A Modern Construct?

Well, the draft has been submitted for marking today. What is done is done. It has left me with mixed feelings, the relief of having completed my work and a feeling of sadness at finishing the course and leaving a piece of work. The film script is called “Ap Neb” which translates as “Son of […]

Contemporary Medieval

I’m reading this novel Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger, which is a modern take on the Arthurian legends. I like it because it indicates its contemporary nature in the treatment of the subject matter: changing the original stories so that they resonate today. There is a ‘knowingness’ about it that contrasts, comically at times, with […]

Protagonist

This picture shows details from a font in a quiet church in mid-Wales. The font is ancient, and has a very strong Celtic influence. There are twelve faces facing out from the basin perhaps representing the twelve apostles and it seems as if Christian and maybe some previous belief system may have come together in […]

Ruthlessness

“If you wish in this world to advance Your merits you’re bound to enhance, You must stir it and stump it, And blow your own trumpet, Or, trust me, you haven’t a chance!” W S Gilbert, Ruddigore (1887) It is now a time of rewriting and restructuring and one of the main things to come […]

“I know that you know that I know”

I happened to be walking down a London street when I caught sight of a number of colourful portraits, some were well-known works by Andy Warhol others recognisably his by the style. I focussed on this picture which I had not seen before but which I knew to be of General Custer (of Battle of […]

Second Gregynog MA Weekend

This was the last formal session where we would all be together as a group so while we worked hard, learnt a lot and had some fun the occasion was tinged with some sadness. Just as we begin to get to know each other we seem poised to go our separate ways… unless we attend […]

First Draft

Submitted a first draft of my major project yesterday. This is the subject of some celebration but perhaps more pertinently, trepidation. It is far from the finished article and is patently incomplete. It will be under review this weekend at Gregynog by my tutors. I must embrace its imperfection and rejoice in the fact that I […]

Adfeilion – Meini Gwagedd

The picture of a crumbling old Miners’ Hall from Merthyr Tudful and some thoughts about the Welsh post-industrial landscape as a wasteland considering Kitchener Davies’s play Cwm Glo and quoting T S Eliot Tynnais y llun yma ym Merthyr Tudful tua blwyddyn a hanner yn ôl. Nes i fi edrych yn fwy manwl cwpl o funudau […]

Adapting

Last Friday and Saturday was another of the MA weekends for the full-time and part-time students. The focus of the weekend was “adaptation” and David Lane, “an award winning playwright and dramaturg” with a host of credits to his name, had been invited to discuss his work with the group. On the day we looked at music […]

Into the Forest…?

‘…one of the greatest lines in medieval romance… “They thought it would be a disgrace to start out in a group, in the same direction. Each entered the forest at the point he himself had selected, where there was no trail or path, at its darkest point” The message is that if you follow a […]