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Aby & Katy’s Starter for 10
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT is the collaborative work of Aby Watson and Katy Dye, who together aim to provide the public with performance that seeks to comfort, disturb, distort, confirm, unify and fragment.
Katy and Aby are a pair of performance makers working together to form duets that cross the genres of live art, choreography and theatre. They are both social artists who believe that performance can be a way to inform and discuss issues with the public in unsanitised, uncensored, and inappropriate ways.
Starter for 10, offers aspiring theatre-makers a funded residency of £2,500 to help them develop their skills, networks, or explore a new idea for a piece of theatre.
Here they share how they spent their time at Rockvilla, the National Theatre of Scotland’s new creation centre.
Over our two-week residency, we set out to begin making a new piece of contemporary performance called 'Technophile'. This is our first piece created between us in collaboration, and even though we’ve known one another personally and artistically for some time, this residency was also important for us to begin to understand this new working relationship. We devise our performances from scratch and frequently use our own experiences and perspectives as material. With this work, we’re exploring our position as two millennials dependent on their personal devices, and set out to question what the future of intimacy is in an age of globalisation. With our intimate, private and personal details becoming personal data, who are we really getting intimate with behind our screens? What do they know about us? And who are they selling it to? We are interested in finding out what happens when our personalities become commodities to be bought and sold, and when a human being becomes data. We wanted to develop these ideas through a performative language of synchronised choreography, projected visuals, spoken text and risk-taking actions using of our own, beloved technical devices.
We spent our time at Rockvilla creating and completing research tasks for ourselves, both in the traditional reading and excavating sense and in performative explorations. This research period was crucial as we could really interrogate and delve into the new information we were learning about by responding physically. These explorations were vast; we delved into our own search histories, googled what Google knows about us, studied videos of Edward Snowden, embodied expressions of emoticons, researched the complicated chemical and neurological effect from a simple ping of a notification… We made material from our perspective as young women of the last generation to remember not having the internet and delved romantically into the nostalgia of the now seemingly clunky, retro technology of our youth. We argued between us about the ethics of how willingly we give our personal data away online, and debated freedom of speech.
We responded to all our findings physically, creating new moments of performance to express them to potential audiences. We worked with video designer Tim Reid, who created a unique visual element to this exploration into technology, as well as offering a dramaturgical voice. With Tim's help, we experimented with how we could use projection to strengthen our enquiry. We played with moments of conflict and synchronicity between a screen and the human body in the performance space. We explored with projecting the aesthetic language and functions of our personal devices; desktops, zoom functions, GIFs, files, loading screens, live stream projection from our phones as we used them in action. Collaborating with Tim helped us to place our work more firmly in the digital world and create a larger visual/sensory dynamic to the material.
Rockvilla was a great place to work. There was always a friendly, buzzy, optimistic vibe that was really welcoming and not at all intimidating. The staff were always so kind and willing to help us with any problems or logistics. It was great that so many of the staff came down to see the sharing at the end of the residency to offer some really helpful feedback. It was lovely to bump into other artists and companies using the building too, and to strike up a conversation about our projects. The rehearsal spaces at Rockvilla are so brilliant; spacious, warm and light, we were very sad to leave!
Our ideas have definitely developed since the residency. At the start our development with this project we were exploring ideas of intimacy with our personal devices. Initially we were working primarily with choreographed movement, that explored a dependency with our devices that bordered on the romantic, or the obsessive. As our residency progressed we deviated from this starting point to discover the personal and emotional differences we had in response to the use of our devices and the commodification of our personal information. After starting together on the same page, we discovered that deep down we had conflicting views which really enriched the discussion we wanted the work to hold. On one hand, the availability of these intelligent technologies, like the internet, is utterly brilliant and the invisible gathering of my information is a small price to pay for free service: it’s out of sight, out of mind and I’m reeking the benefits. However, on the contrary as we continue to buy into this system we continue to allow big companies to corrupt the freedom of our information, make profit from our data and continue exercise surveillance over us… It’s a complex and rather heavy argument. In future developments of this work, we will continue to explore both sides of the argument.
We want to springboard from here to a further period of development, where we hope to take the performance material we created in this residency to fruition in a complete work. For this we want to continue our collaboration with Tim Reid, and add a director/dramaturg to the team. We would like to continue our research by interviewing various digital activists and experts in online surveillance, and creating practical material in response to this.
Iain Beggs & Fiona MacNeil’s Starter for 10
Iain Begg is a young actor who has worked in Gaelic stage and television productions for the last two years. His first professional role was in the play ‘Sequamur’ as part of the ‘Gairm nan Gàidheal’ series which toured nationally and internationally. Most recently he portrayed lead character MacLugran in Theatre Gu Leòr’s nationally touring play ‘Shrapnel’.
Fiona MacNeil is from the Isle of Vatersay in the Outer Hebrides. She trained at the Manchester Metropolitan School of Theatre, graduating in 2014. Since then Fiona has been based Glasgow.
Starter for 10, offers aspiring theatre-makers a funded residency of £2,500 to help them develop their skills, networks, or explore a new idea for a piece of theatre.
Fiona shares how they spent their time at Rockvilla, the National Theatre of Scotland’s new creation centre.
