{"id":692271,"date":"2026-01-13T01:57:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T01:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/692271\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T01:57:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T01:57:12","slug":"michael-sheen-puts-money-where-his-mouth-is-for-new-welsh-national-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/692271\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Sheen puts money where his mouth is for new Welsh National Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

A year ago, actor Michael Sheen pledged to launch a new national theatre for Wales using his own money. He’s now preparing to star in its first full production and says he wants the company to be a major force in Wales, the rest of the UK and beyond.<\/b><\/p>\n

When a “window of opportunity” opened to start a new national theatre in Wales, Michael Sheen was, by his own admission, the only person who could make it happen.<\/p>\n

“I don’t mean because of any innate brilliance that I have,” he explains hastily, “but just because of the position I was in.<\/p>\n

“I could kick-start it myself financially, I could pay for things to begin with, I had a profile, I could get media interest, I could open doors in terms of getting people involved.”<\/p>\n

Indeed, as one of Wales’s (and the UK’s) most admired actors, he has the requisite profile and powers of persuasion, and has pockets that are deeper than most.<\/p>\n

He has previously put his hands in those pockets to fund projects like the Homeless World Cup<\/a>, and to write off hundreds of people’s debts<\/a>, and has been vocal about cuts to Welsh culture<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So when the old National Theatre of Wales closed at the end of 2024<\/a> following funding cuts from the Arts Council of Wales, Sheen came up with a plan for a replacement. His vision was for a company that would “do bigger things that are more expensive, and have more ambition, and are bolder” than its predecessor.<\/p>\n

“Ultimately, I found myself arguing for something that I realised I was in the best position to deliver. Because ultimately, what I was arguing for was quite perverse in that it was flying completely in the face of the prevailing winds,” he admits.<\/p>\n

“And people would quite rightly go, ‘Well, how can we… that can’t happen, that just can’t happen’.<\/p>\n

“And I realised that it could happen, but only if I did it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A year ago, actor Michael Sheen pledged to launch a new national theatre for Wales using his own…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[748,4884,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-692271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115885313042381910","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}