Chapter, Cardiff’s arts centre, and performance-makers good cop bad cop are celebrating the voices of Wales and they need you!
An innovative new project exploring the diverse vocal talents of the Welsh public is on the look out for more participants as part of the Dylan Thomas 100th birthday celebrations.
Lleisiau/Voices, a collaboration between Chapter in Cardiff and performance-makers, good cop bad cop, aims to put on stage some of the more unusual ways in which we use our voices in our work lives and leisure time.
This is a great opportunity for anyone who uses their voice for their work, to get involved in the national celebration of one of Wales’ best-known artistic voices, the Dylan Thomas 100 Festival.
Richard Huw Morgan, co-director of good cop bad cop, said, “We have had a fantastic response to the open days we’ve held at venues around Wales over the last couple of months. We’ve had poets, singers, actors and other kinds of entertainers all taking part at our events in Cardiff, Rhaeadr, Llanelli, Cardigan, Bangor and Wrexham. We will be inviting some of these to be part of the live shows at Chapter in May.
But we are still looking for some less obvious, more unusual, contributions. Clairvoyants, sports commentators, shepherds, newspaper sellers, bingo callers, you name it – we’re interested in working you into the performance, either live or pre-recorded. We’re also interested in whistlers, yodelers, bird-impersonators, ventriloquists, the kinds of things you do with your voice to entertain yourselves and others.
You don’t need to have stage experience, or an ‘act’ as such, just an interest in sharing your voice in front of an audience, we’ll work out how to best to stage it.
In some ways it’s a kind of antidote to TV talent shows, the kind of programme where they search for a new star that turns out to be pretty similar to a previous new star. We’re less interested in the kind of talent that could form a career than the kind of talent formed through work or to amuse yourself or others.
This is not about an individual’s abilities, but about what happens when you put all kinds of different talents together – I suppose in some ways it’s a return to the idea of the variety show, but focused on vocal variety.”
To make a digital submission upload a video of yourself to YouTube or a sound recording to SoundCloud and email a link to the recording to lleisiau@chapter.org, or if you prefer, you can send a CD or DVD in the post to Lleisiau, Chapter Arts Centre, Market Road, Cardiff CF5 1QE.
good cop bad cop’s Lleisiau/Voices will take place at the Chapter arts centre in May.
More info: For further information and a step-by-step guide please visit www.chapter.org/lleisiau.