Abstract
The launch of the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) in 2006 was an historic moment. Based in administrative offices in Glasgow, but with no theatre building of its own, the NTS was established as a “theatre without walls.” The appointment of Vicky Featherstone, an Englishwoman with a strong understanding of contemporary Scottish theatre and the Scottish theatrical landscape, as the first artistic director of Scotland’s national theatre company sent a clear message regarding the intent of the NTS board. Anyone who hoped that the NTS would attempt to defy the broadly accepted wisdom that Scotland has little by way of a theatrical tradition was going to be disappointed. Featherstone, who had been artistic director of London-based touring company and new writing specialists Paines Plough between 1997 and 2005, was not going to embark on a project of trying to excavate the supposed lost gems of Scottish theatre history. Not only was the director’s primary interest in new writing, but her time at Paines Plough had given her considerable experience of both new Scottish theatre writers and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh (which, as we have seen above, defines itself as Scotland’s new writing theatre). Before arriving at the NTS, Featherstone had directed numerous new plays by Scottish writers, including The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union (1999) and Pyrenees (2005), both by David Greig, and Linda McLean’s Riddance (1999). Moreover, during her time as director at Paines Plough, the company produced the premiere of Anthony Neilson’s Stitching (2002), which was presented at the Traverse and directed by the playwright himself.
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Notes
- 1.
First in temporary office space in the city centre, then in more permanent accommodation in Speirs Locks in the north-west of the city. In 2017 the NTS unveiled its new headquarters, Rockvilla (not far from its previous offices in Speirs Locks), which not only offer expanded office space, but also bespoke rehearsal rooms, wardrobe and other storage facilities.
- 2.
This innovative model allows work to be premiered in any venue in the country, large or small, including non-traditional spaces. The model has received international attention and acclaim. It was soon applied to the launch of the National Theatre of Wales in 2009. The proposal to apply elements of the model to the work of the Abbey Theatre , Dublin was significant in the appointment of Graham McLaren and Neil Murray (previously associate director and executive producer of the NTS) as joint directors of Ireland’s national theatre company, taking up their roles in January 2017. See report in The Herald (Glasgow: 21/7/2015): www.heraldscotland.com/news/13486822.Key_staff_leave_National_Theatre_of_Scotland_to_run_Abbey_Theatre_in_Dublin (accessed 9/1/2017).
- 3.
See Chap. 2 of this work.
- 4.
Without question the most critically acclaimed production of the NTS’s relatively short history, Black Watch has been re-cast a number of times as it has been revived for national and international tours. At the time of writing (January 2017), the show was also the NTS’s biggest grossing production at the box office, bringing in more than £6 million in ticket sales (source: NTS).
- 5.
Featherstone and Tiffany met at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds in the early 1990s, when Featherstone was in a junior directorial position and Tiffany was on a placement from his studies at Glasgow University. Tiffany would become literary director of the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh (1997–2001), before working as associate director under Featherstone at Paines Plough (2001–2005), the National Theatre of Scotland (2006–2013) and the Royal Court , London (2013 to the present). Tiffany has received numerous awards for his 2006 production of Black Watch. He also received the Best Direction of a Musical prize in the 2012 Tony Awards for his staging of Once, a new musical based upon the 2007 film by John Carney.
- 6.
Just as John McGrath’s famous play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil was performed largely in Highland and other Scottish working-class accents, and partly in Gaelic , so Black Watch was played largely in the working-class Fife and Tayside vernacular of the former soldiers.
- 7.
At the time of writing (January 2017), the new artistic director of the NTS, Jackie Wylie, was not yet in post. She did, however, grant me an exclusive interview for use in this book. Quotes from that interview appear in the next, concluding chapter.
- 8.
A co-production with Graham Eatough and David Greig’s company Suspect Culture.
- 9.
A revival of Anthony Neilson’s 2004 Edinburgh International Festival production of his own play.
- 10.
Henrik Ibsen’s modern classic directed by Dominic Hill in a co-production with Dundee Rep.
