The most important memory that I have of the Grand is seeing the production of ‘Charley’s Aunt’ because I think that possibly more than any other show I saw, encouraged me to go to the theatre. I can remember quite distinctly, I must have been about ten years of age and I was sitting there and there was an elderly gentleman beside me and just before the curtain went up he turned to me and said, “Is this the first time that you’ve ever seen Charley’s Aunt young boy?” And I said “yes, it is” and he said, “Oh I wish it was my first time” and the show was absolutely wonderful and I always remember how good it was. Everything would have been different if I hadn’t seen that production at the Grand.
Without the Grand, I wouldn’t have done what I’m doing now. It was the cultural stimulus for me, and more importantly it is the place where I currently work.
I founded Fluellen Theatre Company in 2000 shortly after moving back to Swansea from London with my wife and children. We did our first production in the ‘No Sign Wine Bar’ on Wind Street but we decided that not every show is suitable to do in the bar.
At that particular time, the Grand had very recently opened up the Arts Wing, the first two floors were used for an art gallery and the performance space was mostly used as a dance studio for Ballet Russe. The performance space had no seating in those days but I love empty spaces and I’m very much a believer of Peter Brook who said, ‘Give me an empty space and I’ll call it a theatre’.
I started talking to the Grand about doing a series of plays in the Arts Wing starting with a play called ‘Ghosts’ by Henrik Ibsen.
About two weeks before ‘Ghosts’ was supposed to be shown, I went to see another theatre company doing a show there and it was terrible. The show itself was alright but it was terrible because we were all sitting on the same level, if you were sitting beyond row two you couldn’t see what was happening. There and then I decided that we would do the show in-the-round and thereby we started, unconsciously, a little bit of a legend. Because very few people had seen theatre in-the-round in Swansea at that particular time.
By this time, we’d agreed with the Grand that we would do three major productions a year in the Arts Wing as we were building up a really nice audience indeed and the rest is history.
