This year marks a century since the Park and Dare Theatre in Treorchy, Rhondda, opened, thanks to funding from local miners who wanted a centre for the arts at the heart of their community.
Long after the last of the pits closed, the venue continues to delight audiences with music, theatre, cinema and dance. It has a packed schedule of events planned throughout 2013, including a production which will attempt to tell the building's story during some of the great historic events of the last 100 years.
Flights Of Fancy/Hedfa'r Dychymyg is a music and dance based piece which weaves together amateur and professional performers.
Dancers rehearse Flights Of Fancy
Directed by Phil Williams, it boasts a huge cast aged from 11-95. Conventions of the theatrical stage are thrown on their head, with the audience seated on the stage and the action taking place at all levels of the Park and Dare's stunning auditorium as a stage is erected over the stalls and musicians perform in the upper circle and the balcony.
Phil told me: "What we've done is split the events of the last century into five 20-year sections for the first half and we have made it as relevant to the history of the theatre and the local community as possible.
"The first half features 60 performers from five local groups and is set to music through the various ages sung by the Siren Sisters, a 1940s singing trio.
"The songs range from Keep The Home Fires Burning and Putting On The Ritz at the start of the performance, to pieces by Mark Bolan and T Rex and Bowie and an acapella version of the Doctor Who theme tune."
Phil Williams
The 1913-33 section has seen Phil working with Cofio, a dance group for older women in Maerdy, and will see women in their 80s and 90s remembering dance theatre. The section will chronicle some of the events of World War One and the Senghenydd colliery disaster of 1913, but Phil is keen not to make it too morbid.
He said: "I've tried to make it of local interest but I wanted it to appeal to people from outside the local area as well and make it more than just a theatrical piece.
"It will also touch on the era of glamorous black and white female film stars, as well as the founding years of the NHS, the closure of the mines and the Thatcher era.
"During the mine protests 20 young people from Treorchy Comprehensive will march onto the stage brandishing banners."
The performance will also pay homage to Doctor Who - the episode Daleks in Manhattan was filmed at the Park and Dare - with a nod to the fantastical technicolour world of science fiction, and features colour and couture costume by designer Paul Shriek.
Paul Shriek creating costumes for Flights Of Fancy
The second half of the show features a performance from National Dance Company Wales set to a specially commissioned score composed by Jak Poore and sung by Welsh National Opera.
"It's a real feast for the senses and a wonderful celebration of the building as the audience will get to see the theatre in a very different way," added Phil.
It is just one of five shows planned for the centenary year. Others planned include a new play, Tonypandymonium by the author Rachel Trezise, which is being put on by National Theatre Wales in November.
In March the theatre hosted a Song of the Building/Cân Yr Adeilad project, a musical celebration created to echo the crucial cultural role in the community and region the building has played, while looking forward to its future.
Flights Of Fancy has been created with the funding support of Arts Council of Wales and runs from 14-18 of May. Tickets are available from the Park and Dare Theatre in person or by calling 08000 147 111. For information visit rct-arts.co.uk.