- 11.
Luigi Pirandello’s famous Modernist play directed by Mark Thomson in a co-production by the Royal Lyceum , Edinburgh and the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow.
- 12.
Based upon the Flemish-language play by Belgian theatre company Victoria, directed by Pol Heyvaert from the Flemish group. For more on this production see below in this chapter.
- 13.
A critically dismissed play by David Harrower which was presented at the Edinburgh International Festival. For more on this play, see Chap. 5.
- 14.
Federico García Lorca’s classic play in a new version by Rona Munro, directed by John Tiffany. Re-set among gangsters in contemporary Glasgow, it split critical opinion, mainly between middling and negative assessments. In his lukewarm review, Mark Fisher of The Guardian (20/9/2009) opined that, “Rona Munro’s bold translation for the National Theatre of Scotland is not the gimmick it may sound”: www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/sep/20/house-of-bernarda-alba-review (accessed 10/1/2017). My own assessment was that Munro’s text and Tiffany’s directing resulted in a production that destroyed Lorca’s sense of duende (the spiritual and aesthetic heart of Flamenco culture) and was, consequently, “toe-curlingly awful”; in review of Lorca’s Blood Wedding at Dundee Rep, Daily Telegraph, 12/3/2015: www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/11459473/Blood-Wedding-Dundee-Rep-review-lacking-poetry.html (accessed 10/1/2017).
- 15.
An imaginative, Barkeresque “anti-historical” drama by Zinnie Harris. For a little more on this play, see Chap. 5.
- 16.
A postmodern take on David Harrower’s acclaimed 1995 play. Staged by Flemish director Lies Pauwels, famously of Victoria company, it split the critics. Writing in The Guardian (8/6/2011) Mark Fisher welcomed the production’s, “stretching, twisting and squeezing the play into new shapes.” By contrast, Michael Cox of website OnstageScotland observed, unfavourably, “[W]ith its forced-upon concept, the production comes across as an artistic war between writer and director” (June 2011). These quotations from Fisher and Cox , and my own negative appraisal of Pauwels’s production, can be found in my article ‘Lies Pauwels’ Staging of Knives in Hens: A Very European Experiment’ for the now defunct webjournal Prospero European Review (Rennes: 2011): scottishstage.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/journal-article-lies-pauwelss-knives-in-hens-a-very-european-experiment/ (accessed 29/10/2018).
- 17.
David Greig’s Macbeth sequel.
- 18.
Rob Drummond’s piece about writing which was conceived, written and solely performed by him. For more on this play see the concluding chapter of this volume.
- 19.
A site-specific piece by the late performance artist Adrian Howells, performed in and around the small pool of Govanhill Baths in Glasgow.
- 20.
Written and performed by Gary McNair. For more on McNair see the concluding chapter of this book.
- 21.
A site-specific work by Nic Green. For more on Green see the concluding chapter of this work.
- 22.
A devised combination of storytelling and music, by Kieran Hurley. For more on Hurley see the concluding chapter of this book.
- 23.
A co-production between Stewart Laing’s company Untitled Projects, the NTS, Summerhall , Edinburgh and Tramway , Glasgow. Part of the Edinburgh International Festival 2015. For more about this show see Chap. 5.
- 24.
A musical theatre piece in homage to the late Glaswegian humorist, poet and songwriter Ivor Cutler, conceived and directed by Matthew Lenton, artistic director of Vanishing Point theatre company, with text by Sandy Grierson and the company. It was a co-production between Vanishing Point and the NTS National Theatre of Scotland in association with Eden Court Theatre, Inverness.
- 25.
Based on the novel by Muriel Spark, adapted and directed by Laurie Sansom.
- 26.
Presented by Kai Fischer in association with the NTS.
- 27.
Zinnie Harris’s liberal adaptation of Aeschylus’ Greek tragedy The Oresteia. A co-production with the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, directed by Dominic Hill.
- 28.
A co-production between the NTS, Told By An Idiot, the Royal Lyceum , Edinburgh and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse.
