2011 - National Theatre of Scotland brochure - Five Dramatic Years

2011

BLACK WATCH THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART REVEAL - DIASPORA

ÒRAN MÓR INTERNATIONAL SEASON

LOVE LETTERS TO THE PUBLIC

TRANSPORT SYSTEM

COUNT ME IN

GIRL X

SOMERSAULTS

ROMAN BRIDGE BEAUTIFUL BURNOUT EXTREME DUNSINANE KNIVES IN HENS TALL TALES FOR LITTLE PEOPLE/

CALUM’S ROAD MEN SHOULD WEEP THE MISSING 27 TRUANT A CHRISTMAS CAROL

FIVE DRAMATIC YEARS

As a Theatre Without Walls it is rare that any one person in Scotland is able to experience the true range and scope of the work we do.

This programme for the calendar year 2011 is a great example of that breadth and variety as we aspire to be a truly great national theatre for all the people of Scotland.

This work is only made possible through the great partnerships we have nurtured over the last five years with theatres, with artists, with local authorities and schools, with the Government and now with Bank of Scotland.

This milestone year for the National Theatre of Scotland coincides with times of great change in our world and more than ever we must look to the artists and to the shared experience of theatre to open our imaginations to the possibility of what we can achieve together.

VICKY FEATHERSTONE, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND

Image/ Monday 20th December: “Vicky” from ‘1pm’ Danny Brown/ Blipfoto

BLIPFOTO

In 2010 the National Theatre of Scotland created a global online photography competition called Unstaged in partnership with Channel 4, Scottish Screen and Blipfoto.

Blipfoto is a photo journal where members upload a photo a day. The site has become hugely successful with millions of page views per month and in 2009 Blipfoto won the BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Website.

We ran two competitions, one with the theme 'Scotland at Play', the other 'Theatre of Everyday Life'. We had 5000 entries from around the world and now that the competition has closed, a catalogue of stunning images exists that represent a global reaction to the themes we set.

A collection of these images were selected to represent the National Theatre of Scotland 2011 season and a selection of them is included in this brochure.

See all these images and more at www.blipfoto.com

STAGING THE NATION:

A CONVERSATION ABOUT THEATRE IN SCOTLAND – PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. IN ITS FIFTH BIRTHDAY YEAR, THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND IS FACILITATING, RESUMING, PROVOKING AND JOINING A NATIONAL CONVERSATION ABOUT THEATRE WITH SCOTTISH ARTISTS AND AUDIENCES.

Taking many forms and open to all, this national conversation creates an opportunity to continue to explore theatre in Scotland. What is the inherited Scottish theatrical legacy and is it still relevant today? What is the shared Scottish cultural heritage and what does theatre mean to the people of Scotland now and in the future? What partnerships can we build and nurture to put theatre truly at the heart of Scottish life?

Full details of all the events and ways to get involved will be announced and published online during 2011.

ARTIST CONVERSATIONS

Throughout 2011, the National Theatre of Scotland will be hosting a series of conversations to explore the dramatic legacy Scotland has given to the world. Each event will unite audiences with some of the country’s most interesting and creative minds to discuss and debate Scotland’s cultural landmarks.

Taking place across Scotland, in locations and venues with artistic resonance, each conversation will be led by a different artist to uncover and explore different topics: New Writing, Art, Design and Theatre, Political Theatre, Variety and a final topic to be decided by the public.

JOIN THE DEBATE

During the course of the year, some of the country’s most interesting thinkers will be contributing online essays responding to and further provoking discussion. The National Theatre of Scotland will host opportunities to participate, including live online discussions.

FAVOURITE SCOTTISH PLAYS

The National Theatre of Scotland has asked Scotland’s finest writers to pick their favourite Scottish plays. Throughout 2011, the five most loved plays will be performed in staged readings by leading performers in five locations across the country.

FIVE MINUTE THEATRE

On June 21st 2011, five minute pieces of live theatre will be broadcast online to the world: 24 hours will be filled with global live theatre made and performed by anyone for a worldwide audience of everyone. Submissions for ideas and proposals will open on February 25th 2011.

BANK OF SCOTLAND PIONEERING PARTNERSHIP

Pioneering Partnership is a new sponsorship connecting Bank of Scotland and the National Theatre of Scotland in a relationship across a wide range of National Theatre of Scotland programme elements over two years. The partnership will offer geographic spread and reach across productions, initiatives, workshops and events particularly in the area of supporting creativity and emerging talent. For more details, see page 30.

SCOTTISHPOWER

In 2011, ScottishPower continues its support of the National Theatre of Scotland through the sponsorship of new community and education projects, including Truant (see page 25).

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THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART

A NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND PRODUCTION VICTORIAN BAR, TRON THEATRE, GLASGOW 9th & 10th February 2011 OWEN'S BAR, COATBRIDGE 11th February 2011 STAGE DOOR BAR, THE MALTINGS, BERWICK-UPON-TWEED 14th to 16th February 2011 GHILLIE DHU, EDINBURGH 21st & 22nd February 2011

CREATED BY WILS WILSON AND DAVID GREIG

THE CEILIDH PLACE, ULLAPOOL 25th & 26th February 2011 FURTHER TOUR DATES TO BE CONFIRMED

THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART, TOURING THROUGHOUT SCOTLAND EARLY IN 2011, IS A STORYTELLING SHOW BASED ON THE BORDER BALLADS.

Director Wils Wilson and playwright David Greig are bringing Prudencia Hart to pubs, howfs and other unlikely venues, in what promises to be a quirky, boisterous show in the Scottish folk tradition. “Pubs are a natural home for theatre,” says Wils. “They’re gathering places where stories are told and music is played. I really like the idea that you can be in a room somewhere, the doors shut and suddenly . . . anything can happen.”

So with the audience gathered, goosebumps nicely primed, what’s in store? “We’ve taken our inspiration partly from Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, with its heady mix of poetry, action and storytelling,” says Wils. “It’s exciting because you get the real world and the supernatural, the possible and the impossible, side by side in the same landscape, and the story can go anywhere.”

To find out more about the ballad tradition, the team spent some time meeting ballad singers and historians in the Borders. “Walter Scott might seem a bit unfashionable these days, and the ballads often get overlooked,” says Wils. “But if you approach them without baggage, you see what fantastic stories they are – full of great characters and emotions. And since the Ballads are part of an oral tradition, it feels fine to be playful and make them our own.”

Prudencia Hart herself doesn’t appear in the ballad books – she’s an invention inspired by a chance comment from Dr Valentina Bold, a lecturer in Scottish Studies who has a special interest in oral and song traditions in southern Scotland. “Valentina mentioned that ballad singers tend to have one special song that they, and nobody else, sing – their ultimate song, if you like,” explains Wils. “But, we wondered, what if you can’t find your song? And what does it mean to sing it? So we made Prudencia a ballad collector who goes on a quest to find her missing song. It’s a dangerous journey of selfdiscovery, and she may have to dance with the devil on the way.”

The music will also have plenty of playful invention from actor and composer Aly Macrae, who appeared in the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Peter Pan in 2010, and is also known for his subversive way with Scottishness in bands such as The Oatcakes, and successes with Vanishing Point theatre company. The trio previously collaborated on the National Theatre of Scotland children’s show, Gobbo (winner of Best Children’s Show at the 2007 Critics’ Award for Theatre in Scotland) where they realised adults would also enjoy imaginative storytelling in an informal setting. “We hope it’ll be a really great night out. Don’t be surprised if you find a fiddler at the next table, or catch yourself joining in the singing,” warns Wils.

Sir Walter Scott‘s own ballad collecting met with dire warnings from Margaret Hogg, wife of fellow ballad collector James Hogg, who said he’d spoilt the songs by putting them in a book. “They were made for singing an' no for reading; but ye hae broken the charm now, an' they'll never be sung mair.” Happily, she was wrong, and their spirit (and a few bogles) will rise again in this lively production.

THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART

by Jules Horne Playwright and journalist Image/ Sunday 13th June 2010: Blackness Castle from ‘Oor Trev’s Journal’ Trevor Griffin/ Blipfoto

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EXTREME

A CO-PRODUCTION BETWEEN ABERDEEN CITY COUNCIL AND THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND.

