Memory involves places, people, things and words, especially words. This abstract proposition is given knotty life in Welsh playwright Ed Thomas's extraordinary new play, On Bear Ridge, which comes to the Royal Court after opening at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff last month.

I’ve always written alone. As a novelist, that’s what you do. Sit around in your pyjamas composing sentences that come almost entirely from your own imagination. It’s difficult sometimes to conjure the self-discipline required to complete a draft in a satisfactory period of time, but it is always safe. The first draft is supposed to be dross. Nobody’s going to see it. My first play was written that way, too.

While Christmas is the season when traditional theatres trot out the tired clichés of panto, the ever-innovative National Theatre Wales have decided, in their wisdom, to stage a surreal, psychedelic theatre-gig at the Sophia Gardens cricket ground in Cardiff.

Iliad is the third collaboration between National Theatre Wales and “the two Mikes”, directorial duo Pearson and Brookes. The pair have been responsible for two previous highlights of the still young company’s back catalogue, The Persians (2010) and Coriolan/us (2012). Aeschylus was re-imagined on a Brecon Beacons military range and Shakespeare recast in an RAF aircraft hangar, so it is perhaps surprising that the ultimate epic drama of war is staged in an actual theatre, the compact and modern Ffwrnes in Llanelli.

If the Trocks didn't exist, we would have to invent them. Every genre needs its loving parodists, treading the fine line between homage and dommage, and an art form as stylised and convention-governed as classical dance is riper for it than most - as evidenced by the continuing worldwide success of this all-male comedy troupe after more than 40 years.

The Trojan War has been going on for nine years when Homer's account begins in The Iliad. Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes have been developing their version of the story, using Christopher Logue's War Music, for nearly half as long. True, when they staged The Persians by Aeschylus for National Theatre Wales in 2010, The Iliad was not yet on the agenda, but now they say that a through-line is clear from that production to their present National Theatre Wales project.

The brackets around {150} are ambiguous, almost apologetic. The 150th anniversary of Y Wladfa (The Colony), the semi-legendary "oasis of Welshness" in the Patagonian wilderness has given occasion in Wales for the celebration of a most unlikely story. One hundred and fifty men, women and children left their homes all over Wales and created a new life for themselves, against all the odds, at the other end of the world. Sixty-six came from the villages around Aberdare and Mountain Ash in a valley 15 miles north of Cardiff.

Gruff Rhys has called it the Great Welsh Media Gang-Bang. This year everyone who is anyone (who can get funding) has hopped on a plane for Argentina to follow in the footsteps of the 150 Welsh men, women and children who emigrated to Patagonia 150 years ago – broadcasters, musicians, politicians, journalists, comedians.

For many the story of Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas will be familiar. It has been told in many forms, and powerful and inspirational as it is, many times too. Thomas (known to all bar his mam as “Alfie”) is now not just a totemic figure in the sport he graced for 16 years, but a symbol of courage and hope for the LGBT community and indeed anyone who has at some point in their lives felt the walls closing in.