Abstract
It is the contention of this book that, insofar as Scottish theatre has had anything approximating a renaissance, it has occurred over the last five decades. Indeed, the proposition of the work is that the period since 1969 is the strongest in the history of live drama in Scotland, and that most of the country’s finest theatremakers and certainly its best playwrights are alive and working today. These are, of course, contestable assertions. However, it is my hope here to convince the reader, if not of the correctness of my case, then, at least, that my argument has the virtues of being rooted in serious, conceptual thinking and rigorous, largely original research.
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- 1.
The artistic director of the Citizens Theatre between 1969 and 2003, who, this book contends, began the suggested renaissance in Scottish theatre (see Chap. 3 of this work).
- 2.
The newly appointed artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland who took up her position in the spring of 2017.
- 3.
See Chap. 1.
- 4.
This aesthetic revolution continued after the 1970s, as is detailed in Chap. 3. However it was from 1969 and through the 1970s that its impact was most revolutionary and, therefore, most keenly felt.
- 5.
See Chap. 4 of this book.
- 6.
See comments re. Chap. 5 in this chapter.
- 7.
- 8.
See Chap. 6 of this volume.
- 9.
Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1996.
- 10.
Edinburgh: Polygon, 1998.
- 11.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013.
- 12.
The Scottish Calvinist Church in its various forms, predominantly the Church of Scotland (established in 1560), its breakaway denomination the Free Church of Scotland (1843–1900), and the Free Presbyterian Church (which broke from the Free Church in 1893).
- 13.
Born in 1947, Lochhead was Scotland’s Makar (national poet) between the years of 2011 and 2016. In addition to her considerable poetic output, she is the author of many plays, including original works such as Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off (1987), Perfect Days (1998) and Thon Man Molière (2016), and adaptations of Greek classics, such as Euripides’s Medea (2000), and plays by Molière, including Tartuffe (1986) and The Misanthrope, retitled Miseryguts, (2002).
- 14.
Sir David Lyndsay’s (1490–1555) social and political satire, Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (1540), is considered a classic of Scotland’s comparatively scant theatrical history. Revived from time to time in the modern era, it was most recently performed in 2013 at Linlithgow Palace by the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project Staging and Representing the Scottish Renaissance Court.
- 15.
The hypocritical religious moralist who is the subject of Robert Burns’s 1785 poem ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’.
- 16.
The charlatan priest who is the subject of Molière’s 1664 play Tartuffe.
- 17.
Liz Lochhead, introduction to Educating Agnes, after Molière’s The School for Wives (London: Nick Hern Books, 2008), p. 7.
- 18.
A tradition in which Robert Kemp, Hector MacMillan and, latterly, Lochhead have translated plays by Molière into Scots and Scots-English. See Noel A. Peacock’s Moliere in Scotland, 1945–1990 (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, French & German Publications, 1993), and Bill Findlay’s essay ‘Talking in Tongues: Scottish Translations 1970–1995’, in Randall Stevenson and Gavin Wallace (eds.) Scottish Theatre Since the Seventies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), pp. 186–197.
- 19.
Restoration dramatist and author Behn (1640–1689) was a trailblazer in English theatre, being one of the first women to become a professional playwright. A beneficiary of the reopening of the English theatres under Charles II, her plays include The Rover (1677) and Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684).
- 20.
Although his life was tragically impoverished and short, Otway (1652–1685) was one of the outstanding dramatists of the Restoration period. His most notable plays include The Orphan (1680) and, his masterwork, Venice Preserv’d (1682).
- 21.
An Anglo-Irishman, Sheridan (1751–1816) was the author of notable comedies such as The Rivals (1775) and The School for Scandal (1777).
- 22.
The London theatres were officially proscribed (albeit not entirely effectively) by an Act of Parliament in 1642. This was reinforced by a further Act in 1648.
- 23.
Sweden’s great playwright, Strindberg (1849–1912) wrote such plays as The Father (1887) and, his magnum opus, Miss Julie (1888).
- 24.
The Bard of Norway, Ibsen (1828–1906) revolutionised European theatre with such works as Peer Gynt (1876), A Doll’s House (1879) and Hedda Gabler (1891).
- 25.
