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Siôl (Shawl)​​

Siôl opened at Theatr Brycheiniog in September 2025. The play is currently being translated into Welsh and will tour in both English and Welsh in March 2027.
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Siôl is a new play by  Happy Dragons Theatre. The cast is bilingual, and the play can be performed in both Welsh and English. 

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Siôl draws on patients’ and nurses’ experiences of mental health care in the early twentieth century. Based on real historical events and recorded verbatim testimony, Siôl celebrates the strength, resilience and compassion of two remarkable Welsh women, Anwen and Mary. Siôl is theatre made for, with, and about the people of Wales and the stories of Anwen and Mary are rooted in the social history of this country. 

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The Story 

In Senghenydd, 1905, Anwen eagerly anticipates the birth of her first child. In Cardiff, 1939, Mary passes her final nursing exam. Anwen and Mary are witnesses to Welsh history in the making: the religious revival, the Senghenydd Mining Disaster, the Dunkirk evacuations, the Cardiff Blitz and the birth of the NHS. They meet as patient and nurse at Pen-y-Fal Hospital (until 1948 known as the Monmouthshire Asylum and previously the Joint Counties Lunatic Asylum). A traditional Welsh nursing shawl, an emblem of caring and comfort, binds the friendship between Anwen and Mary. 

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The Inspiration 

At the start of 2025, the writer and director, Rhona Richards, met Emma Bevan, the artist behind The Community Shawl, a project where the people of Abergavenny contributed fabric squares, each decorated to express something about the maker, to a ‘shawl’ inspired by the traditional Welsh nursing shawl. Emma used her grandmother’s nursing cape as a base for the squares; Emma’s grandmother began nursing in the 1940s and was a Matron at Pen-y-Fal Hospital. 

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Inspired by The Community Shawl, Rhona researched the history of Welsh nursing shawls and the experiences of patients admitted to Pen-y- Fal Hospital. The documentary evidence and verbatim recordings she discovered contributed to Siôl's narrative. 

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