National Theatre Wales"s sailing series Stage The Guardian

Putting Wales on the map ... (Clockwise from tip left) Sharon Morgan, Boyd Clack, Siwan Morris and Huw Rees. Photographs: Gareth Phillips

Sharon Morgan, who plays a rap-loving, booze-swigging 115-year-old in National Theatre Wales"s entrance production, A Good NightOut in the Valleys, buttonholes me in a mangle from rehearsals to have a point. "There was no veteran entertainment in Wales until the mid-1960s," she says. "People pronounced I was insane to instruct to be an actress behind then. It was a unequivocally bizarre thing to do, stepping in to a universe that didn"t exist." With itsstronger elegant convention and bilingualism, Wales has not been fruitful belligerent for theatre, that is what creates the bieing born of a new inhabitant entertainment in English – a Welsh-language one already exists – so dramatic.

A Good Night Out in the Valleys Blackwood Miners" Institute, Caerphilly On eleven March. Then furloughed Box office: 01495227206 See sum

In Wales, English speakers outnumber Welsh speakers 3 to one. The thought of an English-language inhabitant entertainment has been debated for roughly 100 years, but it took Dai Smith, who has chaired the Arts Council of Wales given 2006, to cut by the competing reports on how it should be structured. "I motionless that this pussyfooting around – should we havea inhabitant entertainment or not? – was ridiculous," he tells me. "So I went to the enlightenment apportion [of the Welsh assembly] and said, "I resolutely hold inthis – can you presumably get £3m?"" He could, and the income will right away cover the cost of environment up the association and programming the primary dual years; thefirst prolongation will be denounced at the Blackwood Miners" Institute after this month, prior to relocating to 4 alternative institutes opposite the South WalesValleys.

Like Scotland"s inhabitant theatre, the association has no permanent home. Its home is all of Wales, and the primary deteriorate will underline a dozen productions stretching from Cardiff, Swansea and Newport in the south to the beaches of north Wales, around Barmouth, Bangor and a troops banishment range in the Brecon Beacons. The programme is ambitious, amounting to what inventive executive John McGrath calls a melodramatic "mapping" of Wales.

In a little ways, prerequisite has been the mom of inventive invention. There wasn"t sufficient income to set up a new theatre, and in any box where would you put it? Someone would be irked: as Boyd Clack, who stars in A Good Night Out, remarks, the Welsh are receptive to jealousy. Better, and positively cheaper, to settle a peripatetic association that takes entertainment to people all over Wales. That, anyway, isthe goal – although, as Clack additionally points out, the people already have their own theatre: fighting, drinking, competition and television.

McGrath explains his prophesy over a cake in the community-run cafeteria in the encampment of Blaengarw (A Good Night Out will be staged at the internal workmen"s hall). The six-strong expel are rehearsing in each of the venues, to let the locals get used to them and dump in on rehearsals if they wish. "We"re called the National Theatre Wales, so we"re asking: what does that mean?" says McGrath. "If you"re furloughed a production, in a approach you have to come up with one one thing and take it on tour, since by operative in twelve opposite places you can ask that theme new each time you have every of work. You can see at a republic by history, by identity, but unequivocally we thought what anation is is a place – so let"s try what place means."

The map is far from conventional. McGrath"s launch programme includes a partnership in in between earthy entertainment association Volcano and Welsh National Opera in an deserted vital room in Swansea; an inexpert fool around by John Osborne in Cardiff; and a uninformed interpretation of Aeschylus"s The Persians staged in a troops formidable in mid-Wales. A Good Night Out is not utterly so edgy, and I wondered if it was a approach of charity primary soundness to NTW"s audience, prior to attack them with Aeschylus and an initial work by German "reality theatre" specialists Rimini Protokoll after in the year. McGrath says not, the preference of launch eventuality was in a little ways accidental, nonetheless Smith accepts that the primary prolongation will be a "warm cwtch" – a poetic Welsh word definition cuddle or hug. "It"s saying, "Don"t be disturbed about this, don"t be frightened, this isyou. We"re not environment up a marble staircase that you have to come up with your black crawl tie on.""

Dai Smith observes that, distinct Scotland, Wales has no bourgeoisie, noEdinburgh or Glasgow with a processed following for theatre. It needs to grow an audience. A large piece of NTW"s work will engage village engagement: open rehearsals, workshops, the growth of teams of volunteers in each place it performs, and an public after each production, where people can plead theissues raised. At the operation I attend in Blaengarw, the institute"s "knitting nanas" lay in on the afternoon event – the idealisation critics, the speed at that they weave reflecting their turn of engagement.

"It"s about operative with internal people, so they can reply to things that are critical to them," says Catherine Paskell, one of NTW"s dual beautiful associates. "It"s not about us alighting and saying, "You should be articulate about taxes, or you should be articulate about unemployment." They"ve got alternative things that are some-more critical to them that we competence not even know about."

A Good Night Out is formed on stories internal people supposing in workshops that McGrath, bard Alan Harris and immature proffer Hannah Bevan hold opposite the Valleys last autumn. Harris afterwards reimagined them, sketch on anecdotes and characters. The work attempts a mural of a vital village – the 6 actors will fool around twenty-five tools – and wants, on top of all, to equivocate being an practice in nostalgia, a paean to the industrial landscape flattened in the last thirty years.

"At those workshops I got a bucket of stories and a bucket of characters," says Harris. "We approaching stereotypical stories, and we did get a little people articulate about Aberfan or the miners" set upon or the decrease in industry. But alot of times we got some-more personal stories. And they were stories of hope, rather than "Woe is us". People told us they longed for to see their lives on stage, but a lady in Aberdare said, "We don"t instruct you to take the piss out of us." By that she meant hold up isn"t all mines and unemployment. There"s a lot some-more to it.She was saying, "Our lives are a lot some-more formidable than the perspective that it"s apost-industrial solitude where everybody functions in Asda.""

NTW does face the peculiar doubter. One Welsh-language repository has called the launch prolongation "provincial" since it rakes over informed theme matter. Andeven though the appropriation of existent English-language entertainment companies has notbeen cannibalised, a little feel in jeopardy by the new child on the block. Terry Hands"s Clwyd Theatr Cymru, formed in Mold, might have to recur the explain to be the "focus for English-language entertainment in Wales".

Smith and McGrath fool around down such fears and the tensions in in between the dual languages, that are less noted than they were a decade ago. But Boyd Clack, a successful sitcom- and songwriter as well as an actor, is less diplomatic: "There are a lot of people here who are unequivocally stranded in their ways, utterly bitter. It"s an additional Welsh characteristic." To spell out this, he says, "A discerning joke: a Welshman is deserted on a dried island and builds a church. It takes five years. Then he spends an additional five construction an additional church. Five years after that he"s rescued, and someone says, "What"s that?" "It"s a church." "And what"s that over there?" "It"s a church." "So because have you got two?" He says, "I don"t go to that one." That is an perspective that we"ve had, and with the Welsh entertainment and the English entertainment I"m certain that mood will be there."

• This essay was nice on Thursday 4 Mar 2010. The venue in the listings was settled as Bedwas Workingmens Hall. This has been corrected.