John Millington Synge (1871–1909) is a key figure in modern Irish theatre. The author of many plays, including The Playboy of the Western World (1907) and Deirdre of the Sorrows (first performed in 1910, a year after Synge’s death, having been completed by W. B. Yeats).
- 26.
Famous playwright, poet, novelist, children’s writer and essayist, Wilde (1854–1900) is the author of numerous works for the stage, including Salome (1891) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).
- 27.
Shaw (1856–1950) was a playwright and critic who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925. His plays include Man and Superman (1903) and Saint Joan (1923).
- 28.
O’Casey (1880–1964), a committed socialist, famously wrote plays which focused on the working class of Dublin. His most notable works include The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) and The Plough and the Stars (1926).
- 29.
See Chap. 1 of this book.
- 30.
Donald Campbell, Playing for Scotland: A History of the Scottish Stage 1715–1965 (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1996), p. 17.
- 31.
See Adrienne Scullion on ‘The Controversy over John Home’s Douglas’, pp. 98–106, in her chapter ‘The Eighteenth Century’, in Findlay (1998).
- 32.
Quoted in Campbell, p. 18.
- 33.
Ibid., p. 17.
- 34.
Theatres licensed by Royal patent to perform spoken-word drama, as instituted in England by King Charles II soon after his Restoration to the British throne in 1660.
- 35.
From Bell’s chapter, ‘The Nineteenth Century’, in Findlay (1998), p. 139.
- 36.
From Hutchison’s chapter, ‘1900–1950’, in Findlay (1998), pp. 207–208.
- 37.
The repertoire of which is outlined by Hutchison, ibid, pp. 208–214.
- 38.
A major, but amateur, company dedicated to the performance of plays reflecting Scottish life and culture. See Hutchison, ibid., pp. 221–225.
- 39.
Professor of Drama at Kingston University, London, playwright and poet.
- 40.
Ian Brown, Scottish Theatre: Diversity, Language, Continuity (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013), p. 9.
- 41.
Ian Brown, ‘Public and Private Performance: 1650–1800’, in Ian Brown (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Drama (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), pp. 22–40.
- 42.
Ibid., p. 26.
- 43.
Campbell, p. 18.
- 44.
Quoted in Campbell, ibid.
- 45.
- 46.
From Smith’s chapter, ‘1950–1995’, in Findlay (1998), p. 253.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
See Citizens Theatre website: www.citz.co.uk/about/history (accessed 1/2/2017).
- 49.
The company (which absorbed the Gateway Theatre Company in 1965) was originally called the Edinburgh Civic Theatre. It would eventually be renamed the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company in 1977. For more on the establishment of the company, see Smith’s chapter, ‘1950–1995’, in Findlay (1998), pp. 264–265.
- 50.
In addition to founding the Citizens Theatre Company, Bridie (1888–1951) wrote numerous plays, including The Paradise Case (1947) and Stage Fright (1950).
- 51.
Corrie (1894–1968) was a Fife miner who enjoyed considerable acclaim as both a poet and a playwright. His plays include In Time O′ Strife (1926) and Hewers of Coal (1937); the former of which was revived by the National Theatre of Scotland in 2013.
- 52.
Lamont Stewart (1912–2006) is most famously the author of the 1947 play Men Should Weep; which has been revived on a number of occasions, most recently by the National Theatre of Scotland in 2011.
- 53.
A prolific playwright and screenwriter, Cecil Philip Taylor (1929–1981) drew, in his theatre writings, upon his Jewish heritage and his socialist political convictions. His more than eighty plays include Mr David (1954), Lies About Vietnam (1969) and Good (1981).
- 54.
For more on 7:84 and Wildcat see the section entitled ‘Two strands: Modernism and agitprop’ later in this chapter.
- 55.
A drama about workers in a Scottish glass-making factory.
- 56.
A play about semi-enslaved (“bondaged”) women farm labourers in the Scottish Lowlands in the nineteenth century.
- 57.
A comic drama set in a Glasgow wash house in the 1950s.
- 58.
A play located, mainly, in the fetid toilets of a Dundee jute mill in the 1960s.
- 59.
Joyce McMillan, The Traverse Theatre Story: 1963–1988 (London: Methuen, 1988).
- 60.
