Michael Sheen is self-financing a new national theater in his native Wales.
The Good Omens, Twilight and Staged star will launch a theater company to fill the gap left by the 2024 shutdown of National Theatre Wales, forced to close after a £1.6 million ($1.96m) funding cut.
Sheen will be the artistic director of the Welsh National Theatre and plans to feature in its first production, currently set for fall 2026 at Cardiff’s Millennium Centre stage.
The actor said the closure of National Theatre Wales was “incredibly sad, but not a surprise”, and that it motivated him to find a solution. “[I realized] if we don’t find a way to reimagine the way forward, it may be a long time — if ever — that we have the opportunity to have a national theater in Wales again.”
“I want it to be something that represents the rich culture that we are and always have been in this country,” he continued, explaining that the company is seeking private and public funding but self-financing initially allows the business to stand “on its own two feet”.
“We want to please ourselves but thrill the world. I want to be able to tell big stories on big stages for big audiences.”
Sheen — known as a vibrant stage actor in the U.K., picking up accolades for roles in Hamlet, Henry V, and Caligula — starred in one of National Theatre Wales’s first productions, The Passion, in 2011.
From February to June in 2024, Sheen performed on stage as NHS founder Aneurin Bevan in Nye, a play written by Tim Price and directed by Rufus Norris, which ran at the Wales Millennium Centre for a short period. Its success inspired Sheen, as Nye was co-produced by the National Theatre and Wales Millennium Centre.
“Welsh writers and Welsh theater makers have to be at the forefront of this. And our Welsh stories have to be the heart of it,” Sheen added. “I think if you put that on with ambition and audacity, with creativity and innovation, then people will respond to it.”
