Theatre Without Walls: The National Theatre of Scotland

Trish Reid

doi:10.1515/jcde-2017-0007

Article

Theatre Without Walls: The National Theatre of Scotland

Trish Reid
Trish Reid is Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Kingston University. Her research interests are primarily in contemporary Scottish theatre. She is the author of Theatre & Scotland (Palgrave 2013) and a number of chapters and articles including “Sexy Kilts with Attitude: Scottish Theatre in the Twenty-First Century” in Adiseshiah and Lepage, ed. Twenty-First Century Drama: What Happens Now (Palgrave 2016); “Teenage Dreams: Power and Imagination in David Greig’s Yellow Moon and The Monster in the Hall” in Contemporary Theatre Review 26(1) and “Anthony Neilson” in Aleks Sierz, Modern British Playwriting: the 1990 s and ‘Post- Devolutionary Drama’ (Bloomsbury 2012).

Published/Copyright: April 28, 2017

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From the journal Journal of Contemporary Drama in English Volume 5 Issue 1

Abstract

The National Theatre of Scotland (NTS), which began producing work early in 2006, is a building-less theatre company which produces work in collaboration with a range of national and international partners. This article explores the ways in which mobility has been central to the conception and operation of the NTS throughout its first decade. In addition to an extensive commitment to touring, the company has made a feature of producing work in collaboration with local artists and communities across Scotland from Shetland in the far north to Dumfries in the south. The article focuses on the company’s inaugural Home project and on Ignition, a more recent large scale collaborative project devised and performed on Shetland under the direction of Wils Wilson. My aim is to show not only that the NTS offers an imaginative and flexible model that productively challenges the orthodoxy of existing national theatres, but that in so doing, it evidences a culturally distinctive and heterogeneous Scotland that privileges inclusivity and participation in arts practice and is de-centred and democratic in impulse.

Keywords: Scotland; national; theatre; Wils Wilson; mobility; localism

About the author

Trish Reid

Trish Reid is Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Kingston University. Her research interests are primarily in contemporary Scottish theatre. She is the author of Theatre & Scotland (Palgrave 2013) and a number of chapters and articles including “Sexy Kilts with Attitude: Scottish Theatre in the Twenty-First Century” in Adiseshiah and Lepage, ed. Twenty-First Century Drama: What Happens Now (Palgrave 2016); “Teenage Dreams: Power and Imagination in David Greig’s Yellow Moon and The Monster in the Hall” in Contemporary Theatre Review 26(1) and “Anthony Neilson” in Aleks Sierz, Modern British Playwriting: the 1990 s and ‘Post- Devolutionary Drama’ (Bloomsbury 2012).

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Published Online: 2017-4-28

Published in Print: 2017-4-1

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2017-0007

Keywords for this article

Scotland; national; theatre; Wils Wilson; mobility; localism