Modernism and Scottish Theatre since 1969 by Mark Brown

Author:Mark Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319986395
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The Interview

The following interview was conducted in David Greig’s office in central Edinburgh on November 13, 2015

Mark Brown (MB)

David Greig (DG)

MB:

Do you agree with the suggestion that there has, since the 1970s, been a “sort of renaissance” in Scottish theatre? In other words, have we, since the Seventies, been living in the best period for theatre in Scotland?

DG:

Yeah, I think I do agree with that. I suppose the caveat is that the period you’re talking about literally spans my lifetime. I was born in 1969, so, to an extent, I’ve known nothing other than this landscape. However, I’ve seen it as an expanding and growing landscape. My experience of it has been of surges forward, then plateaus, then surges forward again; but I haven’t experienced what I would think of as a going backward.

There was the excitement of the Eighties, and the emergence of work by people like Liz Lochhead, Iain Heggie, Chris Hannan, Jo Clifford and others. Then there was maybe a bit of a plateau, but then another surge came with work I was involved with in the Nineties, an outward-looking Europeanness [which] may be coming back, but also becoming more practical. When you talk about Giles Havergal’s Europeanness7 I relate that to a very standard model of theatre practice, where you take a script or a text and you put it on a stage for an audience. By 1995 we were starting to think about co-creating work with European companies, we might tour work in Europe, we might even, in certain circumstances, create work in different languages. There was a sort of adventurousness, an outward focus. Then you get to the 2000s and the National Theatre of Scotland comes in and, again, the “without wallsness” forms a logic that allows another outgrowth [in Scottish theatre], one which involves pushing work out as well is taking work in. All of that is an expanding story.

I think Scottish theatre is defined by its relationship to London in the sense that there is an awkward tension, which manifests itself in a very interesting way theatrically. For good or ill, we share a language. We can’t avoid that. For the most part, our theatre is made in the same language as London, and London is only 400 miles down the road. It’s also part of the same state to which we’re attached. Yet we are also not London. In fact, we’re profoundly culturally resistant [to the idea that Scottish culture is part of a British culture centred on London]. We’re resistant to the idea of being a region, with all that that implies.

Obviously, Scottish playwrights, theatremakers, poets and novelists have wanted for a long time to centre themselves and say, “we are our own centre”. I think that was very difficult, historically, for lots of different reasons. What emerges round about 1969, maybe, is that “Europeanness” allows [Scottish artists] a context, so they can be a centred Scotland, Edinburgh, Glasgow in a Europe that contains countries like Holland, Denmark and Norway.

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