When the Made In Scotland showcase was founded three years ago to support home-grown theatre and dance companies who wished to perform on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe before a host of international promoters, no-one really knew what to expect.
Since then, not only has the strike rate been high in terms of work picked up, but it is work which only a few years ago would have been remarkable within a Scottish context at all. Shows like Cora Bissett’s site-specific sex-trafficking drama, Roadkill, and David Leddy’s labyrinthine backstage tour, Sub-Rosa, speak volumes about how much theatre-making in Scotland has raised the level of its game in terms of scope and imagination.
Funded by the Scottish Government’s Expo fund, Made in Scotland has developed its remit this year as well to include a new Scottish Performing Arts Symposium and Promoter Plus, a means of pairing international promoters with at the very least a guaranteed five pieces of work.
“These new initiatives are aimed at promoters,” explains Federation of Scottish Theatre director Jon Morgan, “in terms of finding out what the arts in Scotland are about and how they’re being developed.”
While some of the 17 works selected by a panel of theatre professionals have already been road tested, some, including Grid Iron’s new show, What Remains, have yet to be seen. “That’s a calculated risk,” according to Morgan, “and it’s one that makes things exciting, because while we know the company’s work, we won’t know what this show will be like until we see it.”
With one year’s Expo funding left to run, Made in Scotland is clearly paying dividends. Yet, while Morgan is confident of the showcase’s future, he is also keen to point up this country’s already thriving theatrical infrastructure that shapes it.
“Made in Scotland is a really important initiative,” he says, “but it couldn’t happen if there wasn’t already serious investment in the arts in Scotland. That’s what we want to make our masters aware of, that this couldn’t happen if there wasn’t already some remarkable work being developed. Something like Nic Green’s Trilogy, which was an extraordinary piece of work, and which was quite rightly included in Made in Scotland, would have happened anyway. What I like about Made in Scotland is that it feels quite democratic, and that off-radar artists can get a platform, which is why it’s important that funders continue to support places like the Arches, where Trilogy was first developed.”
One of the main beneficiaries of Made in Scotland 2011 is Remarkable Arts, the fledgling Edinburgh-based organisation who last year took over Hill Street Theatre, and this year expands into St George’s West.
Despite being one of the newest kids on the block, Remarkable Arts find themselves hosting eight shows across both of their venues from Made in Scotland’s 17. These range from a revival of the Citizens Theatre’s production of One Million Tiny Plays About Britain, a compendium of miniatures based on a newspaper column, to work by leftfield companies Fish and Game and Poorboy. Also featured is Untitled Love Story, the latest piece by Leddy, whose influence on how Remarkable Arts is perceived might well prove crucial.
It was the challenges faced in housing Sub-Rosa, which required a venue full of publicity posters to be taken down and put back up every day to make it work, that convinced other Made in Scotland recipients that Remarkable were committed and credible enough to be approached. “It was a big commitment,” admits Remarkable Arts artistic director Tim Hawkins, “but it was worth it.”
This is a typical statement by Hawkins, who set up Remarkable Arts with associate producer Dani Rae in 2010. “The idea of setting up Remarkable was to be a producer of remarkable work,” Hawkins explains, “and not do Fringe-lite, where people have to cut down their shows. That seems to be a negation of the fringe process. I want the work we put on at Remarkable to be ambitious, and we try to make our guarantees fairer to companies coming in than maybe some venues operate. With that in mind our first year was quite successful, in that we didn’t make any money, but we didn’t lose any either.”
The Made in Scotland shows rushing to Remarkable Arts may be down to the Sub-Rosa factor, but experience counts as well. Hawkins has almost 30 years’ experience running Fringe venues including Old St Paul’s, the Roman Eagle Lodge and Hill Street with its former residents Universal Arts. Hawkins was also a partner in the much missed Aurora Nova venue based at St Stephen’s Church in Stockbridge. “The great tragedy about Aurora Nova,” Hawkins says, “is that no matter how successful it was and how acclaimed it was, there weren’t enough seats.”
Beyond Made in Scotland, Remarkable’s programme of 44 shows includes White Rabbit Red Rabbit, a co-production between Remarkable, Canada’s Volcano company and former Aurora Nova director Wolfgang Hoffmann, and Audience, the latest one-to-one experience from Belgian company Ontroerend Goed. Also in the frame is Viewless, a new piece by Cumbernauld Theatre.
One Scottish show appearing in the Remarkable programme but not part of Made in Scotland is Orlando, the Glasgow-based Cryptic company’s sensual multimedia adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending ode to a lover. Arguably the best thing Cryptic has done in the company’s history, Orlando’s exclusion from Made in Scotland is baffling, and proves that, even with such a high-calibre programme as this year’s, Made in Scotland isn’t foolproof.
“One of the things not well known,” Morgan points out, “is that there is an additional touring fund available, not just for Made in Scotland shows, but for any Scottish company in the Fringe. In a way that acknowledges we’re not perfect.”
As for the future, with or without Made in Scotland, in the current economic climate it’s as uncertain as anything else. “If you’ve got great shows you hope everything else will take care of itself,” Hawkins says. “It’s always a gamble, but if you get interesting companies, you’ve got to trust there’s an audience for it.”
Visit www.madeinscotland2011.com, www.remarkable-arts.com.
