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From
Making it New, a profile of playwright Ed
Thomas
by Heike Roms, Planet 125:
When The Observer recently invited Welsh writer and
theatre director Ed Thomas to comment on the prospects of
devolution for his country, the author responded by hailing
the dawn of a new Wales: "Old Wales is dead. The Wales
of stereotype, leeks, daffodils, look-you-now-boyo rugby supporters
singing Max Boyce songs in three-part harmony while phoning
mam to tell her they'll be home for tea and Welsh cakes has
gone... So where does it leave us? Free to make up, re-invent,
redefine our own versions of Wales, all three million different
definitions if necessary, because the Wales I know is bilingual,
multicultural, pro-European, messed up, screwed up, and ludicrously
represented in the British press... So, old Wales is dead
and new Wales is already a possibility, an eclectic self-defined
Wales with attitude." These are surprisingly confident
words from a man who had become a passionate yet pessimistic
commentator on a culture which he not long ago diagnosed as
being paralysed by lack of self-esteem and lack of confidence.
But Ed Thomas has good reason to be optimistic. This autumn
sees the general cinema release of House of America,
a feature film based on his award-winning play of the same
title, directed by Marc Evans with a star cast (Siân
Phillips, Steven Mackintosh, Lisa Palfrey, Matthew Rhys).
The energetically performed and stylishly shot movie about
a family in the south Wales valleys, whose desperate search
for identity leads to incest, insanity and murder, has already
played to critical acclaim on the film festival circuit. Thomas
himself is currently directing a new theatrical version of
the drama which will première at the Sherman Theatre
in Cardiff in October before going to Australia. For next
year, he has secured a prestigious commission from the Royal
Court Theatre, London's premier venue for new writing. A film
based on the new play is already in the planning stage. And
if this wasn't enough, Thomas also produces Satellite City,
BBC Wales's successful television comedy. Fiction Factory,
the new name for his Cardiff-based company, which has replaced
the more prosaic Y Cwmni, seems to reflect not only Thomas's
move out of theatre into producing narratives for a wider
range of media, but also hints at the enormous productivity
of its director.
"...I would like to thank the Tory government,"
Thomas concludes ironically, "for creating the conditions
whereby it is now obvious to everyone that we are not democratic,
that our government is not accountable, that the Secretary
of State for Wales was never voted in by the Welsh people.
They might even have created the confidence and the stubbornness
to say, this can't go on anymore. A new optimism in Wales
may have more to do with 18 years of Tory government than
with any of the fictions that any of us have contributed to."
Whether confidence and stubbornness are strong enough to decide
in favour of devolution will have been decided by the time
this article goes to press. What is certain is that Ed Thomas
will continue his project to imagine the future of a new Wales.
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