Output details

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Commissioning Theatre: Theatre Sherman Cymru, 2008

The research imperative was provided here by the nature of the commission: to interrogate, critique, and disrupt ideas of Welsh authenticity in a way accessible to a popular audience. Arguments about authentic Welsh culture in terms of language, place of birth, family, heritage, borders, natural resources (water and coal), ethnicity, and the idea of ‘hireath’, are politically pertinent as Wales seeks to (re)describe itself; but the play shows that the notion of an authentic nationality is at best socially divisive and at worst racist.

The play uses that ‘Welsh icon’, Tom Jones, to show how consciously constructed, fluid, changeable, provisional, and flexible any sense of identity is. The play shows how Tom Jones’ identity has changed during his career, using the dramatic frame of the distinction between the ‘persona’ Tom Jones and his ‘creator’ Thomas Woodward. The violent and sexist language of Tom Jones’ songs is also used as a way of questioning his suitability as a Welsh role model.

The research for this play involved many interviews with people who considered themselves ‘truly Welsh’, as well as drawing on the author’s own experience of growing up in Wales as the child of an immigrant family