Arts review of 2020: Joyce McMillan on the year in theatre

In this strangest of years, Scottish theatre has been changed in ways that may take half a decade to become fully apparent, writes Joyce McMillan
Alan Cumming in Out of the Woods, part of the National Theatre of Scotland's Scenes For Survival seriesAlan Cumming in Out of the Woods, part of the National Theatre of Scotland's Scenes For Survival series
Alan Cumming in Out of the Woods, part of the National Theatre of Scotland's Scenes For Survival series

If there was one moment that summed up the strangeness of this year in the world of Scottish theatre, it came towards the end of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Scenes For Survival film Wednesday, written by Tena Stivicic, and featuring actors Douglas Henshall and Morven Christie. Filmed on the back green of a Glasgow tenement, it began in the style of a domestic television drama about a fairly irritating couple – she a writer, he an actor – arguing bitterly over a script she has written for him.

At the end of the 11-minute film, though, its director Finn den Hertog did something completely inspirational: he simply swept the camera away from the couple on the green, and up to the windows of the tenement flats above them, to show a real live audience of Glaswegians leaning out to watch the drama, and applauding at the end. And in that second, those of us watching at home veered from accepting a short screen drama as a decent substitute for theatre, to remembering, witnessing and feeling the very thing we had lost so abruptly back in March – the magic of live interaction between performers and watchers, and the astonishing way in which it opens out the possible meanings of an event.

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The shock of the closure of Scotland’s theatres, which came on 16 March, interrupted a season which, before the pandemic intervened, seemed to be producing an unusually rich and relevant seam of work. The year began in fine style with a brilliantly-curated edition of Edinburgh’s Message From The Skies outdoor visual spectacular, which this year featured two meditations on Scotland’s involvement with the slave trade – one, at the City Chambers, by Kayus Bankole of Young Fathers – which came to seem ever more powerful and prescient, in the light of this year’s intensifying Black Lives Matter debate. Then in March, there was a brief chance to catch the world premiere at the Tron of Vanishing Point’s beautiful and challenging Kafka adaptation The Metamorphosis, a show that seemed to fit the moment in which it appeared with an almost frightening intensity.

Patricia Panther, Saskia Ashdown and Courtney Stoddart in Lament for Sheku Bayoh PIC: Lisa Ferguson / JPI MediaPatricia Panther, Saskia Ashdown and Courtney Stoddart in Lament for Sheku Bayoh PIC: Lisa Ferguson / JPI Media
Patricia Panther, Saskia Ashdown and Courtney Stoddart in Lament for Sheku Bayoh PIC: Lisa Ferguson / JPI Media

The Metamorphosis had barely completed four performances, though, when lockdown intervened. Some theatres reacted by rushing into online work immediately, with Pitlochry using its ensemble company to create “three meals a day” of online interludes under the title Light, Hope, Joy, and later launching its beautiful Shades of Tay season of new short works by leading writers. The National Theatre of Scotland also moved quickly, forming the partnerships with BBC Culture In Quarantine and Hopscotch Films that would support the commissioning of 55 short Scenes For Survival films. The series, launched in May, has achieved astonishing audience figures, with some of the most popular films – notably Janey Godley’s Alone, Douglas Maxwell’s brilliant Peter Mullan monologue Fat Baws, and Alan Cummings’s three-part thriller Out Of The Woods, written by Johnny McKnight – clocking up millions of views worldwide. Touring company Rapture were also quick to move online, creating a short Rapture Bites film for audience members and venues every week from the start of lockdown.

The Edinburgh Festival period came and went in subdued style, despite the launch of the Traverse Theatre’s online “Traverse 3” – now one of Scotland’s most interesting and varied online venues. Hope Dickson Leach’s beautiful film Ghost Light, made with the National Theatre of Scotland, was a highlight of the virtual Edinburgh International Festival season, filmed in the empty Festival Theatre, and dedicated to remembering and celebrating the power of live theatre through film, even during lockdown.

Then in the autumn, after the Scottish government’s £10 million bailout of major producing venues, companies which had at first taken a more cautious approach to online work began to return to life. The Lyceum raised and remodelled its stage to prepare for a time when distanced cafe-style audiences may be allowed indoors, and began to play host to live or as-live shows for on-line audiences, including, in late November, Hannah Lavery’s landmark production of her own Lament For Sheku Bayoh, about the brutal death of a young black Kirkcaldy man at the hands of police there. Then at the end of the year, amid a flurry of online panto activity, Perth Theatre and the Tron both also opened their doors to virtual audiences, the Tron with the gorgeous Edwin Morgan-inspired film, High Man Pen Meander.

In this strangest of years, in other words, Scottish theatre has been changed in ways that may take half a decade to become fully apparent. It has learned that work created by theatre-makers can reach a far wider audience than those who traditionally come to the theatre, and must inevitably respond to that transforming knowledge. It has learned that nevertheless, audiences still love the magic of theatre buildings, and like to see and feel their presence even when they cannot visit them; and it has learned that even online, there is much to be said for the event that gathers an audience at the same time for the same live show, with its own unique sense of occasion.

Nico Guerzoni as Gregor in Vanishing Point's production of The Metamorphosis PIC: Mihaela BodlovicNico Guerzoni as Gregor in Vanishing Point's production of The Metamorphosis PIC: Mihaela Bodlovic
Nico Guerzoni as Gregor in Vanishing Point's production of The Metamorphosis PIC: Mihaela Bodlovic

For many workers in theatre who have fallen through the gaps in government income support, this has been a harrowing year, with a hugely destructive impact that may drive them out of the business altogether; others have managed to survive somehow, piecing together work, and hoping for better times ahead. What can be said for certain, though, is that some magnificent online work has been made, with the NTS Scenes For Survival, in particular, standing as a lasting memorial to Scotland’s strangest summer since the Second World War; and that when the theatres finally open their doors again, everyone who works in them – and the future theatre they create – will have been changed for good, by what they learned during the pandemic year of 2020.

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