EXTREME

LED BY ABERDEEN CITY COUNCIL'S ARTS EDUCATION TEAM IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND AND TRANSITION EXTREME SPORTS LTD. EXTREME IS AN INSPIRE PROJECT SUPPORTED BY THE NATIONAL LOTTERY THROUGH CREATIVE SCOTLAND, WITH ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FROM SHELL AND THE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT. TAKING FLIGHT IN ABERDEEN, MARCH 2011 FIND OUT MORE AND GET INVOLVED WITH EXTREME: VISIT WWW.NATIONALTHEATRESCOTLAND.COM

CO-DIRECTED BY SIMON SHARKEY AND GRAHAM MCLAREN

A RUSH. IT’S WHAT PARTICIPANTS IN EXTREME SPORTS CRAVE – BE IT A BMXER PERFORMING A GRAVITY-DEFYING BACKFLIP, OR A CLIMBER FEARLESSLY SCALING A SHEER ROCK FACE. THIS AMBITIOUS PRODUCTION ASKS: CAN A SIMILAR SHOT OF ADRENALINE BE HAD FROM A THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE?

“One of the things we learned really early on was that the risk and the danger involved in doing an extreme sport can’t really be replicated,” says Extreme co-director Simon Sharkey of the eight-month community theatre project which began in August 2010. “What we’re looking for is an artistic equivalent of that,” he continues, “and we think we’ve found it.”

As the National Theatre of Scotland’s Associate Director (Learn), Sharkey has masterminded several groundbreaking, large-scale community theatre projects including the long-running Transform series and last year’s 99... 100.

Through a process of engagement with local schools and community groups and a series of trailblazer events, Extreme culminates in a major site-specific work staged in Aberdeen in March featuring a cast of around 400 young people, community participants and professional artists and incorporating dance, movement, visual arts, creative writing, video and various styles of music.

“People taking part will go on a journey which gives them a taste of what it means to take extreme measures and decisions that are similar to the ones that you have to take when you’re completing a jump on your bike or abseiling off the top of a cliff,” Sharkey explains. “You should have an adrenaline-fuelled sense of adventure as you go."

Anybody can get involved with Extreme no matter their age or fitness level. It is hoped the project will capture the imagination of anyone interested in discovering what motivates recreational risk-taking in its various forms.

The initial stimulus came from Transition Extreme, Aberdeen’s state-of-the-art urban sports centre. The network of professionals helping to shape the project range from a parkour artist and a digital music composer to a trio of Creative Catalysts – specialists in dance, movement and visual art.

They will work directly with young people in staging events such as extreme ceilidhs – freeform fusions of traditional ceilidh music and choreography with elements of hip-hop and drum and bass.

One of the Extreme trailblazer events – a flashmob in an Aberdeen shopping centre in October 2010 where a crowd suddenly broke out into a mass of spontaneous hi-octane Highland-flinging – proved just how fun and intoxicating extreme ceilidhs can be. “It was extraordinary the number of people that got involved,” remarks Extreme co-director, Graham McLaren. “Big old blokes brought their kids in and said ‘Oh, I’m not going to do that,’ and 15 minutes later they were jumping about with their hands in the air.”

Young or old, Sharkey reckons anyone who casts off their inhibitions and samples Extreme will be “totally in it”.

“It’s like being in your own movie, an experience that totally immerses you.

Sometimes it’s thrilling, sometimes it’s scary, sometimes it’s moving,” he enthuses.

“Only it’s live. It’s for real.”

Image/ Thursday 20th May 2010: ‘The Photographic Ethics of 'The Make'...’ from ‘Tractor Factory Photos’ Neil Currie/ Blipfoto

By Malcolm Jack Freelance arts journalist

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BEAUTIFUL BURNOUT

PRESENTED BY FRANTIC ASSEMBLY AND THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND

A NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND PRODUCTION

ST ANN’S WAREHOUSE, NEW YORK 25th FEBRUARY to 27th MARCH 2011

SIDNEY HARMAN HALL, WASHINGTON 26th JANUARY to 6th FEBRUARY 2011

Beautiful Burnout contains strong language and scenes of a violent nature. An age guide of 14+ is recommended.

MEMORIAL HALL, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA 9th to 13th FEBRUARY 2011

REVIEWS OF BEAUTIFUL BURNOUT

WRITTEN BY BRYONY LAVERY DIRECTED AND CHOREOGRAPHED BY SCOTT GRAHAM AND STEVEN HOGGETT FEATURING THE MUSIC OF UNDERWORLD

"A BRILLIANTLY ACTED EXPLORATION OF WHAT MAKES BOXERS BOX AND WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A SHOOTING STAR SHIMMERS, SHINES BRIGHTLY AND FALLS TO EARTH." THE GUARDIAN * * * *

BASS CONCERT HALL, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN 16th to 20th FEBRUARY 2011 WARWICK ARTS CENTRE, COVENTRY 8th to 12th MARCH 2011

"FRANTIC ASSEMBLY AND NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND’S BEAUTIFUL BURNOUT IS A TECHNICAL KNOCKOUT, BRINGING TO LIFE THE SWEAT AND POETRY OF BOXING. . ."

THE SUNDAY TIMES * * * *

ROTHES HALLS, GLENROTHES 16th to 19th MARCH 2011

"THE SUPER-FIT CAST ARE ROUNDLY EXCELLENT, PARTICULARLY THE YOUNG ACTORS WHO MEET THE CHALLENGE OF ACTING, BOXING AND DANCING OFTEN ALL AT ONCE." THE LIST * * * *

Black Watch contains very strong language, loud explosions and strobe lighting and an age guide of 16+ is suggested.

Black Watch is 1 hour and 50 minutes long with no interval.

"AN INTENSELY VISCERAL EXPERIENCE THAT RECREATES THE TESTOSTERONE-FUELLED EXCITEMENT OF A BOXING MATCH." METRO * * * *

“JOHN TIFFANY’S DIRECTION REMAINS UTTERLY DAZZLING. . . FROM THE TESTOSTERONEFUELLED BANTER AT HOME TO THE SEQUENCE AT CAMP DOGWOOD, WHERE THE TROOPS READ LETTERS FROM HOME, THERE ISN’T A DULL OR REDUNDANT MOMENT.” THE HERALD * * * * *

"STUNNING . . . OOZING QUALITY, THE ACTION SWITCHES SEAMLESSLY FROM SURREAL DANCE SEQUENCE TO HYPER-REALISTIC SPORTING ENACTMENT, POIGNANT SOLILOQUY TO KNOCKABOUT COMEDY . . ."

THE OBSERVER

BLACK WATCH

BY GREGORY BURKE. DIRECTED BY JOHN TIFFANY.

BROADWAY ARMORY, CHICAGO 29th MARCH to 10th APRIL 2011

REVIEWS FROM 2010

“BEG, STEAL OR BORROW TO GET YOURSELF A TICKET.” THE NEWS OF THE WORLD * * * * * “SO IT RETURNS, THE PRODUCTION THAT, IF THE WHOLE THING WAS DISBANDED TOMORROW, WOULD ENSURE THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND'S PLACE NOT JUST IN THE HISTORY OF SCOTTISH THEATRE BUT THEATRE EVERYWHERE.” THE TIMES * * * * “A SHOW OF ASTONISHING POWER.” THE SCOTSMAN * * * *

Image/ Monday 26th July 2010: ‘Last round’ from ‘Sabine Thoele’ Sabine Thoele/ Blipfoto 10

Image/ Tuesday 24th August 2010: ‘Vague’ from ‘sometime somewhere’ Will Collier/ Blipfoto

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DUNSINANE

THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND PRESENTS THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY’S PRODUCTION OF DUNSINANE IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE, EDINBURGH. ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE, EDINBURGH 13th MAY to 4th JUNE 2011 CITIZENS THEATRE, GLASGOW 7th to 11th JUNE 2011

A PLAY BY DAVID GREIG. DIRECTED BY ROXANA SILBERT.

MACBETH WAS THE FIRST PRODUCTION THAT WRITER DAVID GREIG EVER SAW.

As young Scot who had spent his early childhood in Nigeria, it was fitting that an Edinburgh performance of the Shakespeare tragedy long known through theatrical superstition as ‘The Scottish Play’ should serve as an introduction to a world he would grow to inhabit so completely in adulthood.

The superstition was born from a recognition of the play’s thematic concerns: a heady mix of the supernatural and the lust for political and personal power. In Dunsinane, Greig further explores political and personal dimensions in a work that sees the scenes the real Macbeth left behind presented in all their complexity for the first time on a Scottish stage.

