**** The Herald

A photographic memory. Thick brown hair that goes frizzy in the rain. A cameo brooch that belonged to my grandmother. An obsession with list making and thank you letters. Small ears. Asthma. The ability to achieve ten things before breakfast. The knowledge that it’s always important to wear clean underwear as you never really know when you might have an accident… These are some of the things I got from my mother.

Hand Me down is an original show made with ten women from the same family which aims to explore female relationships  in families.

Hand Me Down was performed at the Arches in Glasgow and the Traverse in Edinburgh as part of the Arches Platform 18 Award for New Work 2010.

Check Out Rehearsal Footage:

Hand Me Down Reviews:

Mark Fisher, The Scotsman

Mary Brennan, The Herald

**** The Herald

**** The Scotsman

This is a picture of me and my Dad. You can probably tell that this was taken in the 1980’s which means that he was in his late twenties and I was new to the world. At this point we didn’t know each other very well and didn’t really know what to expect. Twenty six years later we have a bit more experience and a whole new set of questions…

Chip is a show about fathers and daughters that stems from the real life experience of Jess Thorpe and Tim Thorpe and featured as part of the Arches Live! Festival, Glasgow, September 2009.

September 2009 at The Arches as part of the Arches Live! Festival, Glasgow 

 December 2009 as part of the Forest Fringe – Central School of Speech and Drama, London

August 2010 as part of the Forest Fringe Festival, Edinburgh

Chip Reviews:

Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman http://joycemcmillan.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/arches-live-2009-first-weekend-hitch-chip-pictures-of-heaven/

Mary Brennan, The Herald  http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/stage-visual-arts/life-s-journey-is-all-about-the-people-1.921136

This process culminated in a large scale site specific performance event set in the home ground of Arthurlie Footbal team and involved art and performances from over 300 local people.

This project was commissioned and managed by the National Theatre of Scotland

One All Press:

The Herald http://www.heraldscotland.com/feels-like-team-spirit-in-barrhead-1.838720

***** The Herald

**** The Scotsman

Does it seem to you that we have been married for over 50 years?
Can you remember what it was like before we were married?
Can you remember what our favourite song was?
Can you remember the first carpet we ever bought?
Would you like to dance?

In August 2008 we placed an advert in the newspaper. As a result of this advert we met Tillie and Ronnie Jeffrey – they have been married for 52 years. Together we spent time exploring their experience of spending their lives together.

Life Long tracks the significant moments they have lived through, their memories, stories and personal histories remembered and re-lived in this original piece of performance.

Life Long was performed at The Art Club, Glasgow as part of the Arches programme in February 2010.

Life Long Reviews:

Mary Brennan, The Herald http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/stage-visual-arts/life-long-arches-off-site-glasgow-arts-club-1.1008579

Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman http://joycemcmillan.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/life-long/

We came together eight weeks ago knowing little about each other.

Public Displays of Rhythm was created in collaboration with artist James Leadbitter, students from the Contemporary Performance programme at the Royal Scottish of Music and Drama and a group of adults supported by Key Housing. This group spent eight weeks getting to know each other before hosting a performance and party in the Langside Halls, Glasgow.

Supported by the RSAMD and The Ormonde and Mildred Duveen Trust

How do we affect the land on which we live?

We were asked to deliver a project for the National Theatre of Scotland with young people from Lochgilphead in Scotland in response to Half Life a large scale site specific performance they were doing with NVA in the area. And so we teamed up with visual artist Rachel O’Neill, video artist James Leadbitter, musician Brian James and 100 S3 students from Lochgilphead High School to create HERE.

We thought about what it meant to be local in a place that was popular with tourists for its history and heritage. We created a map of the area with large red dots marking a place that was personally significant to each of the young people on the project. We then created large versions of the dots and placed them around the landscape with text on them which explained why the place was so special. Tourists were then encouraged to use the map to go on an alternative route – a route made up of individual memories and personal histories of the area, the things you would never ordinarily know.

HERE culminated in a large scale performance piece in the grounds of the High School that was about to be demolished. It was a way of marking a moment in history that involved those people in that time.

This project was commissioned and managed by the National Theatre of Scotland

In many ways this project has been about reminiscing and about looking back, not just on Govan and the way things used to be, but on lives lived, past and present. We have all discussed a little of the world as we find it and come out at the end of it feeling like we have really met people, people who have mattered to us.

We would encourage you, not to watch our performance tonight in search of any one story, as there are really too many in there to count. We prefer to think of it as a collection of moments– of things which have touched us– things we have learned– relationships built– fragments of memory placed alongside one another all in one show– for one night.

In October 2007 we worked with students from the Contemporary Performance Practice programme at the RSAMD, artist James Leadbitter and members of the Govan Reminiscence group to make Are Ye Askin?

This was a creative project designed to look at Govan, an area of Glasgow previously famous for ship building with a rich heritage and history. We went to regular meetings of the Reminiscience Group, a group of older residents that meet each week with the goal of actively remembering the area as it was as well as participating in the politics of its present.

With their stories, memories and artefacts we made a site specific piece of theatre in the Pearce Institute in Govan and invited an audience to join us in an evening of stories, song and dancing.

Supported by RSAMD and The Ormonde and Mildred Duveen Trust

THIS CITY:
YOU DESERVE TO BE HERE AS MUCH AS ANYONE ELSE

In preparation for National Festival of Youth Theatre (2008) we teamed up with a group of young people from the city of Aberdeen, three local trainee leaders, and Designer Rachel O’Neill. Together we created ‘THIS CITY’ an interactive creative project aiming to find new and interesting ways to introduce the city of Aberdeen to its visiting guests.

Over the summer we took a set of huge white letters spelling THIS CITY out into the streets and completed a series of tasks designed to engage with the people and places of Aberdeen.

We collected stories from passers by, made the longest ever list of things worth knowing about the city, created encouraging banners for the general public and hosted the record attempt for the most amount of people to line dance together in Aberdeen.

The result of these tasks and the experiences made up the THIS CITY performance which opened the NFYT Festival in Aberdeen in October 2008.

This project was commissioned and funded by Promote YT (Scotland)

This festival saw 100 young people from international schools all over the world come to Glasgow and stay with local young people of the city. Together they then engaged in a creative exploration the notion of Home and made a series of site specific works culminating in a large scale performance of the popular Scottish dance; the Slosh.

People tell us that young people in countries from Turkey to Thailand can still be seen doing the slosh which proves that it is always important to dance together…

This show took place on a Glasgow city tour bus traditionally used for taking tourists around the city and showing them the sights. We decided to develop this idea a little and make our own site specific performances in response to the city and our experiences of living there. We invited an audience onto the bus to come and see these performances as an alternative way to view the landscape of the city of Glasgow.

Supported by the RSAMD