‘I was never taught Welsh history’: Michael Sheen on reclaiming rebel leader Owain Glyndŵr
I Was Never Taught Welsh: Sheen on Glyndŵr
Wanderstayfinder.com – Autumn 2026 delivers what Welsh cultural life has lacked for centuries: a full-scale stage telling of the early-fifteenth-century revolt against English crown authority, starring Michael Sheen as the nobleman Owain Glyndŵr. The production, titled Owain & Henry, arrives amid a sharp renegotiation of Welsh political identity. For Sheen, the project is also a reckoning with his own schooling. As he puts it, "I was never taught Welsh" history in any meaningful sense, and that silence shaped how he understood his own nation for decades.
A Gap in the Curriculum, a Gap in the Stage
British theatres and bookshops have long centred English, Scottish, and Irish historical narratives. Wales has sat conspicuously outside that canon. Sheen, who grew up in south Wales, remembers his school years containing no instruction on the Glyndŵr rebellion. The name drifted through ambient conversation, but the substance of the story was entirely absent from his education. "I was never taught Welsh" history, he says plainly. "It wasn't on the curriculum. And again, that tells you something."
"He meant absolutely nothing to me. I was never taught about him. His name existed in the cultural collective consciousness, so at some point I became aware of it, but I knew nothing about his story. I was never taught Welsh history. It wasn't on the curriculum."
The omission is not merely academic. In a public poll, Glyndŵr was ranked the second most significant Welsh figure of all time, trailing only Aneurin Bevan, the politician credited with designing the National Health Service. Yet no large-scale dramatic treatment had ever been mounted. "Nobody's ever done anything about him on this scale before," Sheen observed. "That tells a story in itself."
Scale, Origin, and the Man Behind the Myth
The staging will occupy the Donald Gordon theatre inside the Wales Millennium Centre, whose stage is the second largest in Europe. Sheen's own fledgling company, Welsh National Theatre, will mount the production with the Millennium Centre as co-producer. Sheen notes that ambitious, large-cast Welsh plays written specifically for major venues remain exceedingly rare; most Welsh playwrights must tailor work to intimate studio settings and casts of two or three performers.
The script was written by Gary Owen, an Olivier Award–winning Welsh playwright who conceived the sweeping version of the Glyndŵr narrative during pandemic lockdowns, when theatrical production seemed indefinitely suspended. Freed from commercial limitation, Owen wrote the piece without constraint. "During Covid, during the lockdown, he thought, no one's going to ever see this play anyway, so I might as well write it the way I want to write it," Sheen recalled.
Sheen characterises Glyndŵr as a deeply improbable revolutionary. Born into landed privilege, the man had inherited substantial estates, spent years in the employ of English aristocrats, fought alongside King Richard II's forces in Scotland and against French armies, and received legal training at the Inns of Court in London. By every conventional measure he was embedded within the English power structure. The rupture came through a property dispute with his neighbour, the Englishman Reginald de Grey. What began as a boundary argument escalated into a campaign of legal persecution in which Glyndŵr was effectively branded a traitor. He was no ideologue marching to war by choice; he was cornered into armed resistance to protect himself and his family from ruin.
"He wasn't the big crusading rebel leader. He found himself in a position where he had to fight back, otherwise really bad things were going to happen for him and his family. So he was sort of forced into it."
The production will be performed in English, yet its thematic weight lands squarely on contemporary Welsh politics. Earlier in 2026, Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, swept the Senedd elections, terminating a century of Labour dominance in the devolved assembly. The result created a dual-governance arrangement that makes the centuries-old question of Welsh sovereignty feel immediate rather than archival.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where and when will Owain & Henry be performed? The production is staged at the Donald Gordon theatre within the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff. It is mounted by Welsh National Theatre with the Millennium Centre as co-producer.
Who wrote the play, and how did it come about? Gary Owen, an Olivier Award–winning Welsh playwright, wrote the script during pandemic lockdowns. He conceived the large-scale version of the Glyndŵr narrative when theatrical production was suspended, writing without commercial limitation.
Is the performance in Welsh or English? The production will be performed in English.
What prompted Sheen to take on the role? Sheen cites both the cultural void—a second-ranked Welsh historical figure with no large-scale dramatic treatment—and his own personal experience of growing up without formal instruction on the Glyndŵr rebellion in his Welsh schooling.