Arts & International Affairs: 2.3: Autumn/Winter 2017 | Page 25

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
cy today. He’s, in effect, trying to open it up again ... a theatrical/architectural response, I
think to attempt to increase the power—or the communal empathy.
Figure 15: The Passion, National Theatre Wales
John McGrath, director of the Manchester International Festival, formerly the distin-
guished director of National Theatre Wales, describes his approach to a participating
audience somewhat differently. One of the productions from his early time in Wales was
called Passion, directed by actor Michael Sheen. It was (to quote the press) a riotous
retelling of the biblical crucifixion story, which took place in a depressed steel town in
Wales called Port Talbot. The population of the town was the cast. McGrath told me of
this communal narrative which everyone shared about the industrial wasteland that was
Port Talbot then. The power here manifested itself through the actions of the cast, in
particular by the crowd literally shouting at Pontius Pilate, the symbol of Roman author-
ity. For them, he said, they were stepping into a real moment—when narrative becomes
reality. A year later, rather than being depressed, the town had begun re-inventing itself,
people had begun taking their own futures back.
McGrath thinks theatre the most powerful of art forms, because (unlike music) of the
directness of its message. “I wouldn’t be in it, if I didn’t think it had power.”
Figure 16: British Council House in the 1930s
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