Laurie Sansom: NTS's Season to Belong
Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Scotland, Laurie Sansom sits down with The Skinny to discuss the 2015 season Belong, political engagement in theatre and directing Muriel Spark
Laurie Sansom, now beginning his second season as artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland wants to “harness some of the creative energy that was released in Scotland last year, not just around the referendum but around the Commonwealth Games and everything that put the spotlight on Scotland.” It is with this in mind that he introduces the programme for the first six months of NTS shows this year, all centred around the theme Belong. “There are often challenges involved in who you belong to,” Sansom tells The Skinny, but it is community and belonging that is at the heart of Scotland and at the heart of theatre, regardless of where you approach it from. “Each show is of a very different scale and theme, but somehow all reflect upon the groups, the ethnic groups, the families, the tribes that we belong to, for good and ill. Sometimes those groups can be quite suffocating things to be part of, and other times they’re full of joy and support, and love, and often both.”
Scotland’s identity, and the identity of Scottish theatre, is not a unique bubble of its own and must be informed by its place in the world and its interactions outwith its own community. It is for this reason, Sansom tells us, that NTS is working with “a whole range of artists from Scotland and beyond who have different heritage – something we thought really worth separating. Scotland has always been quite outward facing, and in some ways very welcoming to voices and influences from outside, but every nation also struggles with that sometimes as well, and how to accommodate different viewpoints and cultures.”
Take, for example, Rites, which will be touring in May 2015. This production tackles the highly important issue of female genital mutilation, and it was with extreme care that NTS and Contact Theatre in Manchester have approached the topic. Sansom tells us, “It’s a look at something that the Scottish Refugee Council brought to Cora Bissett’s attention as being a real issue in Scotland, particularly Glasgow. So there’s a very specific example where the piece itself is about a practice that exists within certain communities and outside of Scotland. It’s an attempt to understand it better and to bring lots of different voices into that exploration of why it happens, how we can prevent it, how we can support people who are either challenging it or affected by it, but also how it reflects on other practices that might be seen as much more Western in terms of body modification, looking at what the differences are there.”
"We’re at our best when we’re a company that’s in conversation with our audiences." – Laurie Sansom
This interplay of international and national issues, and of different communities within Scotland is what Belong is all about, and staying engaged politically is what NTS is all about. Talking of the political focuses of Rites, and the Ukranian/Russian season planned for A Play, A Pie and A Pint Sansom emphasises the need to create “work that is relevant, resonant and urgent to now.” He, his associate directors, and the artists involved with NTS all, he says, desire to produce plays that are “socially reactive, trying to reflect some of the things that people are talking about, thinking about, that are affecting their lives.” While he is aware of the difficulty sometimes found in balancing politics with the theatre’s other main desire: to entertain, Sansom sees in Scotland “right now there are so many things that people want to debate and talk about,” and it is part of the National Theatre’s job to answer that. “We’re at our best when we’re a company that’s in conversation with our audiences, that’s actually providing stepping off points for wider debates online, in the papers and in the pubs and bars and theatres where we play. I think that’s when we’re most reflecting all of Scotland, which is one thing we take really seriously as a national theatre.”
One of the ways in which NTS most uphold their national status is through touring to all areas of Scotland. Sansom is well aware that, as a Government funded organisation, NTS is “owned by all the Scottish people. Because there are particular geographic challenges in reaching all of Scotland it also means there’s challenges for people coming to us if we existed in a particular building.” It is because of this that the ethos of “a theatre without walls” has built up within NTS, rising out of a desire to “break down the barriers between people getting to experience culture and live performance.”
When asked how this new season will continue to uphold this tradition, Sansom talks about wishing they could do more in an apparent desire to be everywhere at once. However, given that that sadly isn’t possible, this year they’re bringing the focus to the Western Isles, with a new, Gaelic adaption of Compton Mackenzie’s Whisky Galore. “It’s a very specific bit of programming to be made by Gaelic speaking artists for Gaelic speaking audiences,” Sansom says of the production that is also marking the launch of new Gaelic theatre company, Robhanis, whose artistic director Iain Finlay Macleod has adapted this production. The play will be touring to arts centres and village halls around Scotland in April. For Sansom, “it’s essential that we use the fact that we haven’t got an iconic building in Glasgow or Edinburgh to our advantage, and also it’s a fantastic opportunity to get around the country, which I think is such a gift for all of us to feel that the company is present in all of Scotland.”
On the opposite side of the scale, NTS is starting the year with two of its biggest productions – Dunsinane and Let The Right One In – heading to North America. Sansom talks about being a “cultural ambassador” for Scottish artists, but also how the strength of their work speaks for them. The interest is there, waiting to hear what Scottish artists are trying to say.
And what does Sansom himself have to say? He’s stepping up to direct Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat this June. “It’s my favourite Muriel Spark novel, and it was her favourite too, which is a ringing endorsement.” It's not the first time Sansom has tackled Spark, having directed The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and discovered the greatness in the rest of Spark’s work at that time. “I think that if you see Jean Brodie as the gateway drug, I really want to get people hooked,” he jokes. “Spark has created a lead character who’s so enigmatic, so colourful, so mysterious and in the end quite disturbing that it rivals Jean Brodie easily as far as I’m concerned. You auteur it at your peril, but I’ve been working on it for years so I’m really excited to get the opportunity to finally stage it.” To end a season of belonging with a character who is running away from herself is a bold choice, and it seems that these are choices that can be expected to colour NTS’s programming under Sansom, to keep Scotland talking.