Mark Fisher reveals how one theatre company has earned itself more than a well-deserved reputation

IN the last round of Scottish Arts Council grants for one-off theatre projects, there was a curious disparity in the way three of our most community-minded companies were treated. Clyde Unity and Cat A, active and accomplished companies with a reputation for producing engaging new work in places other outfits feared to tread, were turned down flat, while Raindog, which had all but disappeared from view, picked up #29,000 for a production of an established classic.

As it happens, Clyde Unity had a partially successful appeal, and Cat A's film wing came up trumps with the lottery charities board. And it's not that anyone begrudges Raindog its money, just odd that it seemed to come from nowhere to clear the field.

Odder still that in the publicity for the forthcoming staging of The House of Bernarda Alba, that same company should describe itself as ''prolific''.

Surely Raindog was no longer a going concern now its founder members - Robert Carlyle, Caroline Paterson, and Stuart Davids - had achieved fame and fortune in Trainspotting, Eastenders, and Hamish Macbeth? Hadn't it been two years since its last major production, Wasted, with only a minor youth theatre Shakespeare in the interim? Didn't it seem a long time ago, another era even, that the company first emerged with a bolshie, anti-establishment attitude, a bunch of top-rank actors, and an ambition to wrest artistic control for themselves?

Talking sixteen-to-the-dozen when I meet him in the company's base at Glasgow Arts Centre, Stuart Davids puts me right. For a start, Lorca's tragedy will be Raindog's tenth production since its formation in 1991, when it staged One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Yes, it is two years since the second version of the improvised Wasted (and three since the first), but that's because last year the company focused its energy on The Lucky Suit, a short film that is even now doing the international movie festival circuit.

The youth theatre production of Romeo and Juliet accounted for another six months. And far from treating the company as a stop-gap between drama school and stardom, the founding team is as committed to it as it ever was.

''Because you haven't done a mainhouse theatre show, people think, 'Oh, what happened to Raindog?','' says Davids, best known as the lolloping Lachie jr in Hamish Macbeth.

''Having gone through three years of all of us being completely skint, it was great that suddenly we were earning money from TV, but the company didn't stop. I don't think any of us could just let it go. We've invested too much time. It's very easy to be seduced by film and TV, but theatre, for me, is my favourite art form.''

If the company has a profile problem in inverse proportion to the fame of its founder members, it is only the same as every project-funded company in these days of austerity.

The standard experience is to receive public support for just one production a year. Even if you take the show on a lengthy tour - and the nature of Raindog's big-cast work makes that impossible - there will still be at least 10 months when you're out of the public eye. Take a year out, and don't be surprised if no-one remembers you at all.

That's one problem the company should now be spared with last week's announcement that it is one of the first six organisations to be admitted to the SAC's National Lottery advancement programme. Up to #80,000 has been earmarked to help Raindog establish a secure administrative and financial base, and to expand its work with young people. The cash, which is subject to the results of a further consultation exercise, will enable the company to employ a full-time artistic director and an administrator and, having put Raindog on the map, to keep it there.

One problem Raindog has never had, however, is in attracting a starry cast. Lining up alongside a large band of extras in Davids' production of The House of Bernarda Alba are leading lights, including Shirley Henderson, Anne Lacey, Kathryn Howden, Anne Myatt, and Barbara Rafferty.

The chance to do such a

big, poetic, emotional play accounts for some of the enthusiasm, but just as important is the opportunity to work with a company renowned for its actor-centred philosophy.

''I particularly wanted to do an all-female piece, and I knew in order to get the funding I was going to have to put in a fairly high-profile cast,'' says Davids, who is using extras to bring the on-stage body-count to more than 40. ''The proposal was based on the cast more than anything else. It's a fine cast of actors and it's very rare you see that on stage. The company was formed by actors, and acting is what it's about. A lot of the actors in this show have been with us the whole time.''

Applying the same free approach to the text that the company took in its productions of Manfred Karge's Conquest of the South Pole, John Byrne's Slab Boys Trilogy, and Mike Leigh's Ecstasy, Davids is aiming to find a Scottish voice for Lorca's peasant poetry. ''I want it to be a Raindog translation of The House of Bernarda Alba,'' he says. ''There are lots of things in the play that you don't see, lots of life that goes on outside the walls of the house, and I'm interested in seeing some of that.''

He talks with unbridled enthusiasm about Lorca's tragedy of sexual repression. ''It's almost like opera,'' he says. ''It's a big, big play. I hate the idea of calling it 'Lorca's classic', because the more I read about him, the more I think what a forward-looking man he was. His attitude to theatre was that it has to progress and change, so Lorca purists might not like what I'm doing with the play, but what's the point in doing it unless you find something new and fresh?''

n The House of Bernarda Alba, opens tonight at the Tramway, Glasgow, and runs until September 20.