Gododdin: the past in the

present

Gododdin and their exploits are

remembered in this one epic.

It begins with a fragment of poetry.

Y Gododdin wears the aspect of a genuine

relic of a long forgotten strife, a massive
boulder left high on its rocky perch by an
icy stream which has long since melted
away.

Gwyr a aeth Gatraeth gan wawr ...

Men went to Catraeth with the dawn,
Their fears disturbed their peace,
A hundred thousand fought three
hundred
Bloodily they stained spears,
His was the bravest station in battle,
Before the retinue of Mynyddog
Mzvynfawr.
(From Y Gododdin, Jarman 1988)
Y Gododdin is one of the earliest surviving
examples of Welsh poetry, transcribed in
the twelfth century but commemorating
an event in the sixth: an elegy for slain
heroes and a eulogy of their excellence
and bravery as fighting men.
The land of the Gododdin (the Votadini of
the Romans) lay around, and to the south
of, Edinburgh in Scotland. Sometime
towards the end of the sixth-century AD, a
small warrior-band mounted one last,
suicidal attack from that region against
the Anglo-Saxons who were already
consolidating their occupation of much of
present-day England, in the period of
upheaval, contest and reorientation that
followed the collapse of the Roman world.
Fuelled by heavy drinking, three hundred
met one hundred thousand in battle near
Catterick in North Yorkshire. Inevitably
they were slaughtered almost to a man.
One of the few survivors was the poet
Aneirin himself. His hundred stanzas
celebrate the heroic disaster: the

(Brith Gof: Gododdin programme notes)

The language of the court of the Gododdin
chieftain Mynyddog Mwynfawr was a form
of proto-Welsh known as Brythonic spoken
at that time down the western seaboard of
Britain: a shared ancestry meant that the
Gododdin could call upon brethren from
Wales to join their cause. Y Gododdin
records the assembly of warriors, a year
of riotous preparation and training and the
final, fateful conflict. But there is no linear
narrative here. Instead the sequence of
events is revealed in a fragmentary
manner, as the exploits of individual
heroes and groups of fighters are lauded
and extolled. Whilst tonally familiar, much
of this remains elusive and obscure to the
modern Welsh ear.

Performance as political theatre

The decision to make a performance
based on Y Gododdin came at the
conclusion of a long series of productions,
collaborations and training schemes
organised by Brith Gof and based upon
the theatrical animation of Francisco
Goya's eighty etchings The Disasters of
War and their captions (see Goya 1967).
Thirteen major pieces of work, staged
from Norway to Hong Kong, were inspired
by the same graphic source. Gododdin
was to be the penultimate manifestation.

But the impetus to create the performance

came with the darkest days
of'Thatcherism', a time when Margaret
Thatcher herself proclaimed society dead.
We had long harboured a desire to work
with Test Dept, a group of industrial
percussionists - 'a skinhead gamelan' with several Scots members, whose own
spectacular performances and
collaborations - with such unlikely
partners as the South Wales Miners Choir
- had marked them as amongst the few
authentic voices of artistic dissent and
opposition. But together we resisted the
temptation to create a didactic and
hectoring piece of agit-prop theatre.
Neither did we want to make some
'period' dramatisation of Y Gododdin with
the music as a kind of congruent backing
for the events of the epic. Of course, the
metaphorical implications of the poem
were self-evident. But in deciding to
create a large-scale work, at the limits of
our ability to achieve it both technically
and physically, we aimed to echo the folly
of the Gododdin, the small struggling with
the impossibly greater. We wanted to
constitute political theatre as
sophistication and complexity, elaborating
dramatic material and detail in all
available media simultaneously, to work
with the friction between the sensibilities
and procedures of theatre and rock music
and with anachronism.
Defeat is never to be cherished, but the
glorious rendering of their account
against
an infinitely stronger enemy lessens the
smugness of victory and lends dignity to
the vanquished. Culture then and now
becomes a tool for survival. History
brought
alive through the power of a performance,

no matter how times have

changed. Today the wealthy invade for
personal and political gain. Yet after
thirteen
hundred years there is nothing marginal
about the issues at stake. The right to
self
determination, the growth and celebration
of native language, looking back further
than thirty years of 'pop culture', making
huge visions concrete and breathing life
back into characters who, like so many,
were destroyed when a race first began
to
flex their colonial muscles.
(Brith Gof: Gododdin, Test Dept in
programme notes)
Gododdin was conceived, constructed and
initially presented - for three nights late in
December 1998 - in the engine-shop of
the enormous, disused Rover car factory
in Cardiff, itself a potent symbol of
economic decline and industrial decay. The
production included fragments of the
poem sung and spoken in Brythonic and
English within the musical spectrum; a
highly amplified instrumental soundtrack
played live and on tape; dynamic physical
action which made no attempt to tell the
story of what is, after all, an elegy and a
scenography which 'brought the outside
inside', an arrangement of hundreds of
tons of sand, dozens of trees and wrecked
cars, and thousands of gallons of water,
the latter of which gradually flooded the
performing area during the performance.
Dramatic material was generated and
manipulated in each of the constituent
media, as libretto, as musical composition,
as choreography, as architecture.

