Update from the Llŷn Peninsula

Adverse Camber is in residence at Felin Uchaf in the Llŷn Peninsula this week.  We’re starting work on a brand new show, based on the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi as source material, we're having a truly inspirational time here, things are really starting to take shape. The offer was there if we wanted it, to be up at 3am to lie in a wood wrapped in a blanket with owls arriving overhead at 4am, as the dawn came up. We looked at our watches, listened to the wind outside the converted mill where we’re staying and as it was nearing midnight, after a full day of creative work, spear-making, music, song and story we reluctantly said it would have to wait for another visit, perhaps next time? We’ve visited some of the sites in North Wales which are most closely associated with the story of the Fourth Branch, Tomen y Mur where Lleu and Blodeuwedd were said to live, now next to a disused nuclear power station and Gronw’s stone, the stone where Lleu shoots a spear at Gronw, in revenge for the nearly fatal blow he received from his rival. The artist Maria Hayes ran an inspiring session in both places enabling Michael Harvey (storyteller), Lynne Denman (singer) and Stacey Blythe (musician/composer) to engage with the landscape in creative ways, followed by work with Director Paula Crutchlow in different spaces across Felin Uchaf’s many buildings, bringing those journeys with natural objects and landscape into creative work. We’ve met volunteers at Felin Uchaf, a centre busy with the raw materials of life, from oak trees being felled to make timbers for new buildings, including a centre for mythology, archaeology and storytelling, to iron ore, tin and copper being worked in the forge.  Dafydd Davies-Hughes has been our host and guide, sharing conversations about the stories, their connections to craft, materials and people here. We’ve met some of the people working here, from the volunteers working in the garden growing the food for the community of workers, to the boat restorer and carpenter making a super comfy stool out of elm. There have been plenty of experiences on offer, woods to visit, iron age forts where Math may have held court, all in the invigorating environment of a peninsula where the clouds whisk by speedily, with the sparkling sea on all sides, encouraging us to look afresh at what ‘making a new show’ might mean. When we leave tomorrow, there will be plenty of time for these experiences to ferment and mature and for us to revisit how they manifest themselves in the next stage of creative work… when we come together next time.