Factories have been working overtime in my mind of late. As the Herald’s theatre critic, I recently watched the National Theatre of Scotland and the Tron Theatre’s production of Frances Poet’s new play, Stand & Deliver, take a musical look at the 1981 sit-in at Greenock’s Lee jeans factory. A week later, I saw Sweat, the Citizens Theatre Glasgow and Royal Lyceum Edinburgh’s revival of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize winning 2015 play about what happens to a mid American steel town when the plug is pulled on the factory that gave that town its economic lifeblood. My more personal interest in factories just now is to do with The Machine Stops. This is a project I'm part of that is set to take place as part of Hidden Door, the grassroots Edinburgh arts festival that takes over abandoned buildings and transforms them into unique temporary venues. This year’s Hidden Door returns to The Paper Factory, the vast former cardboard packaging plant close to Edinburgh Airp...
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.