In Eastern Europe with The Town That Went Mad
by Roy Sadler, 1998

In August last year I could not have imagined when Paul Davies, a founder member of Volcano Theatre Company from Swansea, rang offering me a part in a version of Under Milk Wood about to be devised that fourteen months later not only would we have toured to sixteen theatres in England and Wales but also to Stuttgart, Romania, Sligo and this August the Edinburgh Festival, followed by Munich and festivals in Belgrade and Nitra, Slovakia. Paul had directed a student production at Wolverhampton University that had beenpart of my degree studies, but I had never acted professionally before.

Volcano, as you may imagine, devise so-called physical theatre. They create their own texts, perhaps from several sources, and aim to create a balance between the spoken narrative and movement, contact-improvisation, involving some risk-taking. Other members of the company are presently touring Brazil with a revival of L.O.V.E., based on Shakespeare's sonnets. Their most recnt production, The Message, intercut the role of the messenger in Greek drama with the present horrors from Rwanda and Bosnia, and personal biographies of the actors, the death of a father, the birth of a child.

They wanted to "deconstruct" Under Milk Wood, the modern classic from their home town: break the icon, the beautiful and comic language, the radio play that, transferred to the stage, can lose the loneliness and quiet despair, the craziness of its characters, in the comfort of tradition. I was roped in as someone who would pass as Captain Cat, but five of us each played many parts: most of the plays many characters and some others. Three were about half my age, two were trained dancers. I wasn't expected to be quite so agile but at the climax I climbed on top of an eight-foot trilite aluminium cube balanced on the opposite corner and rocked as Captain Cat, reaching up in the crow's nest or perching on his belly, remembered Rosie Probert, a chorus of two girls star-shaped in the cube's diamonds below him, in front of a backcloth of stars.

I use the past tense because, although Dylan Thomas' daughter Aeronwy supported us, his estate refused to give us performing rights after our first tour. So, with new words from Wordsworth, Blake and Nietszche (but mostly from Paul Davies), we resurrected an hour and five minutes' entertainment as Thetownthatwentmad, making one word of Dylan's first title. His original idea was for Captain Cat to receive a letter declaring the town a lunatic asylum that must be cordoned off. Much of our stage work involves letters. In rehearsal we imagined the letter no-one wanted might be Caitlin's to Dylan in Iran announcing their marriage to be over. Actor's ideas become subtext, but now almost the only overt reference we make to Thomas or his play is my cry falling from the cube to my death: "Off to America!". I enjoy getting to die three times in the show, and saying (from Wordsworth), "Glad did I live and gladly die".

We get invitations abroad because what we do is visually interesting. The British Council are happy to sponsor British theatre invited to a foreign festival. It's been a wonderful experience. On the continent audience are warmer than here. Especially in Eastern Europe, there's a sense that theatre is important. We played to full houses, often with extra people standing, in big theatres.

We went to Timisoara, where at the end of 1989 a popular uprising overthrew Ceaucescu. In March, we played in perhaps the most beautiful theatre I have seen, a Viennese style Opera House, gilt and marble, Romanian folk history painted on the domed auditorium ceiling and the words MUNDUS SCENA . VITA TRANSITUS . VENISTI . VIDISTI . AUDISTI / "The world's a stage, life is brief. I came, I saw, I heard" inscribed above the proscenium arch. The previous night the country's new president, Emil Constantinescu, a geology professor until elected last November, the date of the demise of Romania's dictatorship, received the town's Peace Prize there. I saw him warmly welcomed by people chanting the name of their town. But poverty is widespread. According to an aid worker I met, the number of children in orphanages is increasing again because their parents can't afford to look after them.

There is a rich tradition of ensemble playing in Romania. In the National Theatre in Bucharest on the most huge stage, fifty or so actors brough Romeo and Juliet to a life you could not see in England.

In Nitra, in the week following our performance, we gave workshops and so could stay long enough to see some of the rest of the festival. I was lucky enough to be one of about 250 sitting on a stage, nearly as big as in Bucharest, around a dimly lit rostrum to see a Czech Jewish Theatre perform Job, the story of the emigration of a Jewish family from Russia to America in the last century and the miraculous healing of a mentally handicapped son left behind and reunited with his father at the end.

But their international festival was not welcomed by the Slovak authorities. They were already unhappy when in the festival's first year in 1990 an award for best play was given to a Hungarian company. They have now withdrawn funding. Ther is a strong puppet tradition in Slovakia but the director of the Puppet Theatre in Nitra has also fallen foul of the nationalist government and has recently been dismissed. Certain plays have also been forbidden. The National Theatre came out on strike at these events.

President Mecir led the movement that separated Slovakia from the Czech Republic without a referendum and, according to opinion polls, against the wishes of the majority. More than once I heard someone say "I hate Mecir".

People in Belgrade didn't express their contempt for Milosevic quite so nakedly. His deviousness is taken for granted. The pain is perhaps at a deeper level. We happened to have a reception at the town hall at the same time as the National Socialist symbol of the five-pointed star was being replaced by the Serbian eagle. The votes stolen from the opposition last winter were allowed them in the spring and Zoran Djindic had become the city's democratic mayor. When he came to his new office, everything belonging to the government, including computers and files, had been removed. In the ornate building only the waiters remained.

Now this October he is out and Milosevic has his placeman back. The fascist candidate doing well in the elections held the day after I left would make it illegal for non-Serbian children to go to state schools. The opposition coalition is split. But the pride of their achievements on the streets last winter remains. They call it paratheatre. At one stage the riot police cordoned the main street for eight days and nights. In front of them in the bitter cold the students and actors played, including a performance of Macbeth.

Jelena Kovacevic, a journalist with Ludus (a theatre magazine describing these events) told me how as a Serb she had recently illegally (ie without telling the police) entered the Muslim sector of Sarajevo to visit her relatives there and for the first time in her life had had to ask herself "is this person Muslim or Serb", and felt afraid.

I am privileged to have met some of the people struggling to be the conscience of their country.

CREDITS