Ian Morgan - Song of the Goat Theatre, Poland

Dear Sir / Madam


I would like to state my sincere opposition to the decision by the Arts Council of Wales to cut the Centre of Performance Research’s revenue funding from July 2008. The long track record CPR has in the provision of cultural activity, both in and outside Wales over the last twenty to thirty years, stands for itself. Richard Gough and Judie Christie’s work has exposed us all to some of the most important theatre and performance artists of this period, in turn inspiring the most recent generations of performance practitioners. To participate in the neutering of an organisation that supports and creates a real cultural legacy lacks foresight and imagination.

Furthermore, there is a concrete outcome resulting from such decisions as this – decisions that mirror the seemingly uninformed cuts in funding being made across the UK. They send dangerous signs that could discourage artists, such as myself, from coming home to participate in the performing arts community in Wales. Through ambitious organisations such as CPR, Wales has touched the performing arts world from its small but resonant geographical corner. This cut suggests, to someone like me, that such an achievement is no longer considered as worthy of support.

The impulse to support the creation of a non-building based Welsh National Theatre, an institution that can reflect the nation’s sensibilities and ask questions of it’s very being, is exciting, but could be parochial and fractious. CPR has always had a very internationalist vision. It invites us to see how others represent themselves through their art, in order to reflect and create our own visions of ourselves. It inspires us to have voices that are inventive in style and worldly in reach. They provide such an important balance to the dangers of parochialism.

I was born and raised in Bridgend, South Wales. My lack of exposure to cultural activity was such that I was ignorant to the performance work going on and around Cardiff, and especially Chapter Arts Centre, in the Eighties and Nineties that CPR was central to. It was only after having trained in England, France and Italy that I became aware that coming home to Wales was a good next step in exploring my growth as a theatre artist. And that was down to meeting CPR in Italy, where I was working with the late Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski.


When my time in Italy ended they offered me my first job, back in Wales, in a performance they produced - “Soundhouse” in 1995 - directed by the famous American performer / composer Meredith Monk. Through CPR, I was directly introduced to all the work that had been going on in Wales, which related to my actual theatre experience in Europe. I had no idea that they had been bringing companies such as the famous Laboratory Theatre of Grotowski to Cardiff for years, inspiring the work of young experimental companies in Wales and the rest of the UK, at the time.

Through that first contact with CPR I met theatre makers in companies such as Earthfall, Manact, Diversions, Brith Gof, U-Man Zoo, Elan Wales, etc – all influenced by an internationalist vision - who I would work and learn from over the next few years. My connection to CPR was such that I followed them west and started teaching on the drama course at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Without CPR I wouldn’t have thought to come home to continue my education and exploration of performance in these ways. And it was the best possible education. Through them I gained experience, work, inspiration, colleagues and more than anything, clarity for the future.

Since leaving Wales for the second time after 2001, I have built on my experiences gained through my contact with CPR, going on to have a career as a teacher of performance in both HE and Drama schools across the UK. Moreover, my practise as a performer has continued to grow due to the exposure they gave me to a broad range of work over the years. To the extent that I can say that my current long-term employment in Poland, with the award wining theatre company Song of the Goat Theatre, is directly linked to my experiences with CPR.

If CPR had not been there, in its current manifestation, that the revenue funding guarantees, then I cannot imagine where I would be now. My experiences are a concrete outcome of the investment the Arts Council has made in CPR. And my history with CPR is just one of many similar journeys of inspiration and concrete support.

I urge the Arts Council of Wales to re-think this decision and to play an active part in a renewal of CPR’s position as a source of inspiration for so many artists in the future.



Yours sincerely


Ian Morgan
Song of the Goat Theatre, Poland