The audience members pour out elated after this show. ‘That was amazing,’ one of them enthuses – incidentally the one who has actually taken part on the stage. ‘It’s one of those shows that’s going to be difficult to describe to people,’ says his friend. ‘One of those indie shows,’ they conclude. Those already familiar […]

It’s not often that you walk into a music gig headlining a playwright. Or three. Although if you ask me, I would bet my bottom dollar most successful theatre people were at one point or another wannabe rock stars. Often they simply took that energy and transferred it into the language of theatre, never again […]

Following in the tradition of the finest testimony-based theatre, Factor 9 gives the stage to the survivors of a 1980s pharmaceutical disaster in which thousands of people worldwide became infected with the HIV virus after taking factor 8 and factor 9 blood products for haemophiliacs. The play, scripted by Hamish Macdonald, is directed by Grid […]

Clean Break’s Little on the Inside initially makes you feel uncomfortably framed. You take on the role of judge, jury, prison officer, social worker and even patron of Clean Break as you gaze down on the two very engaging performers – Estella Daniels and Sandra Reid – preset in a state of frustrated non-communication. One […]

Seeing a chair and a microphone on a bare stage on entering the four-sided auditorium, one might be forgiven for thinking that Chris Thorpe’s interesting-sounding research project into cognitive psychology and political extremism will predominantly take the form of a lecture. He launches into it somewhat agitated, like a man who has lost patience with […]