- 29.
A co-production between the NTS and US company The TEAM, presented at the 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
- 30.
By Graham Eatough.
- 31.
By Frances Poet.
- 32.
Both classical directors who have a strong record with both classic Modernist plays and Modernist aesthetics. Hill’s Crime and Punishment, after Dostoyevsky (2013), and Thomson’s production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (2015), to take just two examples, are among the most acclaimed Modernist productions presented on the Scottish stage in recent years.
- 33.
- 34.
For more on this generation of artists see the concluding chapter to this volume.
- 35.
Vicky Featherstone, from interview with Mark Brown (NTS offices, Speirs Locks, Glasgow, 10/12/2012).
- 36.
In particular the fact that, of the four playwrights interviewed, Greig was the one who was most aware of being, and most conceptually committed to being, in a European Modernist tradition.
- 37.
Perhaps significantly, emerging in the years immediately after the European Capital of Culture events in Glasgow in 1990.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
A respected Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow, whose other credits included co-founding the Clyde Unity theatre company in 1986. See Mary Brennan, ‘Show salutes a teacher who inspired Scots theatre’, The Herald (Glasgow: 7/3/1995): heraldscotland.com/news/12540967.Show_salutes_a_teacher_who_inspired_Scots_theatre (accessed 6/1/2017).
- 40.
English stage director whose earliest work was at Scottish Opera and the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow.
- 41.
Featherstone, from interview (10/12/2012).
- 42.
The theatre’s smaller, studio space.
- 43.
Premiered in the Traverse Two studio theatre as part of the Traverse Edinburgh Fringe Festival programme in August 1998.
- 44.
Featherstone is referring here to the overwhelmingly hostile, often vitriolic, critical response to Kane’s first play, Blasted, when it premiered at the Upstairs studio at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1995, and to the largely negative critical notices for her two subsequent plays, Phaedra’s Love (Gate Theatre, London, 1996) and Cleansed (Royal Court, London, spring 1998). Quotation from interview (10/12/2012).
- 45.
See discussion with David Greig in Chap. 5.
- 46.
Featherstone, from interview (10/12/2012).
- 47.
See Chap. 3 for commentary on the problems Havergal’s Citizens Theatre had with this policy. Also note, in Chap. 5 of this book, that the current EIF director Fergus Linehan has broken with this policy, notably in staging a revival of Untitled Projects’ Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
- 48.
Sir Brian McMaster (1992–2006) and Sir Jonathan Mills (2006–2014).
- 49.
Featherstone, from interview (10/12/2012).
- 50.
The end of Sansom’s tenure at the NTS was announced abruptly and ambiguously in April 2016, leaving observers to speculate as to whether he had chosen to leave or been ousted due to an internal dispute. See Brian Ferguson , ‘Laurie Sansom exit leaves NTS with questions to answer’ (Edinburgh: The Scotsman, 18/4/2016): www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/brian-ferguson-laurie-sansom-exit-leaves-nts-with-questions-to-answer-1-4102911(accessed 11/1/2017).
- 51.
Laurie Sansom quoted in Mark Brown, ‘Laurie Sansom: An English guardian of Scottish cultural heritage’ (London: Daily Telegraph, 11/7/2013): www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/10146395/Laurie-Sansom-An-English-guardian-of-Scottish-cultural-heritage.html (accessed 11/1/2017).
- 52.
Ibid.
- 53.
Ibid.
- 54.
The many new works by theatremakers working in Scotland included such critically acclaimed shows as Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner (2013–2015), by Untitled Projects; Last Dream (On Earth) (2015–2016), by Kai Fischer; and This Restless House (2016), by Zinnie Harris.
- 55.
Indeed, the only such Scottish “classic” to be staged during Sansom’s tenure was the 2013–14 production of Joe Corrie’s 1926 miners’ strike play In Time O′ Strife.
- 56.
