This year the Aberystwyth-based Centre for Performance Research (CPR) is celebrating 30 years of work. What began life as an experimental theatre company - Cardiff Laboratory Theatre, (founded by Mike Pearson, Sian Thomas and Richard Gough in 1974) and became the CPR (founded by Richard Gough and Judie Christie in 1988) - has achieved an influence far beyond Wales and reached into the heart of further education.
In this anniversary year projects not only include a major conference called 'Towards Tomorrow?' but will also see the publication of a book exploring the work of CPR and the possibilities of performance in the future, Testimony from the Future, Evidence of the Past.
'Towards Tomorrow' is an event designed to explore the future of theatre and performance in the company of leading theorists and practitioners. It's a celebration that will try to ask difficult questions in the most convivial manner.
Its line-up of contributors has created a stir. We've spent the best part of a year preparing to bring around 80 speakers and performers from around the world to Aberystwyth for four days of talks, discussion panels, workshops, performances and installations. More than 200 people will come together to be part of this. For four days, Aberystwyth will be buzzing as delegates grapple with this notion of what 'tomorrow' might mean for performance and theatre.
From its origins in Cardiff, through to the 10th anniversary of its move to Aberystwyth (in a joint venture with the Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth) CPR has continued to produce a maverick mix of international theatre, dance and voice events.
'Towards Tomorrow?' is not just about the debate either. It includes a performance programme that platforms some of a new generation of female performers (four short pieces exploring death and memory; Brazilian fight clubs; German guilt for WW2 and teenage emotion) comedy from British Muslim stand-up comic Shazia Mirza; legendary Australian performance artist 'Stelarc'; Welsh physical theatre company Volcano, and Irish experimental dance company Irish Modern Dance Theatre. All in all then, a mix of dance, physical theatre, comedy and performance art.
The gathering itself, also features special sessions designed to elicit the more spontaneous response to the question of what tomorrow will bring - or indeed what it won't bring. Sessions like J'Accuse will encourage people to vent their spleen against any injustices, or worse still any indifferences.
What is there to get serious about? Well, quite a lot really. Is any of it relevant to what goes in the world? Does anybody care? Well clearly young people do. Theatre and performance studies are amongst the fastest growing departments in further education. Everything from archaeology to terrorism can be viewed through 'performance'.
What do audiences want? A key element is Generation24, a group of 17-20-year-olds from Wales and around the world who will navigate their way through the debates and get stuck in themselves. At the heart of 'Towards Tomorrow?' is a desire to identify with the youthful curiosity and quest for non-traditional training that drove the founder members of Cardiff Laboratory Theatre to look abroad.
'Towards Tomorrow?' won't mean missing out on a two rather high-profile weddings either. Whilst we will be wrestling with the fraught relationship between theatre and performance, Britain will be transfixed by a double wedding; Charles and Camilla and Deirdre and Ken - one from Windsor Castle, one from Coronation Street; one of royal significance, the other from the realm of soap opera. Which is which and which more real? So, we will be looking at them in a special event called Weddings and Weeping, Wine and Woe.
Not to let the evening end with a whimper, a group of Wales-based performance scholars will lead an all-night session - Ten Things I Hate about Theatre. They've begun the list with the following nine:
1. The roar of the greasepaint
2. The smell of the crowd
3. Thumbs-up reviews
4. The end of the pier
5. Edgy contemporary cabaret
6. Relevant Shakespeare
7. Dancing girls
8. Challenging urban realism
9. Mime
I'm sure you'll find all of it at 'Towards Tomorrow?' Happy Birthday CPR.
CPR's 'Towards Tomorrow?' conference runs from the April 6 - April 9 at the Centre for Performance Research, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. What is the Centre for Performance Research?
CPR is a theatre organisation which produces innovative performance work, arranges workshops, conferences, lectures and master classes.
It collaborates and exchanges with theatre companies of international significance, publishes and distributes theatre books and runs a multi- cultural performance resource centre.
CPR has been responsible for bringing many international performance artists to the attention of Welsh and UK audiences and enabling creative exchange between these artists and companies based in Wales and the UK.
Its mission is to explore the implications of performance in all its possibilities and to seek to articulate and disseminate the findings involving the community at large.
Its aims are to develop and improve the knowledge, understanding and practice of theatre in its broadest sense, to affect change through investigation, sharing and discovery and to make this process as widely available as possible.
It also seeks to focus on contemporary practice, to investigate the sources and context of current experimentation and the relationship of innovation to tradition. A main focus of its work is cultural co-operation, collaboration and exchange.
This article was first published in the Western Mail's Friday arts supplement.
What does the future of theatre hold? A conference organised by the Centre for Performance Research in Aberystwyth hopes to tackle that question. CPR's Anthony Pickthall reports on its significance.
