My people - Steffan Donnelly

In a chapel service in rural Wales, all is not what it seems . . .
A stage adaptation of one of the most celebrated and controversial short-story collections in the history of Anglo-Welsh literature. Originally published in 1915, the searing stories of My People - darkly comic, poignant, with flashes of savagery - exposed the hypocrisy and avarice nestling side-by-side in a Nonconformist community in the rural West Wales of the early 1900s.First produced n the centenary year of the publication of the original collection, this radical reimagining makes us question whether the events depicted in these remarkable stories are consigned to the past, or can we discern uncomfortable parallels in our modern life?This programme text edition was published to coincide with the world premiere of the stage adaptation on 5 November 2015 at Clwyd Theatr Cymru, in a co-production with Invertigo Theatre.

Caradoc Evans (1878-1945) was a Welsh novelist, playwright and short story writer. Perhaps best known for his first collection, My People, his writing was villified by the popular press and celebrated by the literary world, with comparisons made to Balzac and Joyce, and Dylan Thomas listing him as one of his early influences. Writing in an English that was heavily influenced by Welsh grammar and vocabulary, his work sought to puncture the myths of quotidian life in Wlaes, juextaposing religiosity with the fearsome poverty in which people existed.

Steffan Donnelly is an actor, writer and artistic director of Invertigo Theatre Company. As an actor, his theatre credits include Shakespeare's Globe (including a world tour), Barbican Centre, Theatr Clwyd, HighTide Festival Theatre (Nominated Off West End Award 2017 for Best Male Performance in Pilgrims), and screen credits include Darkest Hour and BBC's London Spy. He is a creative associate of the National Youth Theatre and Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre. His productions with Invertigo have toured the UK to great acclaim winning the Deutsche Bank Award for Creative Enterprises, Scottish Daily MailAward, Charlie Hartill Special Reserve, as well as three Wales Theatre Award 2016 nominations. His 2015 adaptation of Caradoc Evans's My People
("acid-sharp prose, biting humour … clever adaptation", Observer) and My Body Welsh (2016), which he co-authored with Tara Robinson, are both published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.

It was the hardline pieties of chapel life for which [Evans] reserved his greatest rancour - a point well illustrated in Steffan Donnelly's adaptation . . . intense . . . Donnelly . . . weaves the tales into a form of increasingly nightmarish, collective hallucination that culminates in a bizarre beach party in which the deacons dance around in their swimwear.
Guardian

fully embraces the biblically bad behaviour contained in Evans' stories
Stage

[Caradoc Evans's] characters are sketched in acid-sharp prose; the harshness of their lives and the cruelty and hypocrisy of their chapel-oriented society is portrayed with biting humour. . . . Steffan Donnelly's clever adaptation . . . preserves much of Evans's language and translates his extraordinary blend of fact and fiction to the stage by introducing striking expressionist instants into naturalistic-style action.
Observer