Written as more of a reply to Shakespeare’s Macbeth than a straightforward sequel, Grieg took the same handful of historical facts as Shakespeare and has created from them something entirely new.

“There is chutzpah in what David has written,” enthuses the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Associate Director Roxana Silbert, who is set to stage the production for a second time in this, the first collaboration between the RSC and the National Theatre of Scotland.

“One of the key things about the story is that the character who is Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Macbeth kills herself,” she explains, “but Gruach, as we call her, didn’t in fact kill herself and went on to marry the next king; she was a rather shrewd woman. The relationship she has with the invading forces that come to put Malcolm on the throne is at the heart of the story.”

Despite this crucial difference between Greig’s and Shakespeare’s Scotland, both plays grapple with ideas which remain ever-relevant.

“It’s written about the past but it’s extraordinarily contemporary,” says Silbert.

“It’s about an Englishman who turns up in Scotland and wants to do the right thing. There are enormous resonances with what’s going on in Afghanistan. But the reality is that there are always wars in which people come into a foreign land and want to do the right thing, and in trying to, do quite a lot of wrong things along the way. So I think this is a play that will last way beyond its current run. It can keep reinventing itself.”

Partnerships are central to the projects scheduled to mark the National Theatre of Scotland’s 5th birthday programme, and the strengths of this manner of working are no better foregrounded than in the development of Dunsinane, originally a Royal Shakespeare Company commission which was first produced at Hampstead Theatre in 2010.

“The RSC would not have been able to tour this show in Scotland,” says Silbert, “so it wouldn’t have been seen. It might have had its own production, but the scale of it – set designer Robert Innes Hopkins creates the great 10th century hall, the battlefields – means there would have been very few companies who could do it.”

By Andrew Davies-Cole Freelance arts journalist

SWAN THEATRE, STRATFORD–UPON-AVON 15th JUNE to 2nd JULY 2011

DUNSINANE Supported by Bank of Scotland Pioneering Partnership

Image/ Tuesday 10th August 2010: ‘Big mad skies’ from 'daisyglaisy' Lindsay Allardyce/ Blipfoto 12

THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE TRAVERSE THEATRE, CITIZENS THEATRE, ROYAL SCOTTISH ACADEMY OF MUSIC AND DRAMA, DRAMA TRAINING NETWORK AND ÒRAN MÓR. DIASPORA TRAVERSE THEATRE, EDINBURGH 14th to 26th FEBRUARY 2011 A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT INTERNATIONAL SEASON TRAVERSE THEATRE, EDINBURGH

THE COMPANY WILL OVERLOOK A MOMENT OF MADNESS

BY RODOLFO SANTANA (VENEZUELA) IN A NEW ADAPTATION BY MORNA PEARSON 15th to 19th FEBRUARY 2011 INSTRUCTIONS FOR BUTTERFLY COLLECTIONS

BY MARIANA EVA PEREZ (ARGENTINA) AND THE ARCHIVIST

BY HECTOR LEVY (ARGENTINA) IN A NEW ADAPTATION BY LEWIS HETHERINGTON 22nd to 26th FEBRUARY 2011 FOUR PARTS BROKEN

BY FERNANDA JABER (BRAZIL) IN A NEW ADAPTATION BY ABIGAIL DOCHERTY 1st to 5th MARCH 2011 A DEAD MAN’S DYING

BY ESTEBAN NAVAJAS CORTES (COLOMBIA) IN A NEW ADAPTATION BY DAVEY ANDERSON 9th to 12th MARCH 2011 THE CONFIDANT

BY GILBERTO PINTO (VENEZUELA) IN A NEW ADAPTATION BY ALAN BISSETT 15th to 19th MARCH 2011

REVEAL

REVEAL DIASPORA A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT INTERNATIONAL SEASON GIRL X SOMERSAULTS ROMAN BRIDGE COUNT ME IN LOVE LETTERS TO THE PUBLIC TRANSPORT SYSTEM THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND RIGHTLY HAVE HIGH EXPECTATIONS OF THEIR NATIONAL THEATRE. FROM LARGE SCALE PRODUCTIONS THAT TAKE ON BIG THEMES, TELLING STORIES TO THE NATION, TO EPIC COMMUNITY EVENTS THAT LITERALLY INVOLVE CASTS OF HUNDREDS, THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND HAS, SINCE ITS FIRST PERFORMANCES IN 2006, RESPONDED TO THESE EXPECTATIONS WITH A DIVERSE RANGE OF PRODUCTIONS. It’s only a part of the story, though. Underneath the surface there’s a hive’s worth of activity – the training, mentoring and developing of artists at various stages in their careers – that audiences don’t usually get to see. That’s why, in the National Theatre of Scotland’s period of residency at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, a season of work with the appropriate title Reveal, the curtain is being pulled back to show some of the workings.

It’s a season which reveals themes and issues which some might consider too extreme for formal, main stage presentation. It reveals to a wider audience those upcoming artists, writers and ‘performer-auteurs’ – of which more later – whose development is being supported. It also reveals how the Company has invested in all levels of theatre and theatre production in Scotland.

Image/ Saturday 3rd July 2010: ‘Hula hoops and bubbles galore’ from 'Jillybeans' Jillian Christophel/ Blipfoto

Continued overleaf 15

While regular National Theatre of Scotland audiences may know the work of figureheads John Tiffany or Vicky Featherstone, they will be less familiar with the name Caroline Newall, the Artistic Development Producer behind the development of all Reveal’s artists and productions.

“Sometimes artists come to us with ideas we think have real potential, but we find they need researching,” says Newall. “So we offer them a small injection of cash to investigate the project before they actually need to put pen to page or get in a room with actors. The first assignment the Company ever gave out, for example, was to Gregory Burke to follow the disbandment of the Black Watch regiment, and from that he wrote the play that became our biggest hit.”

Reveal’s headline production, the only fully-finished production and certainly the one likely to grab the most attention, is Girl X, a collaboration between Scottish actor and equalities activist Robert Softley and Belgian director Pol Heyvaert, best known to National Theatre of Scotland audiences as the director of 2007’s brutal, unflinching play Aalst, in which the testimonies of a couple accused of murdering their children were put forth for public scrutiny. This new work, instigated by Softley, is based on the case of Ashley X, a disabled pre-teen girl in America whose parents wished to halt her puberty by medically removing her womb and breasts, effectively preserving her in a child-like state.

It’s been three years in the making.

“I’m active on a number of internet forums which look at equalities issues, and I had been involved in some pretty intense debates about the Ashley X case,” explains Softley. “I took the transcripts of those debates to the National Theatre of Scotland.”

“Robert approached us and said ‘I think this has got real theatrical weight and should be made into a piece of theatre, but I don’t know how to do that’”, says Newall. “So we partnered him up with Pol, who was fresh from directing Aalst, because he’s great at taking challenging material and making something provocative but also really entertaining.”

The Company’s first involvement with Girl X, once they had established the partnership, was to give both Heyvaert and Softley research assignments. After this, Heyvaert and Softley worked together as part of Diaspora, an annual theatre symposium with practical workshops and sharings which connects Scottish and international artists, encouraging them to share processes and working practices. The pair then embarked on a two year development.

“Giving me the chance to work with Pol – even thinking to pair me up with him – has definitely altered the way I work as an artist,” says Softley. “There’s something about European directors: they’re not scared to do things that we in the UK would never think of doing. They question more. Girl X is about an emotive subject, and it would be very easy to get melodramatic about it – but that’s not what Pol does. He doesn’t go for the heart-wrenching sob story. He lets the audience make up their own minds.”

“What’s exciting about Reveal is that it’s showing the process of how a piece of theatre gets made,” observes Martin Travers, the playwright behind Roman Bridge, which will have a rehearsed reading as part of the season. “That’s very important, especially for younger writers. If you’re a first time writer and you’ve just written your first draft – you think, right, that’s me! Now some actors are going to put it on, and I’m going to get famous. And of course it doesn’t happen like that.”

Almost all of the formally scripted productions in Reveal (with the exception of Girl X, which has been devised) have come about as a result of what the Company calls ‘writer attachments’ – an initiative which offers selected playwrights eight weeks’ supported writing time.