The dramatic elements were written,

composed and developed in relative
isolation in order to reach their fullest,
unmediated potential and only then
combined at a date late in the rehearsal
process. To function successfully this
required two working principles: the
establishment of an agreed dramatic
structure, in the case of Gododdin a
sequence of named, thematic sections with consensual agreement about the
nature, purpose and emotional tenor of
each - and the institution of a time-base
with fixed durations for each section. The
schematic sequence included entry,
prologue, heroics, berserking, arming,
journey, battle, lament, epilogue.
Clifford McLucas's scenography resisted all
temptation to provide an anecdotal or
naturalistic setting for the literal
exposition of the text. Instead his
rigorously formal arrangement of scenic
elements - trees, cars, sand - distributed
on the architectural principles of line and
circle throughout the hundred metres by
forty metres space engaged the entire
room (McLucas and Pearson 1996: 21134). The design centred upon the old
factory clock suspended somewhat offcentre towards the middle. Immediately
below this a mountain of sand-covered oildrums was constructed. Around the
mountain a circle of sand thirty metres in
diameter and three inches deep was laid
out, kerbed with concrete...

Review of Gododdin, from The

Independent
The tale is simple enough. Around 600
AD, a band of 300 Celtic warriors, their

spirits inflamed by drink, hurled

themselves upon a hundred thousand of
the invading Anglo Saxons. The inevitable
ensued: one of the few surviros, Aneirin,
wrote an epic poem to commemorate the
action. This is the text that has been
dramatized by the alliance of Test
Department and and the Welsh-language
theatre group, Brith Gof.
A libretto need hardly be of Byzantine
complexity, but the starkness of the
scenario poses fundamental problems. For
Test Department, it could easily turn into
a figurative night to the hills - after the
more recent defeat for the forces around
whom their original identity was forged.
Their fascination with scrap metal and the
imagery of industrialism was suited to an
inner-urban squatter environment, artcollege fashions of the mid-Eighties, and
the cause of the miners.
The group responded to the pathological
condition of the political culture from
which it grew by finding new affinities with
the Celtic regions of the country. The
Gododdin were a people who lived to the
south of Edingurgh. Their old Welsh
language, Brythonic, was spoken in
Scotland, Wales, and north-west England regions partly contiguous with those in
which Test Department found a language
of solidarity five years ago.
Originally staged in an abandoned Rover
car factory in Cardiff, the production has
since toured Europe; constructing a
differently-shaped epic at each site. In
Glasgow, the Tramway theatre is the
venue, inside which a rectangular
performance area has been constructed
from breeze blocks, and filled with sand. It
is framed by the shed's own pillars,

augmented by 30 young pine trees. The

headlamps of half a dozen junk-yard cars,
whitewashed, adds to the illumination.
The performance begins almost
imperceptibly, as Lis Hughes Jones recites
from a central position on the balcony.
Then, to guttural blasts from the taped
soundtrack, the doors open. As the traffic
speeds by in the street outside, Test
Department enters on a fantastical cart
made of wood and scrap metal, torchlit. In
the male players' costumes of maroon
kilts, black cloaks, and Dr. Martens, they
circle the hall and climb to the percussion
instruments wailing on the gantry.
Then come the players; four men and two
women. After ritual grooming and heroic
postures, their haughty demeanour turns
to aggressive sham. Oil drums collide in
mid air and the audience realises that
quick reflexes are needed to avoid the
tyres whirled on ropes. The cars take a
fearful beating.
This is only the 'berserking'; the
preparatory ritual. As the battle draws
near, the nature of the enemy becomes
apparent. The warriors are completely
surrounded by dark figures behind the
trees; us. Meanwhile, the sandpit is slowly
flooding. The warriors sally forth. In their
rage, they swing the (free-hanging) trees
and push the spectators out of the way for
their manoeuvres. Test Department roll
crane-like carts along the old tramlines,
beat gongs, and drag balls on pulleys into
scrap metal sound boxes. For the final
assault, the warriors vanish and regroup,
entering line abreast behind shields made
of car bonnets and boot lids.

Defeat is signified by vain attempts at

climbing: a rope net and a corrugated
steel shutter (over which water plays) are
lowered. Finally, Test Department gather
to tend the fallen in the watery arena, as
Lis Hughes Jones sings a lament.
This is a spectacle of freedom; free, in
particular, from pseudo-sophistication,
self-conscious theory, and preciousness.
Elemental, wild and exhilarating, it is what
it is claimed to be: a celebration not of
defeat but of "the energy, optimism and
dynamism of the last great flowering of
Celtic society".
The fundamental question remains,
though. The physical commitment,
muscular and material, is rewarded: the
energy and dynamism are electrifying. But
in the end, this is the story of a band of
warriors who chose drunken fury over
discipline and tactical skill. Once that fury
has been acted out, little is left. For this
reason, perhaps, the coda was less
moving than it should have been. It did
not weave bonds with the present.
Nevertheless, Gododdin is an exceptional
achievement. For Test Department, it
marks their transition from youthful
essays into maturity. They now face the
challenge of extending their sonic range
beyond the bagpipes and precussion that
are entirely apt for this production.
These are probably the final days of
Gododdin. For obvious reasons, it will not
be performed in England, although the
battle is believed to have been fought at
Catterick. That is the loss of the English,
but then there's always the Charge of the
Light Brigade...

