When Ian
Brown was named as this year’s best director at last weekend’s Critics’ Awards
for Theatre in Scotland for his production of Morna Young’s play, Lost at Sea, at
Perth Theatre, it was vindication of sorts for his first work in Scotland for
more than twenty years. The former artistic director of the Traverse Theatre
and TAG, who went on to run West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds for a decade, was
also in with some very good company.
Also
nominated were Andy Arnold, for his production of Enda Walsh’s play, Ballyturk,
at the Tron Theatre, Orla O’Loughlin for Mouthpiece by Kieran Hurley at the Traverse,
and Robert Softley Gale for Birds of Paradise and the National Theatre of
Scotland’s production of My Left/Right Foot. In the end, however, it was
Brown’s sensitive handling of Young’s moving and deeply personal play about the
loss of lives within a tight-knit fishing community that won out.
“I’m so
proud of what we did with Lost at Sea,” Brown says, the ceremony at Tramway in
Glasgow, “and it was a really nice thing to get from Scottish theatre, and to
realise that people haven’t forgotten some of the stuff I did when I was here.
I think it’s really powerful as well what the critics have done, and that
instead of being divided from the artists, it feels like there’s this kind of
idea that we’re all in this together, which, in terms of funding cuts and
everything else going on in the world, is really important right now.”
Brown
first rose to prominence in Scotland as director of TAG (Theatre About
Glasgow), then the Citizens Theatre’s theatre in education arm. While in charge
between 1984 and 1988, he gave Jo Clifford her first professional writing job
by commissioning a version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for schools. Brown
and Clifford went on to work together on Clifford’s version of Great
Expectations and new plays, Light in the Village and Ines de Castro.
Brown took
over the Traverse in 1988, and oversaw the new writing theatre’s move from its old
Grassmarket premises into its current Cambridge Street home. He stayed until 1996,
with his focus on international work running alongside the theatre’s Scottish
core. He introduced Edinburgh audiences to the work of Brad Fraser, directed Tom
Courtenay in Moscow Stations and oversaw Tom McGrath’s stunning version of
Quebecois writer Daniel Danis’ play, Stones and Ashes.
Brown
also directed the very first production of Trainspotting, adapted by Harry
Gibson from Irvine Welsh’s iconic novel, and initially seen at both the
Citizens and the Traverse. Furthering umbilical links, Trainspotting was recently
revived by Gareth Nicholls during his time as resident director of the
Citizens. Nicholls’ current tenure as interim artistic director of the Traverse
saw him win the Best Production award at the CATS for Ulster American by David
Ireland, which was also named as Best Play.
The
production that stands out most for Brown while he was at the Traverse is
Bondagers, Sue Glover’s play about a group of nineteenth century female farm
workers in the Borders. First seen in 1991 before being revived numerous times,
the play’s lyrical ensemble aesthetic is a clear forerunner to Brown’s work on
Lost at Sea, which began five years ago.
“It was
Colin Marr, who at the time was running Eden Court in Inverness who first got
me involved with Lost at Sea,” says Brown. “I’d worked with Colin at the
Traverse, and when Lost at Sea was originally being developed at Eden Court, he
thought of me. One is about the land and one is about the sea, and there’s an
epic quality to both plays, as well as an emotional honesty. And because Lost
at Sea comes from Morna’s personal experience, it’s something much more than
just a play.”
After
leaving the Traverse, Brown moved into television, for a while directing
episodes of East Enders before succeeding Jude Kelly to run West Yorkshire
Playhouse. As an illustration of how intertwined Scotland’s theatre ecology is
with the rest of the UK, Brown’s successor in Leeds, James Brining, had already
followed in Brown’s footsteps by becoming artistic director of TAG before
teaming up with the then outgoing director of the Traverse and current head of
the Citz, Dominic Hill, to run Dundee Rep. After an acclaimed decade in post,
Brown left Leeds in 2012 to work freelance.
As well
as Brown being named as Best Director at the CATS, Lost at Sea also won the
Best Ensemble award, and was nominated for Best Design. At the ceremony on
Sunday, Brown spoke warmly of Giles Havergal, the former artistic director of the
Citizens Theatre, who was guest presenter of the awards, about how he had been
the one who first spotted his work during his early days in London, and brought
him to Scotland to work at TAG. Brown spoke too of the connections between Lost
at Sea and Bondagers, in terms of them both being set among working communities
in which the work itself was dying out as a victim of societal change.
“I think
for a first play it’s very ambitious,” Brown says. “It’s also fairly
uncompromising. Morna has really played around with form, and the way the play
uses verbatim material is really interesting. I’m not verbatim theatre’s
biggest fan, but the way Morna has put it together is really skilful.
“For me,
the play has a universality. It’s about that community its set amongst, but
it’s more than that. Like in Bondagers, those days of a once thriving community
the play depicts are almost lost now. The power that had on people attached to
those communities was phenomenal. It’s a play about life and death, and the
struggle to go on making a living, and it’s about how people respond to that,
and how their lives are affected by the tragedies that come out of all that
forever.”
The Herald, June 12th 2019
ends
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