“Writer attachments are not about commissioning a specific piece of work,” Newall explains. “It’s just about us giving writers some time and some money to take time out to concentrate on writing.”

Rather than just handing out commissions for new plays for the National Theatre of Scotland itself to produce, these attachments signify an investment in the future of Scottish artists. As Travers indicates, writers need time, and money, to develop their craft.

While Roman Bridge, after two years of informal mentoring from the National Theatre of Scotland’s literary department, is ready for a rehearsed reading, Somersaults, by the established Gaelic playwright Iain Finlay Macleod, is what Newall describes as a ‘platform performance’ – a chance for the playwright to take some risks and try out more experimental forms and ways of working, from the relative safety of a season of less formal productions.

Continued on page 18 16

LOVE LETTERS TO THE PUBLIC TRANSPORT SYSTEM

BY MOLLY TAYLOR TRAVERSE THEATRE, EDINBURGH 2nd to 5th MARCH 2011 CITIZENS THEATRE, GLASGOW 17th to 19th MARCH 2011 COUNT ME IN

BY GARY MCNAIR TRAVERSE THEATRE, EDINBURGH 2nd to 5th MARCH 2011 CITIZENS THEATRE, GLASGOW 16th to 19th MARCH 2011 GIRL X TRAVERSE THEATRE, EDINBURGH 4th to 13th MARCH 2011 CITIZENS THEATRE, GLASGOW 16th to 19th MARCH 2011 DUNDEE REP THEATRE 12th APRIL 2011 EDEN COURT THEATRE, INVERNESS 19th & 20th APRIL 2011 SOMERSAULTS

BY IAIN FINLAY MACLEOD TRAVERSE THEATRE, EDINBURGH 10th to 19th MARCH 2011 CITIZENS THEATRE, GLASGOW 23rd to 26th MARCH 2011 MACPHAIL CENTRE, ULLAPOOL 30th MARCH 2011 AN LANNTAIR, STORNOWAY 1st APRIL 2011 ROMAN BRIDGE

BY MARTIN TRAVERS TRAVERSE THEATRE, EDINBURGH 18th & 19th MARCH 2011 CITIZENS THEATRE, GLASGOW 16th & 17th MARCH 2011

Image/ Wednesday 14th July 2010: ‘It takes two to tango’ from ‘I feel infinite’ Rachel Liu/ Blipfoto

Somersaults also launches a planned three year programme by the Artistic Development department to develop new work in Gaelic by Gaelic -speaking artists.

Forming a season-within-a-season are five brand new plays from Latin America, adapted by emergent Scottish playwrights and produced in conjunction with A Play, A Pie and a Pint at Glasgow’s Òran Mór. They’ve also been conceived with the intention of expanding Scotland’s writing talent, as Newall explains. “The act of cultural translation, putting somebody else’s words into your own, is a great way for writers to develop their craft. We wanted, as a Company, to widen the pool of writers. Of the five we’ve picked, two of them – Alan Bissett and Lewis Hetherington – have had writer attachments, and a third, Davey Anderson, is someone we’ve worked with before, but more notably as a director, not a writer.”

And what about the ‘performer-auteurs’? “Ah, yes. ‘Performer-auteurs’. It sounds grand; it isn’t really,” says Newall. “By that, I just mean artists who originate their own work and act as performer, director and writer all in one. Gary McNair and Molly Taylor were both previously Associate Artists in our Learn department. They ran workshops and community projects, and they also got the chance to develop some of their own work.”

In a new move for the company, both Taylor and McNair have been commissioned to make short pieces of work – no longer than 45 minutes – and given the Traverse stage and the high profile platform of Reveal to showcase their ways of working, hopefully bringing themselves to a wider audience.

Love Letters to the Public Transport System retraces the stages of a journey Molly Taylor took from Glasgow to London which ended up marking a period of transition in her life from personal unhappiness to something much more positive.

“The show is a celebration of the people who drive our buses and trains, who get us to work, who get us to the people we love, and all the extraordinary ways in which they shape our lives,” she says.

Gary McNair will be using the commission to create Count Me In, a one-man piece investigating the possibility of electoral reform and political revolution in the UK. “I think these days we ought to be able to really change things, not be stuck with a stagnant system that represents nobody. I pitched that to Caroline, and she’s really taking a punt on it, and me. I haven’t got anything concrete yet, just an idea which must have interested her, and the fact that she’s seen my work in the past.”

The emphasis on both shows will be on the personal, the experimental – and the low tech. “I’d call it a ‘first visit’. In other words, pared back and with a minimal set, but I’m taking it as seriously as I take any other piece of work,” says McNair.

Taylor describes Love Letters as more of an intimate story-telling theatre show.

“These are experiences we can all relate to,” she says. “I want audiences to leave the room wanting to thank their bus or train or taxi driver, to celebrate the people who get us to our destinations.”

“The National Theatre of Scotland doesn’t have its own venue,” says Newall, thinking about how to sum up the season itself, “so sometimes it’s difficult to know how to present the range of work that we’re involved in. Artists need to try things out in front of an audience – that’s an essential part of developing a work – but it’s difficult to create a safe space for them to do that in. Putting lots of work on together in one season makes it much easier for us to control the context, and lets us really point out all these brilliant pieces of work, all these brilliant artists that we’re supporting.”

By Kirstin Innes Freelance arts journalist and writer.

THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND IS CREATING AN ASSORTED PROGRAMME OF ACTIVITY DURING REVEAL. YOU CAN INTERACT, TAKE PART, TALK AND CREATE THROUGH A SERIES OF WORKSHOPS, MASTERCLASSES, READINGS AND ARTISTS’ TALKS.

IN OTHER WORDS A programme of theatre workshops for adults that explores how we communicate and the everchanging language that we use. The project will culminate in an interactive multi-media installation during Reveal.

TALKS A panel of leading theatre artists discuss new writing in Britain and the legacy of the Traverse Theatre.

READINGS The National Theatre of Scotland has asked Scotland’s finest writers to pick their favourite Scottish plays. Throughout 2011, the five most loved plays will be performed in staged readings by leading performers in five locations across the country. Be part of the audience at the first of the five readings during Reveal.

DIASPORA Diaspora is a National Theatre of Scotland project, in partnership with the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and the Drama Training Network, that reaches out to international theatre practitioners and brings them to Scotland to share, discuss and demonstrate their practice in collaboration with Scottish artists.

Melina Seldes (Argentina), Shernaz Patel (India) and Nadine George (UK) are among the internationally acclaimed artists who will be exploring their working methods at this year’s event. The explorations are supported through a programme of masterclasses, workshops, sharings and talks.

MASTERCLASSES There will be two opportunities for artists, students, graduates and audience members to take part in masterclasses with leading European theatre practitioners.

Workshops are free. Talks and readings are free but ticketed. A small fee will be charged for masterclass places.

For more details about any of these events, contact the National Theatre of Scotland directly on 0141 221 0970.

Get more information, keep up to date and find out how you can take part at www.nationaltheatrescotland.com

A NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND PRODUCTION TRAVERSE THEATRE, EDINBURGH 3rd to 12th JUNE 2011

KNIVES IN HENS

EDEN COURT, INVERNESS 15th & 16th June 2011 DUNDEE REP THEATRE 28th to 30th JUNE 2011 Recommended for age 14+

WRITTEN BY DAVID HARROWER. DIRECTED BY LIES PAUWELS.

DAVID HARROWER’S SPARE AND DREAMLIKE KNIVES IN HENS MADE ITS FIRST APPEARANCE AT THE TRAVERSE THEATRE, EDINBURGH IN 1995. SINCE THEN IT HAS BECOME ONE OF THE MOST INTERNATIONALLY PRODUCED SCOTTISH PLAYS AFTER PETER PAN.

It is a quiet tale and a violent one, a lonely three-hander that nevertheless fills the stage, where simplistic language hides complex impulses. But it’s these very contradictions that lie at its heart and go beyond any sense of national boundaries or identities, to look outward to humanity as a whole.

In a reflection of that fact, the director of this new Scottish production is Lies Pauwels – an Associate of experimental Belgian theatre company, Victoria – and she intends for her production to maintain the play’s many contradictions. “I want to keep the unconscious level in the play, keep the gaps between knowing and not knowing. I don’t want to search like a fool for the ‘right’ answer on a complex matter."

