James Roose-Evans

"As a boy of nine or ten I used to sit in the window seat on the first floor landing of my grandfather's house in the Forest of Dean, and gaze at the Black Mountains in the distance. They weren't always black, but mostly as mauve and blue as Housman's 'blue remembered hills'. Beyond them lay another country called Wales, which for me was as wrapped in mystery as the mountains often were in mist. It was a land where people spoke a different language, played harps and, so I was told, sang like angels Little did I know that one day I would have a home there ..." And little did James Roose-Evans know that in moving to Wales he was also setting out on a different kind of journey altogether - a spiritual adventure into the unknown. For more than fifty years James has kept a journal. Here he draws on his Welsh diaries to evoke a sense of the timeless and magical world of Radnorshire: the landscape, its people and a quality of life in the Welsh Borders which still to this day attracts so many writers, artists, musicians, sculptors and seekers.

`It is a pleasure to read. Well-written, free of cant, impressively wide-ranging. The book is really an introduction to the avant-garde.' - John Lahr

Ritual theatre is a powerful healing system that has been practised since ancient times by early societies and in tribal communities. It has the ability to effect deep transformation in its participants, support growth and development, and resolve personal issues.This book considers the relevance of ritual theatre in contemporary life and describes how it is being used as a highly cathartic therapeutic process. With contributions from leading experts in the field of dramatherapy, the book brings together a broad spectrum of approaches to ritual theatre as a healing system. It explores the anthropological and tribal roots of dramatic ritual and proposes that ritual theatre finds its most potent expression in personal development work. The practical application of ritual theatre in various clinical settings is discussed and the final chapters explore the possibilities of ritual theatre as performance.Offering a comprehensive discourse on the theory, application and potential of ritual theatre, this book will be an essential text for all students and practitioners of dramatherapy, arts therapists, psychotherapists, psychologists, counsellors and theatre professionals.

Poet Laurie Lee was born in 1914 in a small Cotswold village and grew up during a time of change when the rural traditions of past centuries were being swept aside in the path of twentieth-century progress. His autobiography Cider with Rosie, a poetic evocation of his childhood, has become a modern classic both in the United Kingdom and in America and is here imaginatively adapted for the stage by James Roose-Evans.4 women, 5 men

James Roose-Evans, one of Britain's most innovative directors, traces the origins of the avant-garde in the theatre through such key figures as Stanislavsky, Brecht and Grotowski.

This wonderful show is a dramatization of business letters between a young struggling writer in New York and an antiquarian book store in London. In a sense, these are also love letters. They are about the love of good literature. The play takes place over a twenty year period, beginning in 1949 when Helene Hanff (played on Broadway by Ellen Burstyn) first writes Marks & Co. and ends in 1969 with the death of Frank Doel, the delightfully dusty supplier of so many old volumes to Helen who has shown her gratitude through the years by sending "care packages" to the staff of Marks & Co.