Picnic Play @ Clwyd Theatr Cymru

Had a good day this week – my first ever trip to Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold, where Dirty Protest had arranged a rehearsed reading of my play “Songs For Swinging Lovers”. This was as one of the Picnic Plays which Theatr Clwyd are staging as part of their Celtic Festival, in the venue’s Clwyd Room, with the cast, script-in-hand, faced with a small (but somewhat less small than I expected) audience, sat arranged on cushions and at picnic tables. Actors Keiron Self and Sara Lloyd Gregory (both of whose performances in “Love And Money” I’d recently reviewed, prior to discovering that they were going to work on a piece of mine), along with Jenny Livsey and Sam Jones, presented my “dark comedy with a vague wife-swapping theme”, under the direction of Matthew Bulgo. It seemed to go well – laughs and silences in the right places, kind words from audience-members afterwards. We were even, courtesy of Kate Wasserberg, given a tour of the impressive building, as well as refreshments. I have no idea whether the play will go any further, but the reading was certainly a useful experience in terms of gauging its effectiveness as drama, and spotting areas where it might be tweaked. I’m very grateful to all concerned.

And the next day, when I returned to Cardiff, I had some more possible, vaguely encouraging news re my writing about which more later, if all goes well.