Dr Mary-Ann Constantine, Senior Research Fellow, University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies

Dear Judie and Richard,

It was a great shock to hear of ACW’s abrupt decision to withdraw CPR’s revenue funding, and I am writing to express my concern and my firm hope that they will reconsider. As an occasional participant in the Giving Voice programme, and an impressed member of the audience at events, I have always come away from CPR performances with a real sense of ‘buzz’. It has been exciting, as a fairly conventional academic used to doing academic conferences, to take part in performances where I don’t instinctively know the rules: an unsettling of boundaries which is, I think, productive to both parties. Put bluntly, CPR’s commitment to involving different disciplines in new forms of expression goes way beyond the usual nod to ‘interdisciplinarity’: this is not just theatre for drama students and a handful of regular theatre goers; it brings all kinds of people into surprising conjunctions.

It would be a terrible waste of your experience, your many years of building contacts, if all this were to be jeopardized because of some short-term financial strategy. Please add my voice to what I am sure will be a long list of those asking ACW to stand back and reconsider its decision.

Yours,

Dr Mary-Ann Constantine
Senior Research Fellow
University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
Aberystwyth, Wales