Resumen de The Crossing of Frontiers: National Theatre and Devolution in Contemporary Wales
In a recent article on the process of Welsh Devolution, Richard Wyn Jones argues that the process of negotiating changes in post-devolution Westminster/Wales dynamics has been characterised by the emergence of a discourse of «unintended consequences»(Jones 2001, 34). In this article, I intend to argue that one of the most significant and contemporary of these unintended consequences is the new prominence and role that national theatre has acquired in the political and cultural discourse of contemporary Welsh nationhood. It is my contention that, in the absence of a mature set of politicalinstitutions that might directly and swiftly facilitate completion of the process of devolution, the National Assembly government has called upon its national theatrical institutions to play a vital role in the process of articulating national aims, ambitions and directions in the realm of both culture and politics. I will go on to argue that whilst bothnational theatres were brought into being as part of a political programme in which they were afforded an unusually prominent role due to the immaturity of the devolution programme in Wales, it is, in fact, the rift between the artistic aspirations of English andWelsh speaking audiences in Wales and those political-fuelled imperatives that gives both national theatres their unique vitality and relevance in and to contemporary Wales.
