2021: January to March

2021: snapshots from a pandemic year 

January to March

January - Strangeways

January began back in lockdown.  Lockdown-lite, I suppose: we could have insisted that the Strangeways development happened face-to-face in Glasgow (citing the ‘not possible to work from home’ get out of jail free clause) but that didn’t have integrity, so we’d made a call at the end of December to do it online.

There is a moment in the play where Michael (a character that I’ve written before, in Walk With Me) is up on the chapel roof during the 1990 Strangeways siege. He talks about the geese flying south, high above them. I smile now, thinking of Trevor A Toussaint saying those lines.

Drawing: Oliver Townsend

February - Holly Gallagher Development

February was another online development, this time with genius Stockton artist Holly Gallagher, working on a number of different shows at the effervescent stage where they are forming out of the ether.  

I was back in the lighting designer seat (after being in the writer/lead artist seat for Strangeways) and it is the first time that I had done online lighting visualisation for a project.  It was great fun, and the team that Holly put together had a real family feel.  It was **almost** like being back at ARC in person.  Especially when Nick arrived in the zoom room on our final day.  I had missed him, in locked-down 2020.

March - FIELD Scotland Residency

March was the first of three residencies that I did in 2021.  Residencies that I had done before 2021?  Precisely nil, in my whole career.  This year, three.  Just like that.  

For me, that speaks to two things.  The first is that I’m finally taking the time to develop myself as an artist, which is possible because the pandemic and the choices I am making at the moment mean I am moving away the punishing back-to-back of lighting design that I’ve worked for many years, and is ultimately not as creative as it should be because the way we approach production in theatre is rarely sustainable in human terms.  And the second thing is, that the Creative Scotland funding streams, aimed at artists developing themselves and others during the pandemic, are working.

This first residency was online, curated by Kat and Alister from Two Destination Language, who carefully created a space where as artists could imagine a different future.