Sgint

I don't think I'd ever seen a play in Welsh before. Sgint, which was thankfully super-titled, is a verbatim piece based on interviews with people in Carmarthen about their lives since the financial crisis kicked in. Good to be reminded that there are places outside London, outside all sorts of mainstreams, that are really bearing the brunt of the current lunacy.

I went along to see it in Cardiff, because the producing company, Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, is doing some amazing work in developing Welsh language theatre. I've thought for a while that Welsh and Scots Gaelic should be part of the Origins Festival - indigeneity close to home. Talking to Arwel and Elen, the directors, I sense a certain trepidation at the potential romanticism and exoticism of categorising the Celts alongside indigenous peoples from elsewhere. But there are very clear similarities of experience - the suppression of language and culture, the socio-economic marginalisation, the potential for new identities within both larger and smaller, more defined, political structures. It slowly turns into a worthwhile conversation - one we can develop as their new projects come along. At the moment, they are very focused on Elen's Welsh-language production of The Tempest for the 2012 Festival. We talk about my Indian Tempest and Toufann. Amazing how that play can resonate in so many contexts. But I do wonder how Elen will deal with the centrality of language to the piece, and the fact that the main language of the play is that of the coloniser, Prospero, and not the colonised Caliban. Will be fascinated to see!

And a Happy New Year....

Just before Christmas, Penny, Seema and I drove up to Manchester for lunch with Chris Honer and his General Manager Adrian at the Library Theatre. It's a lovely, very comforting space, in the basement of the magnificent City Library. Chris has been very excited by the DVDs of the Trilogy so far, and wants to co-produce the whole thing in early 2010. This means that the trajectory of 2009 is mapped out in terms of preparing it: we workshop in Shanghai in February, followed by a period of dramaturgy with Brian; then we do the first version of Re-Orientations as a work-in-progress presentation at Goldsmiths in the summer, prior to getting the whole thing ready for 2010. I think that's a good way to time it - we can think a lot and not panic too much.

Christmas took me all over the place, including to Aberystwyth, where I managed to squeeze in a swift and fascinating meeting with Jeremy Turner, who runs Arad Goch there. With all my work on First Nations theatre and languages, it's as well to remember there are people doing indigenous theatre right here in Britain, and fighting the corner for minority languages. Jeremy will be in rehearsals when Origins happens in May - but is keen to come down for the middle weekend, and to talk on a panel about theatre and the survival of minority / indigenous languages and cultures.

The Guardian was nice enough to print my books of the year on Saturday, so I won't repeat them here! But it's been an exciting year for watching theatre and film too, especially at the wonderful Barbican, where I saw the amazingly contemporary German Hedda, the justly famous Black Watch, and Yael Farber's brilliant South African re-working of the Oresteia in the light of the truth and Reconciliation Commission, Molora. Elsewhere, I loved Yours Abundantly from Zimbabwe at the Oval House for its directness and its honesty, and That Night Follows Day at the Gothenborg Festival, for the same reasons. In film, I've had a great year watching First Nations films which we'll be screening in Origins in a few months: especially Tkaronto, The Waimate Conspiracy and Kanehsatake – 270 years of Resistance. Elsewhere, I loved Garin Nugruho's Under the Tree - which was also very valuable for the Trilogy!

See you in 2009.