The trilogy received the full gamut of critical opinion. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Dominic Cavendish opined that Munro had superseded Shakespeare: “The James Plays leave the competition, namely Shakespeare’s Henry VI cycle, standing” (London: Daily Telegraph, 26/9/2014): www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/11124589/The-James-Plays-National-Theatre-review-better-than-Shakespeare.html (accessed 11/1/2017). By stark contrast, my own review for the Sunday Herald argued that “Munro’s seven-and-a-half hour epic is so overwhelmingly banal in its vernacular, so light in its intellectual touch and so weak in its dramatic shape that, by its stuttering conclusion, it feels like the biggest missed opportunity in the history of Scottish theatre” (Glasgow: Sunday Herald, 17/8/2014): www.heraldscotland.com/arts_ents/13175300.Keeping_up_with_the_Jameses_____but_badly (accessed 11/1/2017).
- 57.
A phenomenon seen in the work of Communicado theatre company (see Chap. 4) with shows such as Fergus Lamont (2007), based on Robin Jenkins’s 1979 novel, and Tam o’ Shanter (2009 and 2012), inspired by Robert Burns’s famous narrative poem, which was first published in 1791. This connection between Scottish literature and Modernist aesthetics on the stage was seen again at the 2015 Edinburgh International Festival in David Greig’s stage adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s magnum opus, the great Modernist prose fiction Lanark.
- 58.
I remember Tim Etchells, artistic director of the internationally renowned, Sheffield-based performance company Forced Entertainment telling me in conversation that although his company’s work was part of the mainstream on continental Europe, in the United Kingdom they were effectively told to “go and play in the corner” in specially designated spaces, away from the theatrical mainstream, such as Tramway.
- 59.
Mainly a devising company, as is common in Flanders (see e.g. the output of Edinburgh Festival Fringe regulars Ontroerend Goed), Victoria had been regular performers at Tramway prior to the NTS’s production of Aalst. In 2002, to take one example, Victoria astonished Scottish critics and audiences alike with üBUNG, a remarkable show, presented in T1 at Tramway , in which adolescent children on stage played out the roles of adult actors in the film being shown on the screen above their heads.
- 60.
For some examples of, and commentary on, this genre in British theatre see interview with Anthony Neilson in Chap. 5.
- 61.
Mark Fisher, review of Aalst, The Guardian (London: 29/3/2007): www.theguardian.com/stage/2007/mar/29/theatre2 (accessed 12/1/2017).
- 62.
W. G. Rogers quoted in the biography of Gertrude Stein on the website of the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/gertrude-stein (accessed 12/1/2017).
- 63.
Thom Dibdin, review of Aalst, The Stage (London: 2/4/2007): www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/2007/aalst-review-at-tramway-glasgow (accessed 12/1/2017).
- 64.
Ibid.
- 65.
Kane Adrian, review of Aalst, Powerhouse Theatre, Brisbane, Australian Stage website (Melbourne: 1/2/2008): www.australianstage.com.au/reviews/brisbane/aalst%2D%2Dnational-theatre-of-scotland-1080.html (accessed 12/1/2017).
- 66.
Mark Brown, review of Aalst, Daily Telegraph, (London:29/3/2007), p. 29. The application of musical terminology to theatre-making has a considerable heritage. We talk of Strindberg’s “chamber plays”. Composer and opera creator Philip Glass plays upon the notion of chamber works when he speaks of his “pocket operas”.
- 67.
Ibid.
- 68.
An international performance and visual arts venue which, despite its superb global reputation, has been starved of resources by its owner, Glasgow City Council, since the turn of the century, if not before, to the obvious detriment of its programming.
- 69.
A strand in the company’s work which continued with numerous productions, including Knives in Hens (see footnote 16 of this chapter) and in the work of Simon Sharkey, director of NTS Learn (the company’s department for learning, which includes collaborative community theatre projects on local, national and international bases); see Mark Brown, ‘Beyond Borders’, interview with Sharkey re. NTS Learn’s Home Away project, Sunday Herald (Glasgow: 2/10/2016): www.heraldscotland.com/arts_ents/stage/14777088.Beyond_borders__preview_of_the_NTS__39_s_Home_Away_programme (accessed 13/1/2017).