The play’s essential ambiguity is important, Pauwels feels, for its human message. Although there are only three people who appear on stage – the ‘Woman’, her husband Pony William who is a ploughman, and a miller – this is a play with a message about people everywhere, in any community, in any period. Harrower deliberately sets his play in an unspecific time and location: all we know is that it is a rural community some time before the industrial age. The Woman is being betrayed by her husband with other women and is used by him mainly for work. When she meets the miller, who has been ostracised by villagers partly because they don’t trust his ability to read and write, she is initially frightened and hostile. But he teaches her to read and write, too, and eventually she becomes confident enough to stand up to her husband.

The denouement is violent and sudden, and raises as many questions as it answers, as Pauwels points out. “What happens if we do find the liberty to stand on our own two feet and speak for ourselves?” she asks. “Aren’t we missing the comfort of a small community in these individualistic times? We are shouting for freedom and liberation but are we able to handle the liberty we are fighting for so much?”

These are timeless questions that have plagued human beings since antiquity, and thus give this work an eternally relevant quality. But it is also Harrower’s paring back of language that has allowed his play to be performed in so many different countries around the world, reaching out across borders. It is also a universal human message about our impulses, our desires, our faults.

As Pauwels recognises, desire, rage, cruelty and ambition are all present in this play. They are the unconscious elements that have made us what we are, the world over.

By Lesley McDowell Literary critic and novelist

Image/ Tuesday 3rd August 2010: ‘Lost: Key to Heart’ from ‘Bethanne's Vermont’ Bethanne Elion/ Blipfoto

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CALUM’S ROAD/ TALL TALES FOR LITTLE PEOPLE

COMMUNICADO THEATRE COMPANY IN COPRODUCTION WITH THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND. TOURING SCOTLAND AUTUMN 2011.

Calum's Road recommended for age 14+

CALUM’S ROAD ADAPTED BY DAVID HARROWER FROM A NOVEL

BY ROGER HUTCHINSON. DIRECTED BY GERRY MULGREW. TALL TALES FOR LITTLE PEOPLE BY GERRY MULGREW, AFTER DUNCAN WILLIAMSON. THE RICH ORAL TRADITION OF SCOTS STORYTELLING AND THE MODERN HISTORY OF A LOCAL COMMUNITY PROVIDE INSPIRATION FOR THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND’S FIRST COLLABORATION WITH COMMUNICADO THEATRE COMPANY.

In bringing together the yarns that make up Tall Tales for Little People with the Highland-based true story Calum’s Road, Communicado founder Gerry Mulgrew offers the same set of performers a chance to explore the idea that a people’s relationship with their environment forms the first word in the language of a nation.

The Travelling community kept long-loved regional tales alive through their traditional late night gatherings. The 2011 production of Tall Tales rekindles Communicado’s original from 1995 which itself told of campfire stories that, although local in origin, continue to illuminate our present world.

“They are a wonderful collection of stories”, says Mulgrew. “They came from a book of Scottish stories as told by Duncan Williamson who has these fantastic descriptions of being brought up in a nomadic community in Scotland in the 1920s and 1930s. Because their children didn’t go to school at that time, their education system was storytelling, so there are hundreds of different kinds of stories, some for young kids, some for older kids. It’s a really marvellous encyclopaedia of Scottish folklore.”

Mulgrew took several of these stories and set them amongst a family travelling through the countryside. He says, “I suppose they’re influenced by The Arabian Nights and how they were told: a story within a story within a story.”

Touring smaller venues in more rural areas across Scotland, Tall Tales for Little People promises to present today’s families with all the fantasy and wonder that hunchbacks and swans, magic boots and changeling children have offered throughout the ages.

Calum's Road, adapted for the stage from the novel by Roger Hutchinson, tells the true story of one man's self-set challenge: crofter Calum MacLeod decided to build miles of road for the north end of Raasay, an island just off Skye, using little more than a shovel, pick and wheelbarrow.

“His daughter had to go to school on the island of Skye,” Mulgrew explains.

“There was a long track to walk from her home before she could take the next form of public transport which meant she had to stay away from home all week. Being deprived of his daughter finally made him so mad he decided to build a road.”

“This is a familiar story of de-population, of emigration, of the Gaelic language disappearing,” Mulgrew says. “But what makes it different is that there was one man who decided to do something about it.”

Yet the demands of Calum’s task meant it was inevitable it would not be completed until long after his daughter had left the island. Speaking of the road that still runs to this day, Mulgrew says: “In a sense, it’s a marker for human dignity. There is something Quixotic, outrageous and astonishing about it: that one man made a road through some of the most difficult terrain in the world.”

Autumn rural tour of Calum’s Road and Tall Tales for Little People supported by Bank of Scotland Pioneering Partnership

By Andrew Davies-Cole Freelance arts journalist Image/ Saturday 10th July 2010 from ‘Keith, Ganbare!!!!’

Keith Hau/ Blipfoto

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CALUM’S ROAD TALL TALES FOR LITTLE PEOPLE

A NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND PRODUCTION CITIZENS THEATRE, GLASGOW 16th SEPTEMBER to 8th OCTOBER 2011

MEN SHOULD WEEP

THEN TOURING – FULL DETAILS TO BE ANNOUNCED

WRITTEN BY ENA LAMONT STEWART. DIRECTED BY GRAHAM MCLAREN.

FIRST PRODUCED IN 1947, ENA LAMONT STEWART’S MEN SHOULD WEEP BELONGED TO A NEW TYPE OF PLAY, THE KIND OF THING SCOTTISH THEATRE-GOING AUDIENCES HAD NEVER SEEN, OR HEARD, BEFORE. WORKING-CLASS FAMILIES, DEPICTED IN THEIR URBAN SETTINGS AND SPEAKING IN THEIR OWN VOICES, WERE TAKING CENTRE STAGE, AND AMONGST THE NEW WORKS PRIVILEGING THEIR EXPERIENCES WAS A PLAY THAT HAS SINCE BEEN VOTED ONE OF THE BEST OF THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY.

Stewart’s drama depicts the Morrison family, all ten of them, living in a tworoom tenement flat in the East End of Glasgow. It is the 1930s, and the effects of the Depression are everywhere to be seen: in husband John’s struggle to get a job, in the children’s constant hunger, in wife Maggie’s relentless, exhausting attempts to feed and clothe her family. Rarely can a tin of beans have been given such importance in a play: starving John eats them one night, instead of saving them for his kids the next day. Granny has had to be taken in, too, not because she is old and frail but because her pension will help them; son Alex and his wife Isa also have to stay because their own home has been razed to the ground.

This close focus on a particular family at a particular time and in a particular place does not, however, result in something narrow. It is director Graham McLaren’s contention that Men Should Weep is one of the great universal, human stories, reaching out well beyond the confines of a tiny Glasgow tenement: “A truly great piece of work will touch on a lot of contemporary things: this story will be happening in some city tonight, where some family will also be at breaking point. That’s what this portrays. I have always had the feeling that Stewart’s title means Mankind Should Weep – these are universal human values.” If mankind doesn’t change its ways, he says, then mankind will die.

Stewart’s initially shocking play disappeared shortly after its first run and she wasn’t encouraged to write any more. But it was revived in the 1960s and 70s when a new cultural interest in working class voices and experiences emerged, and Stewart was asked to revise it for a new production. Some critics have since judged its femaledominated world a classic feminist work, while others have looked across the sea to Ireland to point to a heritage dominated by the likes of J. M. Synge and Sean O’Casey.

But for McLaren, those comparisons are reductive. “It’s far more than a feminist tract or a single-issue play about economic struggles,” he argues. For him, Stewart is far closer to Ken Loach than O’Casey. “She is much angrier and much more provocative. She’s not poetic, or sentimental. This is a cry for shame – she wants to show this world, warts and all, in an effort to jolt people into action. And for us now, we are playing to people who know this world: it’s the world of their grandparents, people who were brought up in a room and kitchen. For that reason, it’s a less romantic world for us, and it’s my duty not to pull any punches.”

MEN SHOULD WEEP Supported by Bank of Scotland Pioneering Partnership

By Lesley McDowell Literary critic and novelist

Image/ Tuesday 11th May 2010: ‘Missing friends’ from ‘Pensioner’ Jim Glass/ Blipfoto

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THE MISSING

THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY.

THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND IN COLLABORATION WITH JOHN RETALLACK AND COMPANY OF ANGELS THEATRE COMPANY.

