When
Andrew Panton open’s Dundee Rep’s autumn season next week with his production
of Tay Bridge, Peter Arnott’s new play about the disaster in 1879 that saw the
then longest rail bridge of its kind in the world collapse, it will mark a lot
more than the start of his third season as artistic director. By happy
coincidence, the new programme coincides with the eightieth anniversary of
Dundee Rep itself after it was founded by touring theatre manager Robert
Thornely, who forged an alliance between his professional company and the amateur
Dundee Dramatic Society.
The latter
had purchased a disused jute mill which was used as its premises, with the new
Dundee Rep company moving to Foresters’ Hall before the building burnt down in
1963. After a brief nomadic existence, the Rep eventually re-opened in the
former Dudhope Church. The purpose-built theatre the Rep now occupies first opened
its doors in 1982, with Robert Robertson as artistic director.
If
the Rep’s eightieth birthday wasn’t cause enough for celebration, Panton’s
anniversary season also marks twenty years of Dundee Rep Ensemble. The theatre’s
permanent company of actors was set up in 1999 by Hamish Glen, who had taken
over from Robertson as artistic director five years earlier. While the ranks
have ebbed and flowed over the years, the core aim of having a resident team in
place throughout the season has remained the same, with actors Irene Macdougall,
Ann Louise Ross and Emily Winter having been with the company since day one.
“The
Rep and the Ensemble are such a part of Dundee’s cultural life now,” says
Panton, “and I think it’s important to celebrate how that’s developed, both
over the last eighty years and the last twenty. When people come to the Rep,
it’s not just about seeing a show. They want to have conversations with you
about casting, and if I get it wrong then I know I’m in trouble, but I don’t
know of another theatre where you’d get that, and the actors get stopped on the
street as well.
“In
terms of having an ensemble, working with the same actors over several years
you develop a language with each other, and it becomes a genuinely
collaborative process. There’s a lot of skills development that goes on as
well, so it’s not just about me telling people what to do. It’s very much a
two-way street.”
As if to illustrate this, members of the Ensemble
are much in evidence not just onstage this season, but also in the director’s
chair. While Panton takes the helm for both Tay Bridge and a brand new musical
version of Oor Wullie, brought to the stage by the internationally renowned
Noisemaker company, aka Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie, the rest of the
season is overseen by Rep Ensemble members and associates.
First
up after Tay Bridge is A-Z of Dundee, John and Gerry Kielty’s irreverent take
on local history originally seen earlier this year on the Rep’s annual tour of
community venues. Now on the theatre’s main stage, the production is again
directed by Ewan Donald, familiar to Dundee audiences from numerous
productions, including Gagarin Way, All My Sons and Sunshine on Leith.
While
the co-production with Sell A Door of Oor Wullie reunites Panton with Noisemaker
following last year’s production of The Snow Queen, younger audiences will be
able to see
Emily
Mouse’s Christmas Tales, which sees songs, rhymes and some specially written
stories by children’s author performed by long-standing Ensemble member Emily
Winter. Winter’s appearances at the Rep include The Yellow on the Broom,
Passing Places and Deathtrap, while early outings with the company include
Cabaret and the title role of Flora the Red Menace.
Looking
further ahead, Smile is a new play by Philip Differ about the life of Dundee
United’s legendary former manager Jim McLean, which will be directed by Sally
Reid. While not an Ensemble member, Reid has appeared in Dundee in Beauty and
the Beast and Time and the Conways. Finally, Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure
will be directed by Irene Macdougall, who, as well as making numerous
appearances in the likes of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Death of A
Salesman and The Tempest, has also directed Rep productions of The 39 Steps,
Much Ado About Nothing and Whisky Galore among others.
The
season also sees Joan Cleville begin her tenure as artistic head of the
Rep-based Scottish Dance Theatre, with three SDT shows, a double bill of
Process Day and The Circle, Great Big Dance Show: Acts One and Two and Sputnik
feature as part of the programme.
With
Dundee itself in the midst of architectural upheaval, which has included the
opening of the V&A Dundee, Panton is embracing the changes in the city
fabric, and is very much looking to the future.
“When
I first started at the Rep, the V&A still hadn’t opened,” he says. “Once it
did open, it felt like the beginning of a new chapter for Dundee, and Dundee
Rep is very much part of that. It’s about looking out, both nationally and
internationally, developing partnerships, taking shows out, and seeing Dundee
as being part of a bigger world.
“I
think the important thing about this season, both for the Rep after eighty
years and the Ensemble after twenty, is that it’s full of stories for and from
Dundee that have a universality to them. What’s lovely now as well after having
been here for a couple of years is I’ve had time to work out who our audience
are, and they in turn can see their community represented onstage. That’s why
the season is so diverse, and that’s everything I want Dundee Rep to be.”
Dundee
Rep’s 80th anniversary season opens with Tay Bridge, which runs
August 27-September 21.
The Herald, August 24th 2019
ends
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