The Arches Theatre Festival
5-17 April 2005
This year, The Arches will celebrate its fourth annual Spring theatre festival. We explore the festival through its history to the near future.
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The Arches Theatre Festival started in 2002, originally conceived as a showcase of Scottish work. The first programme was a mixture of pieces devised at the Arches in association with Arches Theatre Company and work that had originally run successfully elsewhere. Showcasing appeared to be a good way to package new writing. Audiences always seem prepared to take a risk on lesser-known companies if they are in a festival programme. The Arches encountered criticism as a lot of the work had been seen before. Subsequently they have tried to showcase pieces not previously played in Scotland. |
Because their October festival 'Arches Live' has grown in stature, they have been able to relax the strictures of the festival. They were able to bring in British and international work with relevance to Scottish audiences. This year’s programme, for example, encompasses new Scottish writing, the Scottish premieres of some particularly exciting British pieces and a number of bigger international names. They are also proud of achieving the balance between drama and physical performance pieces, between text-centred and devised work.
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This year, all of the acts share common ground in that their work constitutes a re-examining of the language of theatre. This is not a festival about plays as such – it is a festival celebrating the theatrical experience and the possibilities therein.
A strong strand of the programme is physical theatre, which extends to artists who are crossing boundaries. There are more and more people producing experimental work that plays with the very form of theatre. The Arches hope to celebrate that in this year’s programme. |
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Read more about physical theatre |
With a completely unique range of spaces available, the Arches can offer performers and companies one of the most flexible arts venues in Scotland. This provides far more scope to experiment with form than more conventional theatres.
The Arches also offer their commitment to attracting a diverse audience who might traditionally feel disenfranchised by theatre productions. As the venue also encompasses club nights, live music events and a vibrant café bar, their audiences benefit from cultural cross-pollination. They aim to make the arts accessible to everyone without ever dumbing down.
| This year’s line-up features London-based Kali Theatre, who specialise in new writing by British Asian women, a new work by performance art group Uninvited Guests (soundtracked with live noise samples from the performers bodies) and the UK premiere of Ketzal by internationally-renowned physical theatre company Derevo. |
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The festival has always been a vehicle for the Arches Award for Stage Directors, offering emerging stage directors the resources to put on a professional production at the Arches with funding and full support. Each year an open submission process generates a range of very diverse proposals from across the UK.
| This year’s winners, Skye Loneragan and Davey Anderson, are both putting on pieces they’ve written or devised themselves. Using video and new media technology, Davey’s play Snuff, set in a room on a Scottish housing scheme, examines working-class masculinity and personal accountability against the horrifying aesthetics of the war on terror. |
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Skye is using the award as a space in which to experiment with her own directorial style and has created and directed her piece using storyboards rather than a script. A Little Laugh I Lost Somewhere, based around The Little Prince by Antoine Saint-Exupery, re-examines adult mores through a child-like mindset.
About this year's winners
Skye Loneragan was born in Australia but is currently Glasgow-based. She has collaborated with the Arches on several plays and performance pieces, and won a Fringe First for her one-woman show Cracked in 2001.
Davey Anderson is Glasgow-based and has had his writing developed by Boilerhouse and the Traverse Theatre. He has worked as an assistant director at the Citizens Theatre and as a musical director for Scottish Youth Theatre.
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The Arches Award for Stage Directors would not be possible without the generous funding of the Scottish Arts Council, the Esmée Fairbairn trust and Hoegaarden Beer.
To find out more about the support that the Scottish Arts Council can offer, visit the Funding section of the website. | |