Arts in Motion Creation Centre, Evanton, Thursday 23 February 2006

Arts in Motion Creation Centre

CARDS ON THE TABLE: for almost twenty years I argued against the concept of a National Theatre for Scotland. There were two reasons. First, the idea seemed tired and old-fashioned, something associated with the making of new nations at the start of the twentieth century, not the twenty-first. And, more pragmatically, it didn’t seem logical to create a new, and surely costly, theatrical entity when the existing infrastructure of buildings and companies was still seriously underfunded.

But then, along came the new Scottish Parliament, and a cultural ideal became a political ambition. The key question became, not should there be a national theatre, but what form should it take?

Fortunately the decision was taken at a very early stage that it should not, unlike its English counterpart, be building-based. Then, as Scottish Executive resources began to flow, it was further decided that it would not be a single company, unlike the ill-fated Scottish Theatre Company.

Finally, once new Director Vicky Featherstone had announced her first programme, it became clear that she was determined that the National Theatre of Scotland should be defined not by what it is, but by what it does.

The plan for the new company’s launch was a masterstroke, which ensured that NTS got positive—if slightly bewildered—UK-wide media coverage even before the first performance.

Ten totally different productions, in ten locations scattered across Scotland, all taking place within the same week, and linked only by being organised by NTS and sharing the common theme of ‘Home’.

All of them stretched the conventional concept of what constituted theatre, and, moreover, each production was a result of extensive partnerships, both with host venues and agencies, and with existing small-scale theatre companies.

With four of the ten taking place in the Highlands and Islands—Stornoway, Lerwick, Caithness and Inverness—there could be no accusations of Central Belt bias!

‘Home Inverness’ was in fact something of a misnomer. Although it was a collaboration with the Eden Court Theatre, the actual performances were based at Arts in Motion’s extraordinary ‘creation centre’—two huge Nissen huts based on a rural industrial estate (now there’s a contradiction in terms) outside the Easter Ross town of Evanton.

All that the audience knew in advance was that this would be a ‘site-specific’ piece of work ‘based on specially created photographs of local families in their own homes’.

On arrival, we were herded into a small dark space, lit only by a faux-Georgian wall lamp. An infuriatingly keen estate agent extolled the virtues of the property we had come to ‘view’, while a young man desperately pleaded to be let in the front door.

As he finally succeeded, the one light went out. In the ensuing darkness we sensed the wall in front of us disappear, and then, in a huge echoing space, we watched different combinations of couples posing with photographs of themselves.

To call what then followed ‘high energy physical theatre’ would hardly do it justice. The promenade audience was caught up in a frenzy of movement, as the company of six depicted at amazing speed, and with great economy, facets of the domestic life of young people who are experiencing what it means to have their own ‘home’ for the first time—fighting for the shared TV in a student flat, suffering the enthusiastic lovemaking of the neighbours in a thin-walled tenement, setting house rules, falling in and out of love, breaking up, making up, and finally walking out with all that means ‘home’ stuffed into a holdall. It was like watching an entire series of ‘Coupling’ compressed into one hour.

Using this unusual venue—with balconies, sliding walls, unexpected spaces–meant that the audience was all the time up close and personal: sharing in the voyeurism as an ex-boyfriend watches through the window where his former girlfriend is bonding with her new partner; invited to join one actor on the bed for a shared photo session (to imagine what you might look like with a different partner); caught up in the aggression of drink-fuelled shouting matches.

There were quiet moments too, including one exquisitely simple scene where all six performers were illuminated only by the glow from the screens of their mobile phones.

Now, whatever one’s preconception of what a ‘National Theatre’ performance would look like, I doubt if many had imagined it as a movement-based piece of work by immensely skilled young dancer/actors, with minimal dialogue, staged in a blacked out Nissen Hut miles from any city!

In a different context, this devised piece—witty, sensitive and engaging as it was—might not be considered ground-breaking, but as a demonstration of what the NTS means to do it was unexpected, refreshing, and really rather inspiring.

This is a National Theatre of Scotland which has the confidence to bring in a London-based theatre company (Frantic Assembly, with (Scottish) Director Scott Graham) as collaborator, employing a multi-national cast, and tackling subject-matter which resolutely avoided being local or parochial.

The next NTS production will be a large-scale multimedia adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s children’s book ‘The Wolves in the Wall’. Although this choice might have been influenced by the huge success which that other National Theatre had with ‘His Dark Materials’, it’s nonetheless further evidence that Vicky Featherstone is determined to be untrammelled by conventional expectations of what a National Theatre ought to do. And thank goodness for that!

© Robert Livingston, 2006