Workhouse effort to save Welsh folk songs inspires new stage drama

A new stage drama detailing how two women in a workhouse recorded and preserved Welsh folk songs is set to tour the country this Spring.

Ledi’r Wyrcws (The Lady of the Workhouse), a production by Galeri Caernarfon, supported by the Shared Prosperity Fund and Gwynedd Council, to promote the legacy of the National Eisteddfod of Boduan, will tour 13 theatres from 4 March to 2 April.

Starring Morfudd Hughes, Owen Arwyn and Judith Humphreys, the play from writer Jerry Hunter was inspired by an anecdote he heard about Lady Amy Parry-Williams recording folk songs in a workhouse in Denbighshire.

Jerry was aware that Lady Parry-Williams — wife of the scholar and poet T. H. Parry-Williams — had carried out pioneering work recording Welsh folk songs that were on the brink of disappearing. However, he was surprised to learn that a workhouse was still standing in the 1950s.

Jerry said: “A member of a Welsh society I was addressing in a chapel in the Denbigh area pointed out the old building across the street after my lecture — noting that it had once been a workhouse where Lady Amy Parry-Williams recorded some of her finest folk songs from a woman who lived there in the 1950s.”

Coming from completely different backgrounds, the women carried and safeguarded the tradition, bringing a hidden history to light through discussing, recording, and singing.

Jerry continued: “The story immediately captured my imagination, and I began asking myself questions, such as: who was this woman and why had she ended up in the workhouse? What kind of conversations did Amy Parry-Williams have with her ‘between the songs’, so to speak? And why was a workhouse still standing in the 1950s — the era of the newly founded NHS?

“It was therefore fascinating to imagine the two women spending a day in one another’s company — both clearly cherishing the same culture, yet coming from very different backgrounds and living in vastly different circumstances. A stage play was the obvious medium through which to explore such a situation.”

To find out more about Ledi’r Wyrcws and to book tickets, visit: Ledi’r Wyrcws | Galeri Caernarfon Cyf, Caernarfon, Gwynedd.

Schedule

• 04–05 March | Galeri Caernarfon
• 07 March | Twm o’r Nant
• 10 March | Theatr Clwyd
• 13 March | Theatr Derek Williams
• 17–18 March | Theatr Arad Goch
• 19 March | Yr Egin
• 20 March | Theatr Felinfach
• 24 March | Theatr Soar
• 25 March | Pontardawe Arts Centre
• 26 March | Yr Olwg
• 28 March | Llanover Hall
• 01 April | Neuadd Dwyfor
• 02 April | Pontio