Why Michael Sheen put his money on the line for new Welsh national theatre
A year ago, actor Michael Sheen pledged to launch a new national theatre for Wales using his own money. He’s now preparing to star in its first full production and says he wants the company to be a major force in Wales, the rest of the UK and beyond.
When a “window of opportunity” opened to start a new national theatre in Wales, Michael Sheen was, by his own admission, the only person who could make it happen.
“I don’t mean because of any innate brilliance that I have,” he explains hastily, “but just because of the position I was in.
“I could kick-start it myself financially, I could pay for things to begin with, I had a profile, I could get media interest, I could open doors in terms of getting people involved.”
Indeed, as one of Wales’s (and the UK’s) most admired actors, he has the requisite profile and powers of persuasion, and has pockets that are deeper than most.
He has previously put his hands in those pockets to fund projects like the Homeless World Cup, and to write off hundreds of people’s debts, and has been vocal about cuts to Welsh culture.
So when the old National Theatre of Wales closed at the end of 2024 following funding cuts from the Arts Council of Wales, Sheen came up with a plan for a replacement. His vision was for a company that would “do bigger things that are more expensive, and have more ambition, and are bolder” than its predecessor.
“Ultimately, I found myself arguing for something that I realised I was in the best position to deliver. Because ultimately, what I was arguing for was quite perverse in that it was flying completely in the face of the prevailing winds,” he admits.
“And people would quite rightly go, ‘Well, how can we… that can’t happen, that just can’t happen’.
“And I realised that it could happen, but only if I did it.”
So, at the start of 2025, Sheen announced the birth of the Welsh National Theatre, with himself as founding artistic director.
One year on, the company’s first major production opens this week and reflects Sheen’s big ambitions, with a cast of 19 and a creative team including Doctor Who supremo Russell T Davies.
One thing it isn’t, however, is Welsh. The inaugural play is Thornton Wilder’s 1938 American classic Our Town, set in the fictional Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire.
But Our Town is thought to have inspired Dylan Thomas’s Welsh masterpiece Under Milk Wood and, recognising its depiction of small-town community life, Sheen and director Francesca Goodridge decided to move Grover’s Corners to Wales.
“Me and Fran both felt instinctively that it could work really well with Welsh actors in a Welsh setting,” Sheen explains.
Goodridge adds: “Because it’s a fictional town, Grover’s Corners can be any town.
“Thornton Wilder has written characters that we all know, like the person delivering the milk, the two mums talking over the garden wall. You’ve got things that instantly [make] you go, ‘I know this place’. It’s a universal story.”
‘Like being woken up’
It’s an apparently gentle tale of small-town life, but Sheen says the emotional impact of it is “like being woken up”.
“It taps you into something essential about what it is to be alive, and how precious that is.”
Originally written just before World War Two and partly set just before World War One, it has a sense that “something is coming”, Sheen adds.
“For a play about what seem like small events going on in a small town, there’s this sense of a shadow growing over it, and in that shadow a warning that life can disappear like that, that this can all be gone in a second, and you have to make the most of it.”
Our Town opens in Swansea, the new company’s home city, before touring to north Wales and ending in south-west London at the Rose theatre, the show’s co-producer.
Later this year, Sheen will star in and co-direct the company’s next production, Owain & Henry – playing Owain Glyndwr, the last Welsh-born Prince of Wales, who led a revolt against Henry IV from 1400.
“It’s a real foundational story for Welsh culture and sense of Welsh identity, and yet there’s been practically nothing done about it,” the actor says.
In the trailer, Sheen delivers a monologue in a steely whisper, imagining a better future for Wales without rule by an English king.
The actor reflects: “There’s a parallel universe where Owain Glyndwr did set up the universities and the parliament and all the institutional framework for a Welsh state, and Wales developed along very different lines, possibly more similar to Scotland or Ireland, in different ways, but certainly different to how it has developed.
“And so, looking at where we are now, and the challenges that Wales has in the present day and moving forward, inevitably you reference the past because you have to.”
The present-day challenges include, among other things, cultural funding that was found a year ago to be among the lowest in Europe (although the Welsh government has since increased it).
The Welsh National Theatre is applying for money from public and private sources, and Sheen hopes its shows will be commercially successful enough to pay their way.
Our Town has been partly funded by a recent one-man tour by Matthew Rhys, another of Wales’s biggest acting names. Is Sheen calling on more Welsh stars for support?
“That’s up to them. It’s not like we’re being quiet about what we’re doing,” he replies.
“Matthew got in touch and said, ‘I think what you’re doing is fantastic, I’d love to be able to help in some way.’
“But I don’t want people to think it’s like charity. I want to create something that’s really exciting for Welsh actors to be involved with and to want to come and do stuff.”
Sheen, who has described himself as a “not-for-profit actor”, pledged to put his money where his mouth is to fund the company’s launch.
Putting a figure on his contribution isn’t straightforward, he says, but he hasn’t had to pay as much as he might have.
He has funded some things, such as commissioning scripts for future plays and other set-up expenses. For the major costs of shows like Our Town, he put his funds down as a guarantee if no other money was available.
“We needed to be able to guarantee to our partners that, yes, we can put [in] between £200,000 and £400,000 in at this point, before any money comes in from ticket sales,” he explains.
“So I had to say, ‘Yeah, OK, I’ll do that’. But I haven’t had to do it because the money came in.
“But it makes a big difference when you’ve got someone who can say, ‘All right, if the [effluent] hits the fan then I can do it’. And you have to be prepared to do it, obviously.”
Sheen has used his powers of persuasion to get sponsorship from BBC Studios and Doctor Who production company Bad Wolf for new talent schemes, and creating opportunities for Welsh artists is part of Sheen’s plan.
‘The pinnacle’
Asked what he wants the Welsh National Theatre to achieve, creating “pathways to develop young talent and to give it an opportunity” is one of a list of things Sheen reels off the top of his head.
He wants it to do “productions that are bold and ambitious” of various scales; have an “identity internationally”; stage work that “is resonating with a Welsh audience, but compelling for a non-Welsh audience as well”; create “a canon of Welsh work”; and be “very connected to the other companies” in Wales.
With this monologue reaching a typically rousing climax, he adds that he wants to make sure “that it is the pinnacle”, he says
“That it is what Welsh actors most strive for, and that it has that sense of pride in what you’re doing and that you feel like you are both an expression of and an exploration of what it is to be Welsh.”
He takes a breath.
“That would be great.”
It’s a bravura ambition and a big gamble. But if there’s one man who stands a fighting chance of making it happen…
Our Town is at Swansea Grand Theatre from 16 to 31 January, then tours to Llandudno, Mold and Kingston-upon-Thames.
