So you think setting up an independent theatre company in the Highlands might be just the thing? HAMISH MACDONALD, actor, writer, producer and co-founder of Dogstar Theatre, has some hard won advice on the travails of Highland touring.

Hamish MacDonald, co-founder of Dogstar Theatre

AH, THE JOYS OF TOURING. Its probably a phrase thats been coined tongue-in-cheek for over two and a half thousand years, since Thespis took his company of actors around Greece in a cart that doubled as a stage. No much change there then, eh? Just substitute Transit van (with set and staging tightly packed) for cart, diesel-power for ox, Benbecula for Crete and away you go. So much for the joys of touring. How about the joys of producing for a touring company? Well now.

Coming back to Inverness four years ago after a considerable absence, my own aim was to become closely involved in writing and drama within the Highlands and Islands. As co-founder of Dogstar Theatre Ive been writing and producing music theatre since returning in 1999.

Back in the Eighties, touring with Faultline Cabarets The Kilt Is Our Demise served as a reminder that life on the road can be far from the proverbial bowl of cherries, with memories ranging from the comic to the downright absurd.

In a tale that will be familiar to anyone who has ever been involved with touring theatre, off we set in the Transit, five cast, two crew, set and PA, fuelled by that great motivating but ultimately humbling emotion – naïve optimism, not only convinced that our Robocrofter and talking Caledonian Pine would have them rolling in the aisles from Ballachulish to Thurso, but that the public would turn out in droves to pay good money for the privilege.

Our Edwina Currie Clones* were to be met with vacant stares by the handful of members of the local Tory Party who constituted the audience at Dornie, promoted by a well-meaning shop owner at Balmacara, who, in his younkers, had studied at RADA.

The Promoters Arts Network in the Highlands has, thank the Lordie, moved on since those days. Yet there were great moments on that tour, and good venues and promoters that you don’t hear so much of now. (whatever happened to Skerray?)

The comic absurdity of the above, however, with it’s financial arrangements of box-office split (what’s fifty percent of zero?) and inevitable theatre company penury, should be well and truly confined to the dustbin of history. It is only with a strong promoters network, capable of offering solid financial guarantees, and a substantial and adequate reserve of public money – inflation-linked and held in perpetuity – that Highland companies will continue to survive.

Dogstar Theatre's 'The Strathspey King'

On average we hire nine people per tour, from writer and admin to crew and performers, with employment periods ranging from three to sometimes twelve weeks. We currently have one work in progress, Seven Ages, which recently received funding from the Highland Producers Fund.

Our first play, The Captain’s Collection, was originally commissioned and produced by Highland Festival, thereby absolving us from the rigours of fundraising. Since then, a total of £113,000 has been raised to allow us to continue, with around £83,000 of this coming directly from public grants, through Awards For All, SAC, Community Action Grants and the Highland Producers Fund.

The remaining, essential, £30,000 was secured through promoters guarantees, charitable donations, sponsorship and sales. Given that the majority of funding applications are sent to oversubscribed sources and are ultimately unsuccessful, for a small project-based theatre company this means a considerable administrative undertaking.

Often, this work is carried out “in-kind”, a friendly term for unpaid labour. This is generally down to the artist’s determination to see the fulfilment of creativity – such self-sacrifice may be laudable, but ultimately it will be soul destroying.
In creating our work over these last four years we’ve seen two of our productions commissioned for broadcast by BBC Radio Scotland, meaning in reality we’ve reached an audience of hundreds of thousands. Some of our research material has gone on to inform both a PHD thesis and an Honours Degree thesis.

Dogstar Theatre's 'The Strathspey King' - Bruce MacGregor on fiddle, Billy Riddoch as James Scott-Skinner & Christine Hanson on cello

Our work has also helped to boost sales of printed and recorded traditional music. This is all starting to sound a bit American dream/evangelical sales-pitch, but I mention it only to illustrate how the benefits of producing creative work can reach down into the community. And not all of these benefits will necessarily be ‘measurable outcomes’, conveniently packaged into numbers and percentages.

From my own personal viewpoint, drama serves a means to an end, to give breath to the printed word. Writing, for anyone interested (here we go – another statistic), is responsible for the direct employment of some six hundred and sixty thousand persons in the UK, according to the Writers Guild 2002 Survey. So, nurturing drama and writing serves a mighty purpose: what else out there can bring harmony to the community and at the same time be an investment in a multi-billion pound industry?
  
I guess what I’m getting at is this – if finances are rigidly in place – sacrosanct from government whim or policy – to enable artists to explore and create, then benefits will ultimately reach us. It’s an age-old argument of course, but one too often misconstrued as simply the disgruntled (generally confined in a miserable garret) artist’s complaint. I’ve yet to meet a working artist who didn’t have a desire to work towards betterment of the community.

No doubt too, some of the above will be old hat for seasoned producers.  But if there’s anybody out there reading this who’s considering starting up in the touring game, make as little personal sacrifice as you have to – get all the advice you can from producers, Equity or government agencies. There’s nothing in the world better than seeing your work produced, but getting the conditions right in the early days means a better chance of long-term survival.

Demand, for yourselves, decent wages and accommodation. Strive to pay writers, actors, crew and administrators no less than standard rates – raise them if you can, for touring is gruelling, low-paid work, crews work an average fourteen hour day, and stage actors must be the lowest-paid qualified professionals in the country. Get your budget as watertight as possible through promoter’s guarantees and secured grants.

Above all, avoid performing Edwina Currie routines in front of a handful of vacantly staring Tories.

* Historical Note: Edwina Currie is an erstwhile minister of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government who raised national alarm over infected eggs, damned the Scottish working class diet and serviced the appetite of John Major.
 
Hamish MacDonald has recently taken up a two year post as the Robert Burns Writing Fellow in the Scottish Borders.
 
© Hamish MacDonald, 2003