Games – what for?

Two nights ago, down here in Pembrokeshire, I went to a most powerful play. The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning has been written by young Welsh playwright, Tim Price, now starting to make a considerable name for his work. The play deals with the case of the US soldier currently in confinement and awaiting court martial for bringing a vast mass of military secrets to public knowledge via Wikileaks. Should Bradley Manning be punished or freed? Was he mentally dysfunctional and to be despised for his actions? Or was his whistleblowing – for instance on US army killings of Iraqi civilians – morally defensible and to be applauded in the cause of right thinking and right action?

What made Tim Price’s play so particularly powerful for me when I saw it is that it took place in the main school hall of Tasker Milward School in Haverfordwest. This is a place which Bradley Manning must have known well in his teenage years. After he was brought back from America by his Welsh mother following her split from his father, he was a pupil at Tasker Milward for several years before returning to the US and becoming a soldier. Tasker Milward is significant for me. My mother went to the original Taskers High School. I’ve done several big storytelling projects there. And  watching the play, I was in the company of a friend who actually taught Bradley Manning.

The production of The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning was by National Theatre Wales. The six young actors were brilliant. In every conceivable way – and it was a highly innovative, loud, inventive, multi-media production – they and the play were deeply engaging, obliging you to think on the spot about your views of people and of what is right and wrong.

War Games! They may seem a long way from Storytelling Games – except that they both make you THINK! I can only think that that’s a good thing.

Games: the benefits (more…)

I was scratching my head about this week’s blog. A piece of synchronicity gave me the answer.

An Easter Find

Layers of story

On one side of the synchronicity – synchronicities always have at least two sides! – is my native Pembrokeshire where I’m spending Easter. Once again, I’m reminded how the place is layered with stories like the geological strata of the land itself. One layer is the magical legends of the saints. There are memories of them everywhere especially in the names of places and the many little old churches. The stories of the saints themselves are an extraordinary combination of fact, medieval myth and spiritual inspiration.

The London Welsh Chorale

On the other side of the synchronicity is the London Welsh Chorale which is the choir I sing with in London. We’re currently learning an oratorio by the great Welsh composer, William Mathias. It’s an infrequently sung piece called St Teilo which we’ll be singing in our summer concert in St Giles, Cripplegate, in the Barbican, on Saturday 10 July.

Its subject, Teilo, was reputedly one of the two holy monks who accompanied David (subsequently Patron Saint of Wales) on the journey he is described as having made to the Holy Land to Jerusalem.

Well, a couple of days ago, I was looking through a beautiful booklet about Pembrokeshire churches, published in 1989, in which the paintings were made by my friend, John Knapp-Fisher.

As I perused this booklet, I suddenly made the connection. Of course! There’s a little church in this northern part of the county that is actually dedicated to St Teilo.

It’s in a notoriously hard-to-find village by the name of Llandeloy.

The church

So I went to look for the church again. (more…)

Just one week to go before Christmas Eve, which was my mother’s birthday. Each year the day brings memories of hilarious hours in the kitchen with my mother stuffing the turkey and massaging it with butter, making extra supplies of mince pies and sausage rolls and preparing vegetables for the Christmas dinner.

Another feature of my growing-up Christmases was getting out of bed in the shivering cold in time to get to Plygain, the 6 a.m. Christmas service at the chapel we used to attend, which was Tabernacl Chapel in St. David’s. Plygain is a traditional service which still takes place at cock-crow in quite a few different parts of Wales. On your way to Plygain, the sky is still dark. By the time you come out, wishing everyone “Nadolig Llawen”, “Happy Christmas”, the light is just coming into the sky.

By tradition, anyone who comes to the Plygain service in St. David’s can take part if they wish by giving a reading, a prayer or a Christmas carol. The last time I told the Baboushka story, which is my offering here today, was at a Plygain service.

Baboushka

The Baboushka story is Russian, ‘baboushka’ being the word for an old woman who, in a sense, is everyone’s grandmother. I love the story because it’s not just about giving, though this is its central theme. It’s also about the ability to change. ‘I’m too old to change,’ my father used often to say after he retired. Then in the last years of his life he began saying a different thing: ‘You’re never too old to change.’ It seems to me this is a useful approach in these difficult times. (more…)