TYLWYTH

In 2010, his trailblazing debut play ‘Llwyth’ brought the experiences of Welsh-speaking gay men to a worldwide audience. As he returns to those characters a decade later for his new play ‘Tylwyth’, Daf James talks to us about what’s changed.

“When I started writing, I thought I knew what the story was going to be about. Once I put the characters in a room together, the play just took on a life of its own.” Welsh playwright, composer and performer Daf James is telling me about how he wrote his latest play Tylwyth [Family], which receives its world premiere in March. A co-production between the Sherman Theatre and Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, it returns to the same group of gay friends living in Cardiff depicted in James’s autobiographical debut play Llwyth [Tribe].

While audiences don’t need to have seen Llwyth to understand Tylwyth, the show will feature members of the original cast, including Simon Watts as Aneurin, Danny Grehan as Dada, and Michael Humphreys as Gareth. It also sees James reunite with director Arwel Gruffydd, in what has been a large part of both their creative lives. But why did now feel like the right time to revisit these characters?  

“In the last decade, my life has changed,” says Daf. “I’m engaged to be married to my partner; we’ve adopted two children. Gay politics has moved on, but so has national politics. I mean, who would’ve expected Brexit in the last 10 years?”

The main character of Aneurin finds himself in similar circumstances in Tylwyth: he’s got a partner and two adopted children, yet still feels haunted by past demons. Gone are the hard-partying days we saw in Llwyth, but that same group of friends are still tied together. “The first play means ‘tribe’, exploring the idea of friends: a Welsh tribe and a gay tribe. What does the word ‘tribe’ mean now?”

Like its 10-year-old baby brother, Tylwyth is written mostly in Welsh, but incorporates a mixture of different strains of the language, from colloquial Wenglish to elevated, poetic Welsh. This mishmash of dialects chimes with the playwright’s own relationship with the Welsh language. “I speak many different types of Welsh and jump from one language to the other,” says James. “One of things I wanted to do with Llwyth was put all the various registers of speech on stage together. There is a character, Gareth, who’s in a relationship with a Welsh speaker, but he doesn’t speak Welsh.

“The same goes for Tylwyth, which has a North Walian character, so it’s nice to have a different accent and dialect on stage.” Non-Welsh speakers needn’t worry though, as every performance includes surtitles in English and Welsh, as well as the app Sibrwd which translates plays as they’re happening for audiences.

“Identity is very much rooted in language,” says James. “I always encourage writers to use their own language. They shouldn’t have to compromise who they are and speak in another language that isn’t theirs because it’s about putting who you are, uniquely, on stage. The more specific you are, the more truthful and universal you can be.”

This was something that Llwyth proved when it toured to the Taipei Arts Festival in Taiwan. “That’s what was so crazy! I’m very interested in how Taiwanese audiences responded to the play – how they could see their own Taiwanese identity in relationship to China,” he recalls. “It was the understanding of the minority within a dominant order. That really spoke to them.”

But this is not just a play about sexual and national identity; it’s also a love letter to Cardiff. “I almost think that Cardiff is an additional character in the play,” he says. Llwyth unravelled over the course of a night out in Cardiff, while Tylwyth finds the characters in their 40s and dealing with the rapid changes of the Welsh capital’s gay scene. “When they go back, it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re not in Kansas anymore! This isn’t what we remembered.’

“There’s a line in the play: ‘make way for progress.’ And it’s the idea that everything is always shifting and changing: landscape, identity… Nothing stands still. We have to keep moving. Keep living, I suppose.” SAM PRYCE

Sherman Theatre, Cardiff (Tue 10-Fri 13 Mar); Galeri, Caernarfon (Tue 17-Wed 18); Aberystwyth Arts Centre (Fri 20 + Sat 21); Ffwrnes, Llanelli (Tue 24); Hafren, Newtown (Thurs 26); Theatr Mwldan, Cardigan (Sat 28); Pontio, Bangor (Tue 31 + Wed 1 Apr); Theatr Clwyd, Mold (Fri 3 + Sat 4 Apr). Tickets: £16-£26. Info: 029 2064 6900 / www.shermantheatre.co.uk