Hidden depths - The Arches

Published on Friday 12 September 2008 16:16

The Arches' new artistic director wants to take even more risks with the experimental venue, she tells Mark Fisher

ONE OF the many achievements of the Arches in its 17-year history is to have given successive generations of Glasgow artists a foot on the theatrical ladder. It is appropriate, therefore, that the successor to artistic director Andy Arnold, who moved up the road to the Tron earlier this year, is herself a beneficiary of the theatre's eagerness to embrace the young and the new.

Now 28, Jackie Wylie was not yet a teenager when Arnold had a vision for the warren of catacombs beneath Central Station that had been used to house 1990's Glasgow exhibition. By the time she was acting in student productions in the atmospheric subterranean theatre, the venue had become an established part of the city's arts scene, its adventurous performance programme financially supported by its lucrative club nights and gigs. In 2004, she joined the company full time, taking on the role of arts programmer and developing events such as this month's Arches Live! festival of "unleashed, uninhibited creativity".

Appointed artistic director in July, Wylie understands as well as anyone the venue's ethos. "When people walk into the Arches they expect innovation, forward-thinking, risk-taking and bravery," she says. "It's a building that's synonymous with radicalism, but is also completely open to people who don't have a pre-learned language of theatre. It's work that people who haven't been to theatre before are excited about, but that is also really challenging to a more theatre-savvy audience. That's when something magical happens."

Although she was championed by Arnold, her talents are different and, unlike him, she will not be directing her own shows. This opens up the possibility of bringing in a wider range of theatre-makers from home and abroad and a flexibility in the scale and frequency of Arches productions. "We're going to reinvent the in-house company," she says. "We believe it's essential to have a production company within the building to be a beating creative heart. It's why we exist. But I want to tie it in with the direction I've been taking the visiting companies programme, which is to focus on internationalism and big-scale work. The exciting thing is that we don't have to be tied down to any one artist. It might be that one year we put on a number of small-scale works, but the next year we do one large-scale production."

Wylie will be announcing more specific plans at the end of the year, but there's a clue about the way things are moving in The Snow Queen, which plays in December. The Hans Christian Andersen favourite is being adapted by Megan Barker and directed by Al Seed, two veterans of the Arches' quirkier corners, now bringing their talents to bear on a family show. "We're a kind of laboratory for artists at the beginnings of their careers," says Wylie, delighted to be welcoming back the equally experimental National Review of Live Art in February.

"When they go on to do bigger-scale work, it's really exciting because it's a mark of the success of the Arches. But at the same time I would never close myself off to allowing those artists back. The Christmas show is a really nice example of that. We can say: 'You've proved yourself as artists, now it's time for the responsibility of a big show and a proper budget.'"

More immediately pressing is this year's Arches Live!, a dizzying programme of shows, installations, bands and talks, featuring everything from Adrian Howells offering one-to-one foot washing, to a mystery event, Quantum Physical, driven by text messages sent to the audience. With events lasting as little as 20 minutes, it's a chance for theatre-goers to switch from show to show almost as casually as flicking channels on the TV. "There are weird and wonderful things happening throughout the building," she says. "I noticed last year that people were coming down and just hanging out. It's a nice, creative environment and audiences can be as involved as they want to be."

What she loves most about the Arches is the building itself. "There's something distinct about the work that happens here and that's because the building is so unique," she says. "There's a kind of playfulness that only exists in the Arches. It means you can put on difficult work but there's a sense of celebration because of the building. Even the most risk-taking work feels like it's fun."

• Arches Live!, Arches, Glasgow, September 18-27