COMMUNITY PERFORMANCE
After many months of hard work Glyncoch Community and Creative Communities Performance Project has delivered the goods. Several hundred people were enthralled by a performance that was both entertaining and thought provoking. In poetry, prose, song and action, the performers demonstrated the problems faced on a daily basis by people in Glyncoch and thousands of communities like it. Perhaps more importantly, the caste challenged the audiences to provide answers to the dilemmas presented to them, thereby demonstrating what is so often missed- we can control situations if we’re given the power to do so. From Tia-Leigh aged 6 to Cynthia Williams aged 61, from students to postmen, this company of actors, writers, set designers and artists deserve nothing but praise for a stunning, thought-provoking series of sketches, songs and poems.
I spoke to Kevin Jakeway from Creative Communities after the performance. He told me that his organisation had run this project in Glyncoch as a pilot, to see if it was possible to use this sort of performance to highlight issues within communities. He is no longer in any doubt; he was particularly struck by the innovative way that the Glyncoch players had overcome the limitations of playing on a stage more suited to a pop performance (for example: instead of moving scenery around, they used a simple blackboard backdrop and drew the scenery needed for each scene). He finished by saying that he is certain that people will now be talking more constructively about the issues facing Glyncoch, and he congratulated everyone involved on a good job well done.
Creative Communities will use the experience gained in Glyncoch, to seek funding to run similar projects in other disaffected communities within the valleys.
