Student Memories: Catriona McInnes

I spent my 1st student year at RSAMD studying Harp on the Scottish Music BA before defecting to the drama school for the Contemporary Performance Practice BA. Despite my desire to further my fresher years trying my hand at the Stage management and Opera courses, I stuck it out on the performance course, leaving myself open to the rigors of autonomy and being swept away in those prevailing auteur-winds. Adversely, now as a writer/director of film I couldn't have asked for a better grounding.

One of many highlights was my trip to Huddersfield University to do research for my dissertation. I got there at 10pm not yet having secured a place to stay (an old habit of mine!) and walked around Huddersfield looking for a B&B for over an hour before eventually asking at the George Hotel and being offered a double room and kippers for breakfast for just £20! I have never needed fish for breakfast more than that following morning as the rest of the day was spent with one of Grotowski’s contemporaries contemplative running (backward and forwards!) and learning a Tibetan hat dance for a further two hours, not to mention trying to locate my serpents tail – don't ask! All this and no lunch… But thanks to the fish, I survived!

My Masters years at Napier University's Screen Academy couldn't go without mention either. Top of the list is the summer between my MA in Screenwriting and MFA in Advanced Film practice when I took one of the Uni's XM1 Camera's to film in Morocco for 5 weeks, without insurance (or so the uni thought!). Futher to that...perhaps now it can't harm me to mention that since my interview for the MFA took place the morning after the last night of the Fringe, my interview performance was a little 'fuelled' not by kippers, rather by half a bottle of 12-year-old Balvenie. They must have thought I'd fit in or something...