TRAMWAY, GLASGOW 20th SEPTEMBER to 1st OCTOBER 2011

SPONSORED BY SCOTTISHPOWER WITH ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FROM THE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT.

TRUANT

TOURING TO COMMUNITY HALLS AND SCHOOLS AUTUMN 2011

WRITTEN BY ANDREW O’HAGAN. DIRECTED BY JOHN TIFFANY.

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY JOHN RETALLACK.

THIS YEAR THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND BRINGS A RADICAL THEATRICAL VERSION OF ANDREW O’HAGAN’S FIRST BOOK TO THE STAGE. The stories of vanished people and those they leave behind, The Missing met with instant critical acclaim when it was published in 1995 – and immediately established Andrew O’Hagan as a writer of insight and urgency. Now the National Theatre of Scotland brings O’Hagan’s own adaptation of the book to the stage in a production to be directed

by John Tiffany.

In a first for the Company, The Missing will also mark an innovative collaboration with the Scottish National Portrait Gallery culminating in a series of events around the production.

“The Missing is a story close to my heart, and only the National Theatre of Scotland could bring it to life,” O’ Hagan insists. “It asks for a Company that has a great interest in national feeling, social history, and national character.”

It was the 2009 success of Be Near Me – O’Hagan’s novel about a troubled priest, adapted by Ian McDiarmid and directed by Tiffany – that inspired O’Hagan to adapt his own non-fiction account of missing children and of his own childhood.

“It was the experience of being in rehearsals for Be Near Me that allowed me to see a way forward for The Missing. Adapting it has given it new life: there are new truths residing in this material now that were never there before.”

The production promises to bring together many of the 2011 season’s key strands: adaptation, collaboration, and a concern with a form of storytelling that is particular to its place of origin. National Theatre of Scotland Associate Director John Tiffany has been working closely with O’Hagan on the project.

“I first read The Missing in 1995 and found it incredibly absorbing, unsettling and beautifully written,” Tiffany explains. “What I was immediately drawn to was the dynamic tension between the fantastic passages about the way we respond to missing people as a nation and the breathtaking detail Andrew invests in the individual stories,” he says.

“In the sociology and everyday life of Scotland I think there have always been a lot of tales that were under-described,” explains O’Hagan. “They never made it onto the stage; they just existed in song and in people’s imaginations, people talked about them over the dinner table. They were the stories of missing persons: grandfathers missing at sea, women who might have become victims of a serial killer at a Glasgow dance hall, people who went missing in our community.”

As O’Hagan promises “an exciting, colourful, big spirited” production, Tiffany adds: “We knew we wanted the piece to have a very strong visual element and an ensemble of actors working together to take us through the landscape and the stories of the book. Those ideas are still very potent for us.”

“The book The Missing has had such a life internationally,” O’Hagan says, “and to find it coming home, where its language, its energy, and its mysteries really find their source, back in Scotland . . . that feels entirely natural and right.”

By Andrew Davies-Cole Freelance arts journalist

“ALL THERAPY IS FAMILY THERAPY,” SAYS JOHN RETALLACK, QUOTING ESTEEMED CHILD PSYCHOANALYST AND AUTHOR ADAM PHILLIPS, WHOSE ESSAY IN PRAISE OF DIFFICULT CHILDREN HE LIKENS TO “A SHORT BECKETT PLAY”, HAS INSPIRED AN INNOVATIVE NEW INTERACTIVE PRODUCTION FROM THE NATIONAL OF THEATRE SCOTLAND CALLED TRUANT.

The production explores something which writer and director Retallack – Associate Director at the Bristol Old Vic and Director of groundbreaking youth theatre body Company of Angels – describes as being “very straightforward but not often recognised”, namely the notion that all forms of stress or disorder emerge fundamentally from family experience and that all childrens’ actions outside the family are essentially an extension of the family.

In his essay, Phillips argues that confrontation, friction, rule-making and rule breaking in the family is the key to helping a child set their moral compass in a society with an ever-shrinking code of universal values. A parent needs to have a “truant” mind to allow them to understand adolescent behaviour, and it’s this point in particular that Retallack wants to relay.

“There’s an awful lot of pressure on a family to deliver a bright citizen who is responsible for their own actions and will one day have children and in turn understand what their own children are doing,” he says. “It’s a big ask. And if that doesn’t work in the family, if the parents are not interested in being parents, if they don’t find the prospect of adulthood remotely alluring, well then you’ve obviously got a very big problem.”

For each show, a performance of a dozen or so short scenes, based on reallife experiences, will be followed by a discussion led by a guest facilitator. This will give audience members young and old an opportunity to reflect together on what they’ve just witnessed and take a hand in the play’s progression.

The format for Truant was arrived at through a month-long process of research and development supported by the National Theatre of Scotland and spearheaded by one of the Company’s former Artistic Associates, Catrin Evans.

“Catrin organised for me to go and talk to a number of parents, young and old, from across the city,” Retallack explains, “and also to children, grandparents, police, young carers – a whole range of people in the community.” The 100,000 words of transcripts these conversations yielded were pared down into a series of short dramatisations, which were then experimented with during a week of improvisations by an ensemble of six professional actors and six teenagers from youth groups at Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre and Tron Theatre.

In one scene, a mother has a physical confrontation with her teenage daughter for “having a bevvy in the park”, only to be chastised in turn by her own mum for not hitting her kids at a younger age. Another sees two sets of parents discussing how they relate to their children so well that their kids seem to have nothing to rebel against.

None of the scenes in Truant will be definitive, but Retallack thinks they should leave audiences with plenty to reflect upon. “It’s in the juxtaposition of these 10 or 12 separate stories that we hope people will find an identification or points of interest to do with their own lives or their own families.”

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Supported by Bank of Scotland Pioneering Partnership

Sponsored by

Image/ Sunday 15th August 2010: ‘Gullane Haar’ from ‘Jill McStor’ Jill Storstein/ Blipfoto

Image/ Thursday 19th August 2010: ‘Love locks’ from ‘Cologne’ Sabrina Buurmann/ Blipfoto

By Malcolm Jack Freelance arts journalist 25

27

A CO-PRODUCTION BETWEEN THE ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE, EDINBURGH AND THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND.

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ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE, EDINBURGH 22nd OCTOBER to 12th NOVEMBER 2011

WRITTEN BY ABI MORGAN. DIRECTED BY VICKY FEATHERSTONE.

IN WRITER ABI MORGAN’S FIRST WORK FOR THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND, 27, WE ARE OFFERED A MEDITATION ON RELIGIOUS FAITH AND THE QUESTION OF WHAT THE FUTURE MAY HOLD FOR ANY OR ALL OF US. THE PLAY SEES NUNS BASED IN SCOTLAND OPEN UP THEIR DOORS, AND MINDS, TO A GROUP OF CURIOUS ACADEMICS.

“Ursula is a nun,” Morgan says, “and it’s really about a team of American scientists who approach the convent to see if the sisters will take part in a project on Alzheimer’s and the process of ageing.”

“Primarily, it’s about the relationship between Richard, a scientist heading the research project, and Ursula. It’s a study of faith, love and miracles.”

As with other offerings in the 2011 season, such as Dunsinane and Calum’s Road, the dramatic scenario takes it lead from actual events.

“I read an amazing book called Aging With Grace by Dr David Snowdon,” Morgan says. “He's a scientist based in America who has been conducting this study over several convents across America, and I loved the question of what would happen if he came to Britain.”

A chance meeting with nuns provided Morgan with a personal experience that helped provide a social context for the play’s concerns. “They revealed to me that there were only twelve left in their convent and that they were the youngest, although they must have been well into their late sixties,” she says. “It really put into perspective the fact that these people who had dedicated their whole lives to God were not seeing a generation after them who would take over their work. That was partly the inspiration.”

Abi Morgan is widely recognised as one of the strongest voices in contemporary film and television drama. Her previous work includes the screenplay for the BAFTA award-winning BBC film White Girl (2008), Channel 4’s multi BAFTA award-winning Sex Traffic (2004), and the acclaimed feature film adaptation of Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2007).

Alongside pieces for theatre such as the Afghanistan-set play The Night is Darkest Before the Dawn (2009), her body of work has been developed in a firm belief that the best drama is born out of a conflict of ideas.

