10 years of the National Theatre of Scotland
The Skinny and Laurie Sansom chat about trilogies, tenth birthdays and touring the world with the National Theatre of Scotland.
The National Theatre of Scotland is like the younger kid in nursery that The Skinny has grown up with. Turning 10 just a few short months after this very publication, they’re celebrating not with one big party, but with a year of grand theatrical events. With some of their most popular shows returning over the next few months, as well as brand new, large scale works all across Scotland, it looks to be a landmark year for NTS. Artistic Director Laurie Sansom took some time out of his hectic schedule to talk to The Skinny about what we can expect from the year ahead, and directing The James Plays once more.
“We wanted to make sure,” he says, “that we were curating a really diverse season of work, that reflected all the different kinds of work the National Theatre of Scotland make.” Over the last ten years one of the key facets of the company, for him, has been their ethos of a “theatre without walls, redesigning what national theatre can be. We were the first national theatre ever to be established without a building of its own, without a performance space. Taking theatre to places it hadn’t been before, making theatre in new ways was right at the heart of the mission. I think that has reached across the world actually, as well as the UK, and it’s had a profound impact on how we view the role of theatre in public life. It’s a space in which questions can be debated; where people come together to share hopes, dreams, fears about the world, and it’s really a place of celebration. At the heart of it is a mission to explore the impact that theatre can have in shaping how we view ourselves and our world.”
Ambassadors for Scottish culture
The world that Sansom talks about is not just the theatre world, or even Scotland, but the international links that the company have created – something they need, in Sansom’s eyes, to push further over the coming years: “We’ve established a fantastic reputation for taking work to international territories – we’ve performed in four continents. We need to make work that is about the globe today, that is about our lives and how we’re all connected, and the big issues that we all have to take a global perspective on.”
This is reflected in the current season which began in January, with the acclaimed production Let The Right One In travelling to South Korea. “I think it’s really important that we can act as cultural ambassadors for Scottish culture, and that’s partly because that then influences Scottish artists,” he says. “Taking work internationally enhances the experience and changes the practices of Scottish actors, directors and writers.”
The company has been incredibly lucky on this front, all starting with Black Watch taking off as an international sensation: “We’re lucky, that’s such a fantastic calling card for us.” This foregrounded the company’s success taking work over to America, where Edinburgh Fringe hit Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour will be going later this year. Trying to put his finger on just what it is about the work that resonates so well in the States, Sansom credits a “clear sense of identity, something to do with the irreverence of the work. It’s playful, it’s produced across art forms so it uses physicality, song, drama. I think that’s very appealing to an American audience, and we’ve very quickly gained a reputation for a kind of work that’s very accessible but also provocative, which is at the heart of the work we make.”
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Moving onto the current season, the conversation quickly turns to trilogies; a new trend rising through theatre that has even been labeled 'box-set theatre' by some, almost as if the Netflix generation and binge-watching culture is spilling off our screens and onto our stages. This is not, for Sansom, what the current trend for trilogies – and specifically the three trilogies appearing over the next five months – is about. Instead, it is all about “scale and ambition,” particularly since the resources available to NTS are greater than those available to other, smaller Scottish companies: “The James Plays, This Restless House and The 306 are all hard to imagine without our creative impetus, so I think it’s on us to make sure that we are making those pieces of work.”
Supporting this will be NTS’s new home, Rockvilla, opening later this year – “a nerve centre for the making of work and the developing of talent.” It is the first purpose-built location for the company, despite their decade-long existence and importance on the Scottish theatre scene. Sansom describes it as “a place where we can bring rehearsal rooms, technical facilities and office space all under one roof, which will greatly enhance our ability to make groundbreaking work and take it to the rest of Scotland.” So despite its location in Spears Wharf, Glasgow, this hub, lacking any performance space, will still focus heavily on wider Scotland. “That’s my ambition, my goal for the company, to really enhance our touring across Scotland,” says Sansom. One of the programme’s returning favourites, The Strange Undoing of Prudence Hart, will fulfil this ambition with its tour of Scottish town halls later in the year.
The return of The James Plays
The current month however sees the return of Rona Munro’s James Plays. “It’s been fantastic to review them,” Sansom says. “Half of the cast were part of the company before and half of them are new, with two brand new Kings – James I and James III – and that’s been fantastic because it means it's brought fresh eyes on the plays. It also gave us the opportunity to look at James II over again because it was the one we tussled with a little bit in terms of the storytelling, and Rona’s written a new first act for it. We’ve developed how we tell the story and I think it’s a much more fascinating piece now.”
Performed originally as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, the plays received great acclaim, but the nature of theatre as a living being is that it is constantly tinkered with and reworked: “We made them so quickly last time. There’s been parts of the rehearsal process where we’ve been having a discussion that we never had before, and we’re discovering new things just by returning to it so it’s been fantastic. And of course we’re in a good place because we know we captured people's imaginations before, so that gives us a confidence to approach them afresh.”
It’s good to hear such excitement from Sansom even on the morning of the final rehearsal before taking all three plays into technical, and it’s a definite good sign for the play’s return. Given that it's the morning of the final rehearsal, however, The Skinny must let Sansom return to the rehearsal room. His parting words may be expected, but are sincere: “I feel very privileged to be leading the company in its tenth year and I think its a really good chance to start imagining what the National Theatre of Scotland can be for the next ten years.”
The James Plays, Festival Theatre, 'til 13 Feb then touring UK Mar-Jun
Buy tickets: bit.ly/jamesplays