Buzz Magazine gave ‘Don’t Send Flowers’ four stars read it here
News: Don’t Send Flowers
News!
I’m excited to share that my play ‘Don’t Send Flowers’ is being produced by Clock Tower Theatre Company, and will be performed at The Gate in Cardiff in September.
Grace is in therapy because her Father is dying and she’s not handling it very well. John is in therapy because he’s dying, and also not handling it too well. Louis is in therapy because his work told him he has to be. None of them want to talk to a stranger about the fact this doesn’t make them happy. So, they strike up a friendship with each other. Largely dysfunctional from the outside, it turns out to be exactly what they all need.
‘Don’t send Flowers’ is a darkly funny look at life and death and living with both. And how cake if not a cure for cancer, is a pretty effective placebo .
For tickets see The Gate Website here
And for further updates follow @clocktower_tc for updates
Language and Identity in the Welsh-Turkish Play Y Brain/Kargalar
In a longer more reflective post on this production for Howlround I examine the questions of language and culture and the difficulties of interpretation.
“I felt that these lands were always wrapped around me like a mother, in the most difficult times of my life. And that they were healing me.” These words, spoken by Mel—one half of the Turkish refugee, Meltem, who settled in Wales—form the essence of Y Brain/Kargalar.
Full article is here.
Review: Y Brain/Kargalar
Writer Meltem Arikam was forced to flee Turkey after accusations against her and start a new life in Wales. While starting her new life, her husband unexpectedly died and she was left once again re-examining her place in the world, her sense of identity and where and how to belong.
In Y Brain/Kargalar, she examines the two parts of herself ‘Mel’ and ‘Tem’ her Welsh and Turkish alter-egos. The two performers deliver the script in their respective languages, sometimes to each other, sometimes at each other, sometimes into the ether, and there’s a distinct sense of the exploration of language, the exploration of identity and the struggle
Full article at Nation Cymru
New Review: 12 Cabins 12 Vacancies
In life we are used to the intersection of personal and public events. But there’s an interesting kind of personal/public dynamic with the cultural events that come to mean something beyond themselves, because of the moment we encountered them. Nobody would look at Psycho for a tender exploration of love and loss, but for Chris Durnall the intersection of seeing this movie on TV as a youngster and his father’s death have made it exactly that.
Full review at Wales Arts Review
New Article: Years And Years
This article contains spoilers.
Episode one of Russell T Davies’ Years and Years ends with Russell Tovey fucking a man as the world ends. That seems a flippant summary, but for gay men sex has always been, and still is, a political act. Seemingly apt from the writer who brought the world Queer as Folk and caused much clutching of pearls when gay characters showed up in his Doctor Who. However, the story of gay characters Daniel and Viktor in Years and Years is as much a political act as any of the broader politics of the story. And a gay man fucking an illegal immigrant as the world edges towards nuclear disaster is the opening gambit of one of the most important gay stories on television in recent years. Being gay is after all still a political act. Simply existing in the world becomes a political act. And that’s what insidiously the Viktor/Daniel storyline in Years and Years does.
The Generation of Rent Remixed, and now Rent Live
My piece for Miro magazine on Rent Live can be found here