In this same spirit, 27 has led Morgan to explore unchartered territories: the common ground that exists between seemingly disparate disciplines. “I loved the idea of this meeting of science and religion,” she says. "In a way, both are disciplines with strong sets of rules and both demand dedication. The notion of this American doctor meeting this Scottish nun and forming a friendship was irresistible. I also love the idea of Ursula, a ballsy, outspoken, witty and compassionate nun who is a woman struggling with her faith, then meeting this man who challenges it.”

The drama emerging from this challenge promises to ignite the imagination of audiences to explosive effect.

By Andrew Davies-Cole Freelance arts journalist Image/ Sunday 29th August 2010: ‘The ties that bind’ from ‘Almanach’ Vladimir Radivojevic/ Blipfoto

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A CHRISTMAS CAROL

A NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND PRODUCTION OPENING DECEMBER 2011 Suitable for fearless eight year olds, brave nine year olds, practically all ten year olds and everyone else.

WRITTEN BY CHARLES DICKENS. ADAPTED, DIRECTED AND DESIGNED BY GRAHAM MCLAREN.

EVER SINCE ITS PUBLICATION ON DECEMBER 19TH 1843, A CHRISTMAS CAROL BY CHARLES DICKENS HAS BEEN A STAPLE FACTOR IN THE ANNUAL CHRISTMAS FEAST. THE SAME YEAR AS THE FIRST CHRISTMAS CARD WAS SENT, AND A YEAR AFTER CHRISTMAS TREES WERE INTRODUCED INTO BRITAIN BY PRINCE ALBERT, IT HAS FULLY PLAYED ITS PART IN THE SECULARISATION OF A RELIGIOUS FESTIVAL.

Dickens was a man who loved the theatre and knew how to stage a scene, so it’s not surprising that his novella was adapted for the stage less than a year after it was published, and successful productions in London and New York saw a subsequent sweep across both countries. Musicals, films, orchestral pieces, even a mime, have all taken up the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, the spectral Jacob Marley and crippled Tiny Tim Cratchett, and carried its message of redemption and goodwill to all.

Yet in order to be redeemed, one has to have been bad in the first place, and that notion of inherent wickedness is often downplayed in a tale that most now consider to be aimed mostly at children. The National Theatre of Scotland’s new production restores the essential darkness at the heart of Dickens’ message.

Director Graham McLaren’s production downplays the familiar sentimentality, the notion of a ‘poor but happy’ populace all celebrating together at Christmas time. “A Christmas Carol is really about a man who has such a bad nightmare it makes him change his entire life,” says McLaren. Death stalks his version of the tale, innocent children suffer and starve, and it’s to help convey that harrowing aspect of a grim end, of suffering and inequality, that he has brought in puppets, specially designed by Gavin Glover of Faulty Optic, to be used alongside the actors.

“If you look at Phiz’s original illustrations for Dickens’ books,” says McLaren, “you see how many of the characters are grotesques, really carbuncled characters. We can make a puppet take on that sense of the grotesque. Ghosts and apparitions can walk through walls, but actors can’t. We thought, wouldn’t it be a feat if Jacob Marley could float?” Puppets can be more sinister than humans, their skeletal form a reminder of what might happen to us in bad times.

McLaren highlights a moment in Dickens’ tale when Scrooge meets the Ghost of Christmas Present who talks about “ignorance and want” and shows him the tiny bony hands of children. It is one of the story’s many terrifying moments by a writer who truly understands the power of the visual, but it also starkly demonstrates the social concerns that preoccupied Dickens all his life. As one forced to work as a child, and who lived with his family for a time in debtor’s prison, he feared and understood poverty.

“We want to be reassured”, says McLaren. “But we need to be reminded too, that if Scrooge doesn’t change his ways, Tiny Tim will die.”

By Lesley McDowell Literary critic and novelist Image/ Wednesday 3rd February 2010: ‘Bathing in the silence’ from ‘Bliss moments’ Darren Tattersall/ Blipfoto

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A CHRISTMAS CAROL

BANK OF SCOTLAND

AND THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND – A PIONEERING PARTNERSHIP

The partnership will support a wide range of initiatives across Scotland focussing on supporting creativity and emerging talent.

In 2011, the Bank of Scotland Pioneering Partnership will include: ­ DUNSINANE

BY DAVID GREIG AT THE CITIZENS THEATRE, GLASGOW AND THE ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE EDINBURGH MEN SHOULD WEEP

BY ENA LAMONT STEWART, TOURING VENUES ACROSS SCOTLAND THE MISSING

BY ANDREW O’HAGAN AT THE TRAMWAY, GLASGOW

BANK OF SCOTLAND AND THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND HAVE ENTERED INTO AN EXCITING NEW TWO YEAR PARTNERSHIP, A FIRST FOR BOTH ORGANISATIONS.

The Bank of Scotland Pioneering Partnership will be the first time that both have worked together and also represents a new approach to sponsorship with Bank of Scotland supporting not just one production or strand, but a large part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s wide reaching programme over the next 2 years.

It is estimated that nearly 100,000 people will come into contact with a production or initiative under the Bank of Scotland Pioneering Partnership banner in year 1 alone, many of whom will be customers and colleagues of Bank of Scotland.

“We are delighted to be embarking on a new partnership with the National Theatre of Scotland. The Bank of Scotland Pioneering Partnership is the first time that both organisations have worked together and it also represents a new approach to sponsorship, with Bank of Scotland supporting not just one production or strand, but a large part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s wide reaching programme over the next 2 years.

“Our investment will enable the National Theatre of Scotland to further develop their core programme and to take it to audiences across Scotland. It is estimated that in the first year alone nearly 100,000 people will come into contact with a production or initiative under the Bank of Scotland Pioneering Partnership banner. Our joint aim is to encourage and support the next generation of theatrical talent, from actors to set designers, directors and writers, reinforcing the Bank of Scotland’s wider sponsorship strategy of supporting emerging talent in Scotland and providing opportunities for our customers and colleagues."

Susan Rice, Managing Director, Lloyds Banking Group Scotland “The National Theatre of Scotland’s success over the last 5 years has been built on the talent of Scottish artists. This extraordinary Pioneering Partnership between the National Theatre of Scotland and Bank of Scotland assures we can continue to develop the unrivalled talent we discover as we travel throughout the country. It enables Scotland to retain and build on its growing National and International reputation for being cultural leaders and to give audiences the length and breadth of the land exceptional and lifechanging experiences in the theatre.”

AUTUMN RURAL TOUR OF CALUM’S ROAD AND TALL TALES FOR LITTLE PEOPLE IN PARTNERSHIP WITH COMMUNICADO THEATRE COMPANY GRADUATE DIRECTOR PLACEMENT PROGRAMME – EVERY YEAR, THREE YOUNG SCOTTISH TALENTED STUDENT DIRECTORS WILL BE GIVEN A 10 WEEK PLACEMENT WITH THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND EMERGING ARTIST ATTACHMENT PROGRAMME – EVERY YEAR, FOUR TALENTED INDIVIDUALS IN THE ARTS WILL BE GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO PURSUE A PROJECT OF THEIR OWN CREATION FIRST NIGHTS – A PIONEERING INITIATIVE TO INTRODUCE YOUNG PEOPLE WITH NO EXPERIENCE OF THE ARTS TO THE THEATRE THIS ACTIVITY WILL ALSO BE ACCOMPANIED BY A PROGRAMME OF THEATRE WORKSHOPS FOR BUSINESS EVENTS AND INTRODUCTION TO THEATRE FAMILY EVENTS

Vicky Featherstone, Artistic Director, National Theatre of Scotland

Image/ Sunday 15th August 2010: ‘Gullane Haar’ from ‘Jill McStor’ Jill Storstein/ Blipfoto

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ACCESS YOUR NATIONAL THEATRE

The National Theatre of Scotland is fully committed to providing access to all our work.

We aim to provide audio description, audio guides, touch tours, captioning and BSL interpretation for all our productions wherever possible.

Our website has details of all accessible performances with links to many of the venues we perform in, including information on facilities, methods of booking and discounts. During 2011, our website will contain up to date BSL interpreted and captioned information on all our activity.

DEAF THEATRE CLUB

In 2011 the National Theatre of Scotland in partnership with Solar Bear are launching the Deaf Theatre Club. Deaf audience members can now sign up to receive up-to-date information on all our performances, interpreters, ticket deals, and exclusive talks, tours and events.

