Pioneering approach that became a phenomenon

Theatre critic

Monday 4 June 2012

WHEN David MacLennan founded A Play, A Pie and A Pint at Oran Mor in 2004, his first season of lunchtime plays with refreshments included in the price was a modest affair.

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comment Neil cooper

Eight years and 250 new works later, as MacLennan gets set to receive the Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland's inaugural CATS Whiskers award for Outstanding Achievement, A Play, A Pie and A Pint now looks like a genuine theatrical phenomenon that was seriously ahead of the game.

With initial seasons seemingly pulled together with the help of MacLennan's extensive address book of Scottish theatre movers and shakers, it was as if those seemingly left in the theatrical wilderness after grants for companies such as the MacLennan-led Wildcat had been cut had suddenly rediscovered their mojo. With no tradition of lunchtime theatre in Scotland, A Play, A Pie and A Pint served up works from veteran writers such as Peter MacDougall that were more serious than the sort of froth one might expect from such a forum. Actors such as David Hayman and Robbie Coltrane took to the stage for the first time in years. Pretty soon, writers such as David Greig, David Harrower, Jo Clifford, Morna Pearson and many others grew ever bolder in form and content in what had become a low-risk showcase for writers to explore short-form play-writing with often startling results.Connections with other companies were forged, first with Bewley's Lunchtime Theatre in Dublin, then with the Traverse, the National Theatre of Scotland and others. Many plays at Oran Mor have found second or third lives, and the Play, Pie and A Pint web is now far-reaching, with the current One Day in Spring mini-season by Middle Eastern writers the perfect example of how ambitious the work has become. All this without a penny of direct public funding.When A Play, A Pie and A Pint began, the recession had yet to hit arts funding. Now, with theatre companies forced to be creative with ever more limited budgets, MacLennan & Co look like pioneers.With Creative Scotland's review of how it funds major arts companies currently causing justifiable anger among the artists it serves, A Play, A Pie and A Pint is a glaring example of how artist-led initiatives can thrive in difficult times. Watch and learn, Creative Scotland, because A Play, A Pie and A Pint really is the CATS Whiskers.

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Pioneering approach that became a phenomenon

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