What People are Saying about Work in Progress

When I was five, I got a letter from Spider-man. He wanted me to meet him at Radio Rentals in Colwyn Bay. I don’t know how Spider-man got my address, but my mum took me down anyway. Even at five, I doubted very much that Spider-man was really going to be in North Wales. Why would a super hero want to come here? I was proved right. When I finally met him his accent was a bit dodgy, he didn’t walk up any walls, and he didn’t seem to know anything about the letter. Fourteen years after that, when I was an aspiring actor who had just left school, I met another hero. A real one. She was a professional theatre maker and an actual American, with the proper accent and everything. Back then, meeting an American in North Wales was about as likely as meeting actual Spider-man. She was funny, and warm, and bold, and although I doubt she can walk up walls or shoot webs from her wrists, I would not be surprised to learn she’d be willing to give it a damn good try. At the point we met, I was not in a good place. I had failed to get into drama school, and so I faced another year living at home in Colwyn Bay, with not even dodgy school play versions of Disney films to sustain me. I was lost, and so I went to see the Careers Company. They sent me to a community theatre project in Rhyl called Streetwise who were putting on two plays about homosexuality. The director of one of those plays was Leslie Churchill Ward. In 1999 homophobia was much worse than it is today. As a straight teen who went through high school in North Wales I was, like everyone around me, a homophobe. But I liked acting more than I didn’t like the thought of homosexuality, so I signed up. Being part of that group opened my eyes to what being a homophobe really meant, to exactly what you were aligning yourself with. We toured Wales – high schools, theatres, community centres – and received almost constant abuse. Jeers and catcalls on stage. Frightening, angry audiences. At one school, we were told we could only perform if the male leads did not kiss. At another, we overheard staff members making homophobic comments about us in front of the students. Now I reckon you shouldn’t have to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes to empathise with them, but it is a foolproof method of getting there. That show changed me. It cured me of my stupid prejudice, helped me find my people at a time when I felt like the only person in North Wales who knew what a stage door was, taught me about expressing myself through the arts, and also the value of taking risks in a safe fictional environment. (It makes the dangerous, real-life ones easier.) I was reminded of my time at Streetwise on World Mental Health Day, when I got another lesson, again thanks to Leslie. She is now Artistic Director of 'Work in Progress', a community performing arts project with a focus on well-being and positive mental health. The group, which is made up of people from across North Wales, has spent the last year working with a series of guest artists to produce 'Journeyman', their first public Sharing which took place at Theatr Twm o’r Nant in Denbigh on October 7th 2023. I have spent the twenty years since Leslie and I met working in the arts. After Streetwise, with Leslie’s help, I got into drama school. After I graduated I was a professional actor before moving into writing. I have worked with some amazing people over the years, and it has spoiled me. I’ve been involved in so many shows that I’d forgotten about those days in Streetwise, where I learned about that old chestnut, the redemptive power of art. But at 'Journeyman', it all came back to me. Thirteen brave people got on the stage – and since I used to do that for a living I can tell you that alone is no joke, even for a wizened old professional, since every moment you are on there is a moment you expose yourself to ridicule – and shared their truths. They performed poems and stories they had written, sang solos and in groups, and though they had a range of abilities, one thing was true in every single performance: they had the guts to get up in front of strangers like me, and tell us who they were at their very core. They had been through things, and were remarkably honest in sharing them through their pieces. Some of those challenges were explicitly spelled out, as in the moving poems ‘Me and my head’ and ‘Work in Progress’. Others, we just knew from the performances of, say, 'Martha’s Harbour' or 'Colours of the Wind' or the joyous finale of 'Freedom ’90'. The group performed in shirts with a slogan emblazoned across them: ‘We are all a Work in Progress. Together we can do so much!’. And that’s right. We are, and we can. We’re each a patchwork quilt that is never quite finished. The quilt gets squares added as we gain experience, connect with new people, say goodbye to former friends. Some of those squares we’d rather weren’t there, because they were put on by people who came to mean us harm. Those squares never stop hurting us, but they can be outnumbered by the ones created by the unexpected friend; the inspirational mentor; or the community drama group that came along when you needed saving from yourself. I’m lucky that when I was young, I had a bunch of my squares sewn on by Leslie Churchill Ward, and I’m so glad she’s still at it, beavering away at all these other quilts, getting people to come together, to share, and to wake up parts of themselves they had thought dead but were merely sleeping. The lesson I learned that night at Theatr Twm o’r Nant, though, was one I’ve had to relearn again and again and again since I was a five-year-old asking Not Quite Spider-man for his autograph. It’s this: that yes, North Wales has heroes too. Leslie Churchill Ward is one. But for the performers of Work in Progress, the word ‘hero’ is too small. They need a prefix. Those guys are super. The great thing about heroes is that they encourage us all to be a bit braver. Not Radio Rentals in Colwyn Bay brave, perhaps, but the sort of bravery that gets you out of bed when you just can’t face being alive anymore. I’ve got a patch or two on my quilt like that. But then I am a work in progress too.