A story ...
I first met him at a talk he was giving at
Stanford. He was, as Michael often says,
quite a presence. Aura, definitely. He
didn't actually speak about Brith Gof and
Gododdin this time (it was about
representations of the past in Polar
expeditions), and for me, sometime later,
the juxtaposition of the tall gentle man in
black and the clashing Dionysiac
performance of Gododdin was certainly a
jarring one.
I'm not quite sure what I wanted to know
when I first wrote to him. At one point I
think I might have been trying to be
overly clever by following a thread (the
number 300) in Greek monuments
(Thermopylae and Chaeronea) and in the
battle of Gododdin. This of course was a
rather ridiculous conceit.
Now that I think about it, it was, instead
(at least today), an attempt to come to
grips with two things:
1. The notions of courage, battle,
liminality, the performance of
courage within this experiential
hodgepodge, and its crystallization
in time -- its traces. But also the
rather Homeric tension between
the event and/in time. Its
disappearance. And representation.
2. His own performance of such an
event, his recreation
representation, and his own
dialogue with temporality and the
event.

Such things can often be distilled into

totemic entities, as Michael was telling me
last week. A sound, an image, these can
contain all the incredible complexities of
experience (an Experience?), all deeply
embedded in one aleph-like symbol.
This is why I alighted upon battle
monuments. These (often simplistic)
material symbols are incredibly effective
in evoking an experience, both in the first
person -- this is what battle was like for
me -- and in the third person. Not only
the experience of battle, but a whole
series of notions: courage, death,
patriotism, love, sacrifice, hardship, terror,
fear, etc.
Battle monuments also provide, both as
material objects and as symbols, a grand
overarching narrative through which the
experience of battle can be justified.
Suffering is thus worth it, because it was
in the service of (insert abstract entity
here). I realize I might come across a bit
glib here, and you would be right in
chastising me for it. It takes personal
belief in these abstract entities to justify
suffering through them.
Aneirin's elegiac poem might just be one
such symbol.

Review of Gododdin, from The

Scotsman
It may appear perverse to suggest that a
production which is a joint venture
between a theatre company, Brith Gof,
and a musical group, Test Dept, and one

which goes out of its way to reproduce,

through a series of drones, wails, skirls,
and clashing metallic objects, all the din
and clamour of battle is somehow
reminiscent of silent cinema,
yetGododdin playing at the Tramway in
Glasgow, brought to mind images from
the work of cinema pioneers like D. W.
Griffith.
The performers strive in silence, while the
words, in a mixture of Welsh and English,
are spoken, or more precisely declaimed,
by an actress perched on an eyrie far
above the surge of events.
The text is taken from an ancient Welsh
bardic piece, commemorating the
despairing prowess of a band of Celtic
warriors in a site near Edinburgh, where
they hurled themselves against a superior
Saxon army. Predictably, they were wiped
out, but Celtic legend is made of such
gestures.
No gestures are grander than those of the
performers. The environment of what
must be the most flexible theatre in
Britain is transformed with a long central
sandpit accommodating three scaffolding
towers which provide the playing area.
While painted cars with headlights blaring
and a forest of hanging trees surround
this space, and here the spectators stand,
crouch and - very frequently - flee for
their lives.
Promenade Theatre is too wan a
description for this spectacle, since the
audience is dragged willy-nilly into the

action, and will have to keep attentive to

avoid the performers, who leap in their
midst, swing massive rubber tyres in their
direction or hurl steel barrels either into
pools of water or at the pillars behind
which the prescient spectator will cower.
For a brief period at the beginning, the
performers enjoy the luxury of marching
or strutting on fresh sand, but decidedly
chilly water cascades down two of the
towers flooding the performing area and
transforming it into swamp land.
Here the rival champions meet and here,
in the rising water, they lie when they are
struck down.
The design recreates to perfection a land
of mythic twilight and the choreography is
sustained in its imaginativeness. Together
they produce the illusion of the revived
world of legendary heroes.
The actors march in disciplined formation,
they form pyramid structures, they hurtle
into each other and attempt to scramble
up walls at times of siege. The materials
come from various ages, but the
impression given is compact and
coherent...
The production draws the admiration
which must go to any project ambitious in
aim and original in execution. There is
nothing humdrum about it, the
commitment of the actors is absolute, and
the work provides images for the eye and
spectacle for the imagination.