Welsh venue voted the most welcoming theatre in the UK

Nation.Cymru staff

At the recent UK Theatre Awards held in London, a Welsh theatre scooped two awards, Excellence in Touring for their production of Under Milk Wood and the coveted Most Welcoming Theatre.

It’s brilliant recognition for Theatr Clwyd nationally for their hard work and dedication in becoming one of the best producing venues in the UK, living up to their mission to make the world a happier place one moment at a time.

Theatr Clwyd’s production of Under Milk Wood was the inaugural production of the Craidd Project, a unique collaboration between the Sherman Theatre (Cardiff), the Torch Theatre (Milford Haven), Pontio Arts (Bangor), the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (Cardiff), and Theatr Clwyd (Mold). Together, the partnership is working to achieve lasting equality in the employment, involvement and representation of Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people within mainstream theatre in Wales, with the long term ambition of making the Welsh theatre sector the most accessible in the world.

Craidd has been designed to change the way theatre is made and toured, and how the organisations change in all aspects of their work with anti-ableist action at their core. Each partner organisation creates a mid to large-scale production that tours to the other partner venues, with every project building on shared learning. Knowledge, challenges and solutions are openly shared across the partnership, while organisations pool producing expertise, technical capacity and infrastructure to enable work at a scale that would be difficult to achieve alone. Inspired by the success of England’s Ramps on the Moon model, Craidd is creating a sustainable and distinctly Welsh approach to inclusive, anti-ableist, theatre-making and touring.

Under Milk Wood was a high-quality, ambitious production, with 11 DDN actors on stage and BSL interpretation, audio description and captioning integrated into every performance, ensuring disabled and non-disabled audiences shared the same theatrical experience rather than attending separate accessible performances. This represented a significant shift from traditional touring models, where access provision is often offered only on selected dates. It was also the first time many DDN audience members saw themselves represented on stage.

Access provision for everyone involved was embedded right from the start of the casting process, where we tried to ensure that as many barriers as possible were removed so auditionees felt supported, having creative enablers in the room certainly helped with this. We had a longer than usual rehearsal period – five weeks rehearsing and two weeks of tech. This is much needed when embedding access into a production and consideration needs to be taken of everyone’s access requirements; there are particular challenges when working with both Deaf actors who use BSL and actors with sight loss. The extra time in tech enabled the team to create a barrier free backstage area, providing monitors and lights for cues and ensuring all cables were off the floor. Solving problems in creative ways was very much a team effort, leading to one member of the tech team saying it was the greatest experience of their life.

Directed by Theatr Clwyd’s Artistic Director, Kate Wasserberg (who as a result of her experience is now developing integrated access and anti-ableist action into her wider work and practice), it was a huge, vibrant and fast paced production with design by Hayley Grindle, original score by Oliver Vibrans and movement direction by Laura Meaton. It was produced by Jenny Pearce who assembled an incredible team to tour the production across Wales, led by Suzy Sommerville.

Under Milk Wood was enjoyed by over 16,000 audience members across Wales and received excellent reviews.

See all the winners of the UK Theatre Awards HERE