Award winners top the bill at Behaviour

Pulling all of this together in one programme has been the responsibility of Gillian Garrity, a Glasgow-based independent producer who came into post as acting Associate Producer last summer as Arches Artistic Director, Jackie Wylie, made contingency plans for her forthcoming maternity leave. "Jackie summed up the theme she had in mind in one word: 'futures' - but apart from a couple of productions she'd already pencilled in, it was up to me to decide what that meant for Behaviour." Garrity laughs, remembering how - it being already August - she simply headed over to the Fringe in Edinburgh, took a deep breath and plunged into day after day of watching "as many shows as I possibly could. For me, this was all about putting into practice what the Arches stands for in terms of taking risks, supporting artists, finding new talent - bringing in international work that hasn't been seen here before, but also keeping faith with existing artists that have a relationship with this venue. It was a personal learning curve, and a challenge, but the arts team here couldn't have been more helpful and now, when I look at the brochure... I think it's full of what the future means to a really diverse range of artists and audiences."

One strand, the Arches Brick Award, links directly into the Edinburgh Fringe by bringing in productions that might otherwise never make it along the M8 to Glasgow. The Christeene Machine is one of those, a darkly graphic onslaught on all things "nice" led by the unstintingly deviant drag persona created by Paul Soileau. "You know," says Garrity, "this wasn't actually the kind of theatre I'd expected to programme! But I was really touched by the piece. It is extreme, yes. Language, references, the whole look is extreme but at the same time, it has a real sense of vulnerability and protest." Also badged with a Brick Award - Christopher Brett Bailey's This Is How We Die. "He's just such an exquisite wordsmith," says Garrity. "His story-telling skills, his use of language - wonderful. And so totally different from Christeene, you'd assume they were an unlikely pairing. But they both asked to be programmed across the same weekend, so as they can hook up again. And somehow, for me, that seems to sum up what it is that makes Behaviour different and special. You can have two artists who seem poles apart, finding a common bond in why they make the work.And why their work feels right in this context "

Language is also a driving force in Ishbel McFarlane's O is for Hoolet, the winner of the Arches Platform 18:New Directions Award 2014. "My parents brought me up speaking Scots," she says. "So in my alphabet book, 'o' was for hoolet - owl - and it felt perfectly natural to talk of 'hame' and 'maw' as a family." Long before she arrived at university, however, McFarlane had encountered the cultural cringe that pushed Scots off the tip of her (and most folks') tongue, with English assuming the role of lingua franca. "I understand that," she says with just a hint of a smile. "I understand people's need to communicate at home and abroad, but what I'm exploring in my show is the need we also have to own more than one language. To have the language we use when we're being interviewed for a job, but to have the language we use when chatting with our pals or when we're at home as well. And for those languages to be given an equal value, because of how they allow us to communicate with different people in different circumstances."

She's quietly fierce in her proselytising on behalf of the Scots language, but she's by no means blinkered by her passions. On-stage, her accumulation of fragments, garnered from different sources - everything from casual conversations to seriously academic studies - will intermingle with her own memories in a collage of conflicting opinions.

In a way, like so much of Behaviour, McFarlane's solo is future-forward in it's thinking, even as it draws strength and inspiration from the past. Garrity agrees. "It's important for us to go forward - build connections with other venues, like the Citizens, CCA, the Botanic Gardens - and to encourage new work, but we know our audiences like to see how artists are progressing, so Peter McMaster, Nic Green, Rosanna Cade and Gob Squad are back with us before we round off the festival with the Sexology Season, presented in collaboration with the Wellcome Collection. The legendary Lois Weaver is a part of that, and I couldn't be more thrilled."

www.thearches.co.uk. Behaviour runs from tomorrow to Sunday May 17.