Off the Rails / Back on Track

24/12/2024

Springburn Winter Gardens Trust Spirit of Springburn Springburn Auditorium CIC Springburn Shopping Centre

This project has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my creative life - why? Cos I got to work with GREAT people, some of whom I already knew, some of whom I met for the first time. To a woman and a man, the people of North East Glasgow have shown me such generosity of spirit and kindness. To everyone who came along to the Community Creatve Writing Wokshops, I only hope YOU got as much out of it all as I did:) BIG thanks to our actors and director George Docherty, Cindy Awor and Star Penders; to Springburn Winter Gardens Trust, my community partner; to Alex and everyone at Springburn Auditorium for giving us their space and also, to the Scottish Society of Playwrights for making me a "Fellow" and funding this whole project!

22/09/2024

After nearly a year of solid and VERY rewarding work, gonna take a few weeks off here to rest and refuel...but we will be BACK mid October, so you have been warned...:) Off the Rails / Back on Track The Last Train

21/09/2024

It's finally here - yes, looking forward to welcoming you all to Springburn Auditorium CIC this morning for our script-in-hand rehearsed reading, part of Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival, in partnership with Springburn Winter Gardens Trust and Scottish Society of Playwrights!

Doors open 10.50am for an 11 am prompt start! If you get lost in the park, message Jack and he'll drop a pin for you.

PLEASE NOTE: our venue is a Romney Shed and former salt store so built to keep those tiny crystals cold and thus will be chilly so DO dress warmly, please. Teas / coffees will be on sale and there is FREE hot soup afterwards so remember to hang around:)

See y'all later on

New Rhythms For Glasgow Springburn Community Council Spirit of Springburn

20/09/2024

It’s almost time - only ONE sleep til the script-in-hand rehearsed reading of our Spoken Landscape, tomorrow (Saturday) 11am at Springburn Auditorium! We’re very much looking forward to seeing you there if you’ve booked: if you’ve NOT booked or dropped me a message, please do so soon cos we really do have limited space. Also, DO dress sensibly: we’re in a corrugated iron Romney Shelter, remember, so wear yer layers:)

Our actors and director are currently in Day 2 of rehearsals: having had a sneak peak yesterday, I can promise you something rather special.

For today’s epistle, let’s talk today about my job-title: I’m a playwright, right? Not a play-write. A playwright. That’s always struck me as a bit weird: what’s the difference between writing and “wrighting”? Is it just yer usual theatrical-up-itselfness love of anachronism or might there be something more going on here? Or the potential for something more?

Loads of other folk have “wright” in their job-title: shipwright, cartwright, wheelwright, ploughwright - and yeah, okay, you don’t see many ads for any of them at JobCentre Plus these days (or “playwright”, for that matter!) But we’ve all heard of Joan Plowright and Rufus Wainwright ( a “wain” was a type of cart, apparently) so, back in the day, there was obviously a sense of tradition and skill, passed down through families even, attached to this wrighting-activity.

And what IS a wright, exactly?

“A maker of useful things” is one definition I’ve seen.

A craftsperson - someone who takes raw material - be it wood or metal or words - and turns it into something else. Maybe all writers do this - after all, we’re all storytellers when you get down to it. Maybe all writers were originally known as “wrighters” but the poets and the novelists and the screenwriters decided to join the modern world and get rid of the clunky spelling.

Or maybe there really is an element of transformation involved in this “making useful things” lark - and perhaps an obligation to ensure the plays we make ARE useful. Yes, yes, if you wanna get pedantic about it all writing is useful in that it has an end-user. But is it just me or does it feel like there’s an element almost of service - to the community, to some patron? - involved in wrighting?

Back in the day, every village or community had its cartwright, its ploughwright, its shipwright - and yes, okay maybe every village didn’t have its own playwright but imagine if it did!

Imagine if there was someone in every community whose designated task it was to produce wrighting of use to that community? Who would that person be? Who SHOULD that person be? Would there perhaps be an element of apprenticeship involved? How would you apply? What would the job-description be? How - and how much - would the community playwright be paid? And what exactly would they wright? Would it be a gathering-of-stories type of arrangement? A keeper of memories? Every community has its stories. Those stories belong to that community as a shared heritage, to be added to as the community changes. And the playwright? Maybe they take those stories as their raw material and transform those stories into something of use to that community.

Wow: that’s a LOT of responsibility! Who’d want THAT job?:)

But, also? What an honour

Get ready for a wild ride as we bring you the story of Springburn: the story you DON'T know...

18/09/2024

Just THREE sleeps until our Off the Rails / Back on Track script-in-hand reading this Saturday - and as tomorrow marks the first of our two-day rehearsals with our director and actors, it feels fitting to say a wee bit about our extraordinary venue…which is also our rehearsal space.

And I do not use the word “extraordinary” lightly.

Tucked away in the heart of Springburn Park adjacent to the Mens Shed and the Boat House and beside the boating pond, Springburn Auditorium is a much-loved community arts space locally but hardly known outside the area. The whole place is a living breathing example of up cycling, of taking the old and discarded and repurposing it to striking effect. This corrugated metal Romney Shelter is a former Grit Shed and once home to millions of little grains of salt; inside, the seating is formed from reclaimed pianos saved from landfill. With lights, sound system, projection screen and the techies to run it all, this extraordinary - there’s that word again…! - space really is a one-off. But it didn’t happen overnight. Many years of hard work by volunteers have resulted in a unique venue the community can be proud of, creating a destination within North East Glasgow which gives people a new reason to travel to Glasgow’s last Great Victorian Park - which dovetails beautifully to one of the aims of my Scottish Society of Playwrights Fellowship Award: to take theatre out of traditional venues and encourage us all to think about where “theatre” can happen.