To find our more and to sign up to the Deaf Theatre Club contact either: National Theatre of Scotland info@nationaltheatrescotland.com or Solar Bear natalie@solarbear.org.uk

GET IN TOUCH

Do you or someone you know make use of one or more of our accessible services?

The National Theatre of Scotland wants to ensure that everything we do is up to scratch and meets the needs of every member of our audience.

We are committed to programming accessible performances when we tour. If you know of any groups that are keen to see our work, get in touch and we’ll do our best to provide the right services in the right places.

Help us make this the best service possible by getting in touch and giving us your feedback.

Marianne Maxwell Audience Development Manager National Theatre of Scotland Civic House, 26 Civic Street, Glasgow G4 9RH T: +44 (0) 141 221 0970 F: +44 (0) 141 331 0589 E: info@nationaltheatrescotland.com

AUDIO DESCRIPTION Audio Description offers a live commentary for audience members with visual impairment. The description starts about 10 minutes before the show and includes information on the production.

The audio describers then provide commentary on the action and visual effects throughout the performance. This information is relayed over an infrared system to individual headsets, which are available free of charge from the venue Box Office.

TOUCH TOURS Touch Tours offer blind and visually impaired members of the audience a chance to orientate themselves with the set and costumes immediately prior to an audio described performance. The Stage Manager will lead these tours. Those wishing to take part in a touch tour should register with the Box Office when booking tickets for the performance.

AUDIO GUIDES When we are unable to offer full audio description we will provide an Audio Guide to the performance.

This will be free and available at venues and to download from our website prior to the performance. The guide will provide audience members with thorough detailed content about the show including scene by scene breakdown, descriptions of the set and information provided by key members of the cast and creative team.

BSL INTERPRETATION BSL (British Sign Language) interpretation offers deaf and hearing impaired audience members a live translation of all spoken words and sound effects into sign language. Please mention when you contact the Box Office that you are booking for the BSL interpreted performance so you can be allocated seats with the best view of the signer.

We aim to publish the details of who will be signing each show on our website. Visit www.nationaltheatrescotland.com for information.

CAPTIONED PERFORMANCES Captioning converts the spoken word into text that provides people with hearing loss access to live performance. In captioning, the words appear on a screen at the same time as they are sung or spoken.

Captions also include sound effects and offstage noises.

TICKETS FOR ALL ACCESSIBLE PERFORMANCES, HEADSETS FOR AUDIO DESCRIPTION AND AUDIO GUIDES MUST BE BOOKED IN ADVANCE FROM VENUE BOX OFFICES.

For more information about learning opportunities in 2011 and discuss ways to connect with the National Theatre of Scotland contact: Philippa Tomlin Creative Learning Coordinator National Theatre of Scotland Civic House, 26 Civic Street, Glasgow G4 9RH T: +44 (0) 141 221 0970 F: +44 (0) 141 331 0589 E: info@nationaltheatrescotland.com

NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND LEARN

THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND’S LEARN DEPARTMENT PROVIDE AN EXCITING RANGE OF WAYS FOR AUDIENCES OF ALL AGES TO INTERACT, TAKE PART, TALK AND CONNECT WITH THE COMPANY.

From post-show talks and backstage tours to workshops in schools and large scale events involving thousands of people, the National Theatre of Scotland provides the opportunity to engage with the creative minds involved in bringing work to the stage and encourages, supports and inspires homegrown creativity in communities across Scotland.

EXPLORING PRODUCTIONS

In 2011, an extensive range of creative learning opportunities exist to support the productions, including masterclasses with leading international artists, multi discipline workshops for all ages, readings and talks. For audiences everywhere there is a comprehensive catalogue of online, digital resources including trailers, cast and creative team interviews and behind the scenes features from productions past and present.

INSPIRING TEACHERS AND LEARNERS

There are many ways for teachers and learners to gain a deeper understanding of theatre with the National Theatre of Scotland. Teachers can now access CPD sessions delivered by the Company and a selection of free resource packs for teachers and students can be downloaded online any time. Class sets of scripts can be ordered easily and there are regular workshop opportunities throughout the year.

CONNECTING COMMUNITIES

The National Theatre of Scotland takes root in communities in Scotland to create unique individual projects mixing music, visual art, dance, literature and theatre. Extreme is a major large-scale community event in Aberdeen. Spanning months of work in the area and culminating in a production in March 2011, there are opportunities for local residents, school pupils, groups and artists to get involved.

TRAINING THE ARTIST

As a student, young professional or experienced theatre practitioner, there are a number of ways to connect to the National Theatre of Scotland. Diaspora is an international theatre exchange, uniting Scottish artists with renowned practitioners from around the world to create, share and explore new ideas.

INSPIRING YOUNG PEOPLE

It is easy for young people who are passionate about performing to feel part of the National Theatre of Scotland. Information about the right shows, in the right place and at the right price can be always be found online and fans can tell us what they think on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

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SUPPORT THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND GREAT THEATRE HAS THE POWER TO MOVE, INFLUENCE AND TRANSFORM.

THEATRE WITHOUT WALLS FUND A donation to the Theatre Without Walls Fund enables you to take a seat for one year within our virtual theatre. Membership of the Theatre Without Walls Fund brings with it a range of benefits. Join us and take your seat amongst our many supporters. Already seated are Alan Cumming OBE, Sir Sean Connery, Blythe Duff and Bill Paterson.

Where will you sit?

CORPORATE PARTNERS We wish to develop long-lasting, mutually valuable relationships with a small number of corporate partners. Through these new partnerships we aim to create strategic, innovative high profile associations allowing both sides to achieve their objectives.

For information on ways to support us and enjoy a rich and rewarding relationship with Scotland's national theatre, contact Stella Litchfield in the Development department on 0141 227 9236 or email: stella.litchfield@nationaltheatrescotland.com INDIVIDUAL DONORS By making a donation to the National Theatre of Scotland you play a vital role in helping us to develop and deliver exceptional work. You will help to nurture a new generation of theatregoers, bring Scottish excellence to an international stage and create access to a wide range of experiences so that theatre can touch and enhance the lives of all.

If you would prefer to discuss supporting our work in person please contact Stella Litchfield in the Development department who will be delighted to speak with you on 0141 227 9236 or email: stella.litchfield@nationaltheatrescotland.com TRUSTS AND FOUNDATIONS Trusts and Foundations play an essential role in supporting many areas of our work. For more information contact Robin Gray, Trusts and Foundations Manager, on 0141 227 9494 or email: robin.gray@nationaltheatrescotland.com

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THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND WISHES TO THANK THE FOLLOWING INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANISATIONS FOR THEIR SUPPORT: Bank of Scotland David and June Gordon Memorial Trust EsmĂŠe Fairbairn Foundation Inchrye Trust JarHair Leeds Building Society Charitable Foundation Mr Boyd Tunnock Mrs Katharine Liston Mr Martin Segal Miss E.C. Hendry's Charitable Trust Nancie Massey Charitable Trust North British Hotels Trust Prairie Trust Talteg Ltd Tayfield Foundation The Alma and Leslie Wolfson Charitable Trust The Binks Trust The Craignish Trust The Cresswell Family Foundation The Endrick Trust The Hugh Fraser Foundation The James and Elizabeth Murray Charitable Trust The Merchants House of Glasgow The Pleasance Trust The RJ Larg Family Trust The Roger & Sarah Bancroft Clark Charitable Trust The RS Macdonald Charitable Trust The Robertson Trust The Russell Trust The Wolfson Foundation Two Fat Ladies Restaurants Schuh ScottishPower Talteg Limited Tayfield Foundation Union Advertising Agency

FIVE DRAMATIC YEARS

NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND CIVIC HOUSE, 26 CIVIC STREET GLASGOW G4 9RH Tel: +44 (0) 141 221 0970 Fax: +44 (0) 141 331 0589 info@nationaltheatrescotland.com www.nationaltheatrescotland.com

Design by Graphical House www.graphicalhouse.co.uk Copyright 2010 National Theatre of Scotland and individually named contributors. All information correct at time of going to press and subject to change. The National Theatre of Scotland reserves the right to alter casts, performances, seating or ticket arrangements. Booking fees may apply on tickets, please check with the venue Box Office when booking.

The National Theatre of Scotland is a registered Scottish charity SCO33377.

The National Theatre of Scotland is core funded by the Scottish Government.