Namely, Jim Haynes, Richard Demarco, Tom Mitchell and John Calder. For more on these founders of the Traverse theatre club see the short section about the Traverse later on in this chapter.
- 61.
McMillan, p. 7.
- 62.
Sartre (1905–1980) was a Renaissance man among the “Left Bank intellectuals” of twentieth-century Paris. A philosopher, novelist, playwright, literary critic, biographer and Marxist activist, his dramatic works include The Respectful Prostitute (1946) and The Condemned of Altona (1959).
- 63.
Arrabal (b. 1932) is a Spanish artist who has been based in France, and writing in French, since 1955. He is a playwright, filmmaker, screenwriter, novelist and poet. His theatre works include Guernica (1961) and And They Put Handcuffs on the Flowers (1969).
- 64.
McMillan, p. 18.
- 65.
See Chap. 1 of this book.
- 66.
Mishima (1925–1970) was a major Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director. The founder of an ultra-nationalist private militia, he committed suicide, using the ritual method of seppuku, following a disastrous coup attempt. His dramatic works include The Magic Pillow (1950) and The Blind Young Man (1960).
- 67.
See Chap. 1 of this work.
- 68.
See Chap. 3 of this volume.
- 69.
Social events which involve live traditional music, singing, dancing and storytelling.
- 70.
The name 7:84 was famously taken from a statistic published in The Economist magazine in 1966 to the effect that seven per cent of the UK population owned eight-four per cent of the wealth.
- 71.
McGrath (1935–2002) came from Birkenhead on Merseyside. His work as a director and dramatist includes directing many episodes of the BBC television police drama series Z-Cars in the early 1960s and adapting Sir David Lyndsay’s classic play Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (1540) as The Satire of the Four Estaites for performance by Wildcat at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1996.
- 72.
Elizabeth MacLennan (1938–2015) was an actor and writer most closely associated with 7:84 Scotland theatre company and the movement for a politically radical popular theatre.
- 73.
David MacLennan (1948–2014) was an actor, writer and producer best known for his work with the 7:84 Scotland and Wildcat theatre companies, and his establishing, as producer, of the successful, and continuing, lunchtime theatre series A Play, A Pie and A Pint at the Òran Mór venue in Glasgow in 2004.
- 74.
Scottish actor, musician and writer.
- 75.
Writer and theatre practitioner.
- 76.
The forced, often violent, eviction of a huge number of Highland crofters (small tenant farmers) and their families from their land by wealthy landowners and the British state in order to replace them with more profitable sheep. Many of the dispersed people crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Canada and the United States, others went to southern Scotland and elsewhere in search of new lives. For more on the Clearances see John Prebble’s 1963 book The Highland Clearances (London: Penguin Books, new edition, 1982).
- 77.
My own 2016 article previewing Dundee Rep’s 2016 tour of The Cheviot includes both details of the history of the play and interviews with performers who took part in the original 1973 production. The article’s title, as published in the Sunday Herald (‘Relighting Scotland’s Fire’) was not written by me. Given that the Clearances involved the burning of some people out of their homes, I consider the headline somewhat crass and insensitive (Glasgow: Sunday Herald, 4/9/2016): www.heraldscotland.com/news/14721961.Theatre__Relighting_Scotland__39_s_fire (accessed 2/2/2017).
- 78.
Which, together with the Edinburgh International Book Festival and other associated festival programmes held in Scotland’s capital each August, continue to be the world’s biggest celebration of the arts and culture.
- 79.
Which ran from 1983 to 1997.
- 80.
Held annually in venues across Edinburgh, with a touring programme taking work elsewhere in Scotland.
- 81.
A major arts centre housed within an enormous former tram shed in Pollokshields on the southside of Glasgow. Since its opening in 1988, it has been a home to international theatre, dance and performance, including many theatre artists whose work could be said to be in the European Modernist tradition, including Peter Brook (France), Robert Lepage (Quebec), The Wooster Group (USA), Victoria (Belgium), tg STAN (Belgium), DV8 Physical Theatre (England) and Scottish companies Suspect Culture, Vanishing Point and Untitled Projects.
- 82.
Centre for Contemporary Arts, previously The Third Eye Centre.
- 83.
