Last week was a brilliant week for playing with and presenting the ideas we're working on for SpectreTown. It was a real privilege to be in a rehearsal room with such a talented and imaginative bunch of people. Emily Reutlinger, Susan Martin, Aiyana D'Arcangelo, Matt Regan, Lucy Goldie, Bridget McCann and Mark Wood - thanks everyone for launching yourself at this play! Head to our
Projects page for more images and stories from last week....
On Friday night we were welcomed into the Traverse to share what we'd been working on. Here's the piece I wrote with Emily for the Traverse blog....
'As a writer it’s very daunting to be showing a work-in-progress - it’s something I expected to feel lucky getting out of alive! So I was really pleased when the Traverse offered to include my play, SpectreTown, in Hothouse – what better place to experiment with ideas in front of an audience hungry to see and take part in the development of new work than at Scotland’s home for new writing? Everyone on the Traverse team, from marketing to the technical staff, were brilliantly supportive.
For emerging companies in Scotland, sharing the process of making the work along the way has become a vital part of building both audience and industry support as well as crucial funding. We found that being able to showcase this work at the Traverse elevated both the standard of expectation as well as our own ambitions for the piece.
Last year we played to a packed Traverse One during our tour of The Idiot at the Wall, and so beginning our second show with this Traverse platform was a great way to continue building a relationship with Edinburgh audiences. The focus of our week-long development workshop in Cumbernauld was on exploring the different worlds, styles, and voices set out in the first draft of SpectreTown and to try and push the boundaries of what each of those elements might be. There was something both terrifying and affirming for us as a company to jump up in front of an audience at the end of that week and present those explorations – but it felt like an incredibly important leap.'
Big thank you to all at the Traverse for having us. Photos to follow!
On Saturday we left home in the dark and made the trip up to the Tullynessle and Forbes Hall, near Alford. It was really important to us that we brought our work-in-progress to a local North East audience, though honestly we wondered if a) anyone would show up, and b) we would be run out of town for mixing bothy ballads with electronic music.....! In the end over 40 folk showed up, and we had such a lovely afternoon of new writing, songs, tea, scones, and tons of interesting chat!
Thanks very much to Blair Dingwall at the Press and Journal for the chat, and the lovely piece!
Great to talk with Doric speakers about the state of things for their own dialect. We were also honoured to have the wonderful Sheena Blackhall join us to sing some bothy ballads - one very sad, and one utterly filthy....and there's nothing like seeing a polite crowd sing along to a song like that.....brilliant! We'll be posting videos shortly so watch this space :-) In the meantime, Aiyana's getting the tea on!
Thanks to everyone at Cumbernauld Theatre for hosting our development week, and for all the ongoing support of our progression as a company. See you again soon!
Elspeth xo
