upfront
WARTIME,
WOODLANDS
AND WALES
Rhodri Jones talks to the
poet Owen Sheers about
how the unearthing of a
grave inspired the latest
site-specific production
from National Theatre
Wales. pic: ANDERS
T
o say that Owen Sheers and National
Theatre Wales have some history
would be an understatement. Their last
collaboration, The Passion, not only
garnered rave reviews from critics but it also made
a whole town a theatre, its people and its players.
What strikes me as I speak to Sheers about the
forthcoming Mametz, the latest collaboration
between writer and theatre company, is that the
motivation for the project isn’t merely trying to
recreate a successful formula. There are more
important issues at stake. There are voices to be
heard. Voices we all need to hear.
It’s easy to be swept along by the writer’s enthusiasm
as he speaks about the production, which will be
performed in woodland somewhere near Usk: “When
I took the idea to National Theatre Wales, they didn’t
blink,” he tells me.
Sheers believes that “We’re very very lucky” to have
such a creative company who not only took on board
his ideas but also added to them, a company “who
develop creative spaces, site-specific plays which are
community-based.”
Mametz refers to Mametz Wood, the location where
4,000 Welsh soldiers lost their lives during the first
Battle Of The Somme in World War One. The writer
BUZZ 18
first visited it to research the lives of two Welsh poets
who fought there, Llewelyn Wyn Griffith and David
Jones, a poet who Sheers regards as “up there with
Sassoon and Owen.”
While Sheers was there a grave was discovered
containing a number of soldiers linked arm in arm:
“The image stuck,” he says.
It led to him writing the poem Mametz Wood but the
poem is only a fragment of what inspired and what
comes next is sure to be one of the most talked-about
plays of the year.
Sheers is no stranger to writing about war. His
radio play in verse Pink Mist gives voice to three
soldier friends in Afghanistan and has recently been
nominated for the Welsh Book Of The Year Award. His
play The Two Worlds Of Charlie F used interviews
with veterans as the basis for the production.
When I ask him about his interest in the subject
there i