In the weeks following International Women’s Day the Riverfront will also be showcasing inspirational female artists, organisations and groups within our creative communities across social media, including an exclusive performance from Aleighcia Scott. If you would like to be featured contact sally-anne.evans@newportlive.co.uk sharing your work and let us know why IWD is important to you and what you would #ChooseToChallenge.
To keep up to date with The Riverfront’s program of events for International Women’s Day follow them on social media, Facebook.com/ TheRiverfront or visit newportlive.co.uk/IWD.
Creating opportunities for a diverse range of people to experience and respond to sport, arts, culture and live events. / Lleisiau amrywiol o Gymru yn ymateb i'r celfyddydau a digwyddiadau byw
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