- 70.
Encyclopedia entry on Tzara on the website The Art Story: www.theartstory.org/artist-tzara-tristan.htm (accessed 13/1/2017).
- 71.
Peter Nicholls, Modernisms: A Literary Guide (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 261.
- 72.
From Untitled Projects company website: www.untitledprojects.co.uk/projects/confessions-of-a-justified-sinner (accessed 13/1/2017).
- 73.
Ibid.
- 74.
This element of the production was far more effective at Tramway in 2013 than during the show’s revival at Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh during the 2015 Edinburgh International Festival (EIF). Presenting the piece at Queen’s Hall was an appropriately neat joke (as, according to Laing’s tale, part of Bright’s Confessions had been staged in that very building during an edition of the EIF). However, unlike the highly versatile T1 performance space in Tramway , where the company was able to create a bespoke museum room between the entrance to the auditorium and the stage, thereby enabling, indeed almost requiring, audience members to give the exhibition their undivided attention, Queen’s Hall allowed only for the arrangement of the exhibits in cramped spaces to either side of the stage, thereby diminishing the influence of the exhibition materials considerably.
- 75.
Influential English dramatist and performer whose works include An Oak Tree (2005) and ENGLAND (2007).
- 76.
Acclaimed. UK-based American writer and director for screen and stage.
- 77.
In one particularly humorous interview, while Havergal (see Chap. 3 of this work) speaks, in what we assume to be his London home, about Bright and his work, a young man, wearing nothing but a bath towel, walks across the back of the shot; an affectionate, homoerotic gag that, among other things, evoked gently the daring sexuality of Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre under Havergal’s directorship.
- 78.
Internationally renowned stage director whose works include Pelléas and Mélisande by Claude Debussy at the Aix-en-Provence Festival and Sarah Kane’s Cleansed at the National Theatre, London (both 2016).
- 79.
Leading Scottish actor and theatre director. Peebles was a founding co-director of Communicado theatre company (see Chap. 4 of this book).
- 80.
My own agnosticism was only punctured when I recognised some of Bright’s supposed actors in films purported to be from the 1980s as, in fact, recent students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland where I am a regular guest teacher.
- 81.
Joyce McMillan, review of Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, The Scotsman (Edinburgh: 19/6/2013): joycemcmillan.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/paul-brights-confessions-of-a-justified-sinner (accessed 14/1/2017).
- 82.
Ibid.
- 83.
Mark Fisher, review of Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, The Guardian (London: 21/6/2013), p. 41.
- 84.
Mark Brown, review of Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Daily Telegraph (London: 19/6/2013): www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/10131138/Paul-Brights-Confessions-of-a-Justified-Sinner-Tramway-Glasgow-review.html (accessed 14/1/2017).
- 85.
I still believe that Paul Bright’s Confessions stands as a sharp challenge to the project of establishing “truth” through live drama on the part of many verbatim theatremakers (for more on verbatim drama, see interview with Anthony Neilson in Chap. 5).
- 86.
The announcement, in October 2016, that Jackie Wylie, former artistic director of The Arches venue in Glasgow and a specialist in devised and non-conventional theatre, was to become artistic director of the NTS (taking up her post in the Spring of 2017) was, perhaps, an indication that the national company was set to engage even more strongly with work that belongs to the European Modernist tradition. For more on Jackie Wylie see the concluding chapter of this work.
- 87.
As is suggested elsewhere in this book, Harrower’s 365 (see Chap. 5), Rona Munro’s adaptation of Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba (see this chapter above) and Lies Pauwels’s rendering of David Harrower’s Knives in Hens (see Harrower interview in Chap. 5) were badly misconceived. The same might be said of Suspect Culture’s Futurology (see this chapter above).
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Brown, M. (2019). The National Theatre of Scotland: Mapping onto the Landscape. In: Modernism and Scottish Theatre since 1969. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98639-5_6
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