Our idea was to write a play around the story of the Vatersay Raiders. The Vatersay Raiders were a group of ten men from the nearby Islands of Barra and Mingulay in The Outer Hebrides. They raided the Island of Vatersay in the early 1900's to better their quality of life as the conditions they were living in were so poor. As a result of The Raid, they were sentenced to two months imprisonment. The story was spread far and wide, and gained huge public recognition. The land was then bought over by the Scottish Government and distributed into crofts for the Islanders. Both Iain and I have a strong connection to this story as we both come from the Islands, in fact my great-grandfather was one the ten men who went to prison.
We spent our time at Rockvilla mainly working with playwright and dramaturg Douglas Maxwell. Douglas was really the key in helping us to unlock our ideas and helped us to find our direction for the story in the play. The subject matter was so broad a concept, we really needed to hone exactly what route we wanted to go down. Douglas was great in helping us to explore this, and we also had a development day with actors scenes which was really helpful.
Rockvilla is fantastic, what a building! It has a wonderful, relaxed atmosphere and you really feel the creativity buzzing around. We were made to feel really welcome there.
Our ideas for our project changed quite a lot from the initial starting point. To begin with, we had visioned the history of the 1900's, the land, and the despair of leaving the islands behind for our piece. The main change was not the setting but time. We found that a contemporary take on the story and the Islands as they are today became the main focus. It was now about the characters, and not letting the story of the Raiders dominate the drama of the play, but help to enrich it, instead.
Iain and I are now about half way through finishing the play, so there's still work to do. The idea changed so much through our residency, but now we are happy with the direction it has now taken. We’re now looking to finish the play and explore how we could take it on to production level in the future.
MJ Deans’ Starter for 10
MJ Deans is a Gaelic-speaking actor and performance facilitator. She recently began work on a new piece of Gaelic language theatre adapted from a short story by acclaimed Scottish novelist Kirsty Logan as part of her Starter for 10 residency.
Starter for 10, offers aspiring theatre-makers a funded residency of £2,500 to help them develop their skills, networks, or explore a new idea for a piece of theatre.
We caught up with MJ towards the end of her residency at Rockvilla, the National Theatre of Scotland’s new creation centre.
“I'd been thinking about adapting a short story of Kirsty Logan's for a while. I'd loved Una and Coll Are Not Friends from The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales since I first read it in 2014. The story is set on the Isle of Skye and has a great, modern, fairytale quality. I thought it could make an exciting piece of contemporary physical Gaelic theatre. I'm also really interested in making theatre accessible, so before translating the story entirely, I had to think how it would work for English-speaking audiences. I came up with the idea of having one character always speaking in Gàidhlig and the other always speaking in English. I had no idea before my Starter for 10 residency if or how it would work!
I had so much fun during my four day residency. I had an amazing team in the room; director Caitlin Skinner, actors Beth Friedan and Michael Abubakar and movement director Natasha Gilmore. Caitlin kept the environment in the room really safe and playful, so the actors were free to improvise and challenge each other. Beth and Michael were incredibly generous with their ideas and performances and kept probing me with questions and new ideas.
We spent two days improvising around the scenes I'd written and then I'd go home and redraft in the evening.
The last two days saw Natasha coming in to work specifically on the movement, which was amazing and brought out new sides to the characters I hadn't thought of.
Being based at Rockvilla during the residency was an invaluable experience. Having everyone under one roof makes such a nice change from the old National Theatre of Scotland HQ at Civic House. I was able to nip into the technical or costume stores to borrow things or ask for some help and advice. It's such a buzzing, supportive atmosphere at Rockvilla. Staff I'd been chatting to over the week popped into our end-of-residency sharing to see how we were getting on. Rockvilla feels like a big, sexy, water-cooler hub for Scottish theatre. I think some great new connections and ideas will definitely be made in Rockvilla soon.
My main focus for the Starter for 10 residency was to ask the question, ‘does this form work for the story I'm telling?’. The feedback from our sharing was ‘yes it does’ so I'm now in a great position where I can go and keep writing. Once I've got a first draft finished, I'll see where I'm at and where I think Kirsty Logan’s story would be suited to as a piece of theatre. I hadn't dared to dream too big before the residency in case the idea didn't work, but now I'm really excited for the future!”
Photography by Beth Chalmers.
The National Theatre of Scotland’s opening reception for Rockvilla
We are pleased to announce the unveiling of Rockvilla - the new headquarters for the National Theatre of Scotland on the banks of the Forth & Clyde Canal in Glasgow - which was officially opened Monday 23 January 2017 by Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs.
The evening’s opening reception welcomed guests with a spectacular sight: projected onto the façade were moving images that lit up the canal, and included a construction time-lapse and scenes from various past productions by the Company. Along with speeches by Fiona Hyslop, Councillor George Redmond and Dame Seona Reid, guests were invited to look around the newly opened building and meet some of the brilliant folk who produce, promote and facilitate the National Theatre of Scotland’s productions.
In keeping with the Company’s declaration of being a ‘Theatre Without Walls’ – committed to performing to diverse geographic audiences and engaging with the community - this new facility will not host public performances, but rather will be a creative engine room for the Company. Rockvilla will facilitate their expansion nationally and internationally, and will continue to reinvigorate a part of Glasgow that is fast becoming its cultural quarter.
The redevelopment of a disused industrial warehouse provides the Company with approximately 3700sqm of space over two levels, and incorporates: three rehearsal rooms of varying scales, a learning and community suite, wardrobe department, production workshop and technical store; plus office space and social areas.
You can see more about the project on our website, and watch the featured construction time-lapse here.
January 2017