Established, in 1991, following its use as a temporary gallery space during the European Capital of Culture programme, by Andy Arnold, artistic director of the new Arches Theatre Company. The venue was controversially closed down in 2015 by the Licensing Board of Glasgow City Council, following the advice of Police Scotland, which raised concerns over drug-related incidents. See Glasgow Evening Times report by Caroline Wilson on the protest against the closure (27/6/2015): www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/13357340.Protest_to_keep_the_Arches_open (accessed 1/1/2017).
- 84.
Now self-styled as Scotland’s new writing theatre, but, as we shall see below, with its origins in a theatre club specialising in the European Modernist repertoire.
- 85.
An independent performing arts centre in central Edinburgh from 2002 to 2010. Housed in a former chapel, it has, in recent times, come under the management of major producer Assembly, first as an Edinburgh Fringe venue, then as a year-round performing arts centre.
- 86.
A major independent arts venue on the southside of Edinburgh city centre housed within the former veterinary school of the University of Edinburgh. Established as an Edinburgh Fringe venue by former artistic director of Roxy Art House Rupert Thomson in August 2011, it has become a permanent, year-round centre for the performing and visual arts. The venue’s owner, Robert McDowell, took over the directorship upon Thomson’s departure (to become a senior programmer at the Southbank Centre in London) in 2015.
- 87.
The founding production of Tramway.
- 88.
Performed in the engine shed of the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Glasgow.
- 89.
For example Anthony Neilson and the Traverse Theatre, see Chap. 5 of this book.
- 90.
Although hailing from the United States, Haynes had a passion for the European avant-garde.
- 91.
McMillan , p. 12.
- 92.
This was a gradual process, with new writing coming increasingly to the fore in the theatre’s output. In 1988, for example, the Traverse referred to itself as “a powerhouse of new writing”, and its entire Edinburgh Fringe programme that year consisted of new work. The Traverse finally defined itself as “Scotland’s new writing theatre” in 2004. Source: The Traverse.
- 93.
Note, for example, that Steve Cramer’s essay ‘The Traverse, 1985–97: Arnott, Clifford, Hannan, Harrower, Greig and Greenhorn’ takes as its primary subjects six playwrights. The essay appears in Ian Brown (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Drama, pp. 165–176.
- 94.
O’Loughlin joined the Traverse in 2012 and announced her departure, to take up the role of Vice-Principal and Director of Drama at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, in July 2018.
- 95.
For more on Harrower see Chap. 5 of this work.
- 96.
- 97.
Announced by the Traverse on February 9, 2017.
- 98.
Namely, those who emerged in the 1990s.
- 99.
Artistic director of the Traverse, 2008–2011.
- 100.
Artistic director of the Traverse, 1996–2007.
- 101.
Which opened at the Traverse in April 2010 and received three nominations at the 2010 Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland and the Best Female Performance award for Sian Thomas.
- 102.
A co-production with English Touring Theatre and the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, which opened at the Traverse in December 2010 and received four nominations at the 2011 CATS and the Best Ensemble and Best New Play awards.
- 103.
This subject is explored further in Chap. 7 of this volume.
- 104.
From its inception in 1991 to 2008.
- 105.
Since 2008.
- 106.
A post which she was set to assume in February 2019.
- 107.
Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996).
- 108.
See Chap. 1.
- 109.
See interview in Chap. 5.
- 110.
See interview in Chap. 5.
- 111.
An accomplished actor and comedian, best known, perhaps, for her leading role in the popular Scottish TV comedy sketch show Chewin’ the Fat.
- 112.
See Chap. 4.
- 113.
A successful Scottish screen and stage actor, Chetty performed in the 2008 production of David Greig’s play for young people Yellow Moon.
- 114.
As I noted in my review for the Sunday Herald of May 13, 2018: www.heraldscotland.com/arts_ents/16222206.Theatre_reviews__Baba_Yaga__Ma__Pa_and_the_Little_Mouths__Sunshine_on_Leith/ (accessed 14/5/2018).
- 115.
See Chap. 5.
- 116.
See Chap. 5.
- 117.
Artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland, which was an associate producer of Ma, Pa and the Little Mouths.
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Brown, M. (2019). Introduction. In: Modernism and Scottish Theatre since 1969. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98639-5_2
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