A powerful tale of loss starting on the beaches of Swansea, Now The Hero is set to be a highlight of the theatrical calendar this year. Fedor Tot speaks to its creator Marc Rees.
Tell us what Now The Hero / Nawr Yr Awr is about.
It’s an immersive experience. It’s site-specific, so it begins on the beach in Swansea. With the crowd gathered, you’re introduced to three soldiers from different periods – one from WWI, one from the modern day, and one from medieval times, inspired by the medieval Welsh poem Y Goddodin by Aneirin – and to a protagonist who’s the peace protester. She guides the audience towards the Brangwyn Hall in Swansea. There are certain kinds of dramatic things happening en route and then you’re going to the Brangwyn Hall itself to see the Frank Brangwyn panels, which inspired the whole piece. There, an immersive requiem takes place inside – that’s the heart of the whole project. Then you explore the rest of the building; there are reflective scenes about peace and war. At the end, you have a kind of soup, because within the panels there are indigenous plants and vegetables, and we are growing them currently throughout Swansea and you’ll be able to have a soup and ingest the panels and reflect what you’ve just seen, so it’s a kind of an ambitious large-scale, multi-sensory visceral experience.
What sorts of influences and inspirations went into its creation?
Frank Brangwyn is the main inspiration, so that came to represent WWI. But then also I wanted to go back to ancient history, to a famous poem called Y Gododdin, which is written by Aneirin in AD 600, which documents this brutal and famous battle where 300 Celtic warriors were slaughtered by 10,000 Saxons and it’s an incredibly graphic poem but it’s really beautifully written in ancient Welsh so that forms a really important part of it, so we have the Celtic warriors, one of the soldiers and then we have a group of a hundred women from Swansea Valley of all ages who are reciting 6 verses of the original text in a very traditional style. That was really crucial to have the women’s voices kind of loud and clear and kind of paramount through the production. Within the show we have a contemporary soldier played by Captain David Williams and he’s playing himself throughout the show, so there are three interweaving narratives of war. Essentially it offers two questions, it’s called Now the Hero, but I think you can choose whether you think the hero is other soldiers or is the peace protester; it’s important to have a kind of counterpoint to the narratives of war because essentially I think the piece is about healing and I think that’s what the Brangwyn panels are. There’s perhaps the vision of what a healed world looks like.
Whenever I approach any work of art that’s about war as a theme, I’m always reminded of the Francois Truffaut quote about war films: “There is no such thing as an anti-war film”, suggesting that they invariably end up romanticizing it simply by presenting it onscreen. I broadly disagree with the quote, but did that concept ever come into your head during the making of Now the Hero?
As an artist I was a bit thrown when they asked me to consider something that marks World War One because I’m a pacifist; why would I want to make a piece about WWI? Then I thought this is an opportunity to create something which is kind of questioning. The Goddodin doesn’t glorify war, it’s about people losing war so I think it was really important to put it out there and of course in order to represent war you need to show the horror but also you need to show the opposite sides, the messages that we can’t do this again. And that’s why I interweaved the three narratives and we have a contemporary elements as well and we have the peace protester, so I think I was very aware of that.
This work seems to be quite an ambitious experience. Was it difficult to get off the ground?
I’ve somehow become a go-to person for kind of large-scale work; the last one I did was P.A.R.A.D.E for National Dance Company Wales, which was in and around the Millennium Centre. This is probably even bigger. 14-18 NOW, who have commissioned contemporary artists to respond to WWI, asked if I wanted to do something. I thought about the Brangwyn panels, that was my way in.
What is the significance of doing a piece that references WWI today?
An opportunity to reflect on WWI, but also to reflect even further by using Y Gododdin. That is from 600 AD and, in a way, nothing has changed – we make the same mistakes.
You’ve got some interesting collaborators involved with you for this, including the now-departed Jóhann Jóhannsson [Oscar-nominated composer for Sicario and The Theory Of Everything]. How did that come about?
I met Jóhann maybe a decade ago, in Caernarfon of all places. With this one, he was really interested but so busy, and he said he could only do this if he brought his very trusted assistant, Owen Roberts, whose family are from Wales. Unexpectedly, Jóhann died, which was a terrible shock. He did visit the Brangwyn – I walked through the whole experience with him and Owen, so we talked about what we wanted to achieve with the sound, because the music is so important. He started to play the organ and to mess around and improvise with this refrain. Owen has worked on that and built that up into a refrain that will feature throughout the requiem; ironically, it will become a requiem for both Jóhann and the piece as a whole.
If you could recommend one place in Wales to a first-time visitor that’s not on the tourist maps, where would it be and why?
I’m going to keep it very local and suggest Pipes brewery on Kings Road, Pontcanna which is only open on Fridays and Saturdays. Their beer is excellent and the regulars are very friendly.
Now The Hero, Swansea Beach and Brangwyn Hall, Swansea, Tue 25-Sat 29 Sept. Tickets: £15/£12. Info: www.nowthehero.wales