If you don’t know it already, you’ll see the place for yourself on Saturday - but if you want to whet your appetite, visit https://www.auditoriumcic.com/

To join the army of volunteers who keep this very special space in operation or to hire the space itself, contact Cheyenne or Alex at [email protected]

Still a few tickets left, I believe: and please DO book or let me know your coming cos seating amongst those beautiful up cycled pianos is limited:-
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/off-the-rails-back-on-track-script-in-hand-rehearsed-reading-tickets-1013674386377?aff=oddtdtcreator

Scottish Society of Playwrights Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival Springburn Winter Gardens Trust Springburn Park Men's Shed Friends of Springburn Park

17/09/2024

Only FOUR sleeps til the script-in-hand of our curated Spoken Landscape event on Saturday, 11am at Springburn Auditorium CIC

So what IS a “curated spoken landscape”, I hear you ask?

Well, the “curated” bit is easy to answer: the bulk of the text of the piece comprises the verbatim words, writing and opinions of the good people of North East Glasgow who came along to our Community Creative Writing sessions back in July. My contribution as Curator was merely to add structure, a narrative line and three characters to deliver the story. So almost 75% of what you’ll hear on Saturday was either said to me, sent to me, or devised in collaboration my community collaborators.

Explaining the idea of a Spoken Landscape is more difficult. It kind of comes back to the “lie of the land” and the concept of mapping.

Off the Rails / Back on Track and its sister event The Last Train are both partly research projects - see, I’m an ootlander, originally from Ayrshire and now living in Dennistoun, on the other side of the M8 from North East Glasgow. What little I knew about Springburn came from one emergency visit to Stobhill Hospital, going to parties in the Red Road flats back in the day, walking various dogs over the decades and shopping in the “big Tesco”.

As a writer, the place has always got my spidey senses tingling: so much open space - so much change, even in my brief 20 year experience (the Sighthill high rises seemed to disappear almost overnight!) - and so much decay.

I’m creatively attracted to decay…maybe because it’s an ideal medium for new growth. So I’ve always felt affection for North East Glasgow, despite the abomination of expressways that crisscross its beleaguered terrain: yes, it inevitably seems to be blowing a gale and yes, it has its problems but it’s got the best views in the city and from the park looking down over the rest of our city you really get a sense of perspective, a sense of the lie of the land.

The area has, however, suffered from unnecessarily harsh Press treatment over the years. Google “Springburn” and the horror stories descend on you. This, for me, is the real “lie” of the land: the distortions, the broad-brush-strokes-lazy-journalism, the attacks which almost seem designed to divide and dispirit an area with serious and complex problems not of its making instead of highlighting its glorious heritage and potential. And that makes me angry.

So I wanted to map a different topography - I wanted to creative a more nuanced and hopefully more accurate portrait of the landscape in North East Glasgow - both to correct that lazy journalism which still persists AND to remind us all that it hasn't always been this way and it doesn't HAVE to be this way. And it felt only right to do that by using the unfiltered words of those who live in and left Springburn.

So there you go: yes, there’s inevitably a big bit of me the writer in there too and if you know me you'll spot it, but the piece is designed to allow the hopes, dreams and voices of Springburn speak loud and speak true.

Now you've need to come along, eh?:) Tickets available below:-
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/off-the-rails-back-on-track-script-in-hand-rehearsed-reading-tickets-1013674386377?aff=oddtdtcreator&fbclid=IwY2xjawFWG-hleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHT1gT9MThn7qTroPG1cI00qX01abSPBCE5BWH1tPFJERqyuRzye7GhwrXw_aem_upfu6g1WtFwsvkqu0XdSuA

16/09/2024

One of the aims of my Scottish Society of Playwrights Fellowships Award, is “To encourage experimentation and new ideas about what theatre is - and could become.” So let’s talk about that.

Where do we usually go to see plays? In traditional theatres - yes, those glorious often Victorian buildings sited in city centres with tiers of comfy seats, balconies, a raised stage and a curtain to come down at the end. But “theatre” in the drama / play sense can happen anywhere: anywhere can be a theatre - and often is, these days. Non-traditional venues have been with us for a while, here in Glasgow, sited outside the city centre and (in theory at least) embedded in the community - so instead of US going to the theatre, the theatre comes to US. Easterhouse has Platform, the South Side has Tramway, the West End has Oran Mor.

And if you think about those venues, they offer MUCH more than the opportunity to see a play / attend a concert: Tramway has the Hidden Garden and gallery space; Platform has a library and a great cafe; Oran Mor has a bar and functions as a wedding venue. Each in their very different ways, they encapsulate the character of their areas and aim to serve as community hubs.

What about North Glasgow? The magnificent and much-loved Springburn Public Halls on Keppochhill Road was demolished in 2012 after over 100 years of community service. Nothing on that scale has replaced it. But there’s an equally once-magnificent structure 15 minutes’ walk which has the ambition and potential to do all that and more: the currently derelict Springburn Winter Gardens.

Enter my Community Partner in