- The Corn is Green
was written by Emlyn Williams.
At its heart, it's a play
about the importance of education
and the ability of education
to offer people a greater horizon to aim for.
(gentle music)
(door thuds)
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- [Dominic] We are at the Big Pit Museum
which is a former colliery in South Wales.
The play was written in 1938
and it's by a Welsh writer called Emlyn Williams
who's actually from North Wales,
based on his own experience growing up locally
in a Welsh speaking community.
And he was sort of taken under the wing
of a local teacher who sort of recognised
that he was very smart and talented.
And sort of hot-housed him and got him into Oxford.
And what he's done is he's sort of fictionalised it,
pushed it back about 30 years,
and placed it in a mining community.
(gentle music)
(woman laughs)
- I'm really intrigued as how someone
who had been so successful in his time
has slightly fallen out of the cannon.
And I think that's what Dominic's interested in as well.
I knew nothing about how autobiographical the play is,
knew nothing about that,
but it is without a doubt,
based on his own experiences with his teacher, Sarah Cooke.
Sarah Cook saw something in him,
plucked him out,
and she got him to Oxford.
(gentle music)
- I think what stands out about Emlyn's writing
is the rhythm in which it's written
is so contemporary, now.
And the way that Emlyn manages to structure the play
as a West End comedy,
but plays out as so much more than that.
And I think the rhythm of his writing
has got a lot to do with that
and mirrors more of our contemporary writers.
- [Dominic] I'm hoping that one of the things
we can do with this play
is sort of draw people's attention
to someone that I think is a really important writer
not just for Wales or Britain
but for the world.
In our version, we sort of made more of the fact
it's an autobiographical play
by putting Emlyn Williams in
as the sort of main character of the play.
So it's like he's telling his story.
- [Gareth] I think it's the first time
he's ever been sort of dramatised on stage.
So as an actor, I sort of want to honour who he was.
He wasn't a miner,
but he was from sort of a poor North Welsh background.
Things that he wrote about
people just weren't writing about them, then.
He was very sort of brave in his subject matter.
Emlyn Williams himself was world famous.
He was an actor.
His plays were put on all over the world.
For the audience, it is sort of a window
into why he wrote the play at that time.
- In this play, there's just a tonne of Welsh language.
And that, again, it's sort of putting a working class world
on stage in 1938 about a mining community
where people are speaking Welsh.
No one was doing that.
So I think he was really ahead of his time
but people didn't give him credit for that.
- [Iwan] Most of all, what struck me
was how radically it was, really
and also about Welsh identity.
I think that was such a progressive thing
to have put on in the 1930s.
Unfortunately, we don't talk enough about Emlyn Williams
and we don't celebrate his work enough.
I mean, especially when you look at a play like this
and how young he was when he wrote it
and the success that he made of himself in London
being a young Welshman from North Wales,
who'd come from that background.
One of the main things I took from it after reading
was just how important education should be
in our lives when it's done correctly.
When you have somebody who cares about you.
We celebrate our Dylan Thomas' and whatever.
And I certainly think Emlyn Williams should be up there too.
It's incredibly important for Welsh people
but there's something in the play for everybody.
(gentle music)