Culture and Regular Events
The town's small traditional theatre and cinema, the Savoy Theatre, on Church Street, is believed to be the oldest working theatre in Wales. Monmouth is also home to the Blake Theatre, which opened in 2004. Local performance groups include the Off Centre Theatre Company, Monmouth Operatic Society, Monmouth Choral Society, and the Merlin Society, one of the largest music societies in the country. Presently, it is the only town within the region not to have some form of nightclub or predominant music venue.
The Monmouthshire Show (formerly the Monmouth Show) has been held each year, traditionally on the last Thursday of August, since 1919, though its history can be traced back to 1857. Prior to that there had been an agricultural society in the town dating back to the 1790s, which held ploughing competitions. The show is now the largest one-day agricultural show in Wales, with over 350 trade stands.
The Monmouth Festival, a free nine day music festival, has been running every year since 1982 and is one of the largest free music festivals in Europe. The town also holds the Rockfield Country Music Festival and the Monmouth Women's Festival each year. An annual regatta is held, each May, and a raft race takes place each year for the St David's Foundation.
The Monmouth Museum, formerly the Nelson Museum, is home to one of the largest collections of Nelson material, bequeathed to the town by Lady Llangattock, mother of Charles Rolls. It also displays the only known example of an original Monmouth cap, dating from the 16th century. A small Regimental Museum established in 1989 is housed in Great Castle House, a former town house built on the site of part of Monmouth Castle.
Monmouth is twinned with the French town of Carbonne, and Waldbronn in Germany.
The Shire Hall and surrounding area were used as a location for the 2008 Doctor Who Christmas special and in 2011 The Interactives graphic novel.
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Famous quotes containing the words culture and, culture, regular and/or events:
“Culture and possessions—there is the bourgeoisie for you.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“The anorexic prefigures this culture in rather a poetic fashion by trying to keep it at bay. He refuses lack. He says: I lack nothing, therefore I shall not eat. With the overweight person, it is the opposite: he refuses fullness, repletion. He says, I lack everything, so I will eat anything at all. The anorexic staves off lack by emptiness, the overweight person staves off fullness by excess. Both are homeopathic final solutions, solutions by extermination.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,—the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man’s treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“On the most profitable lie, the course of events presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient footing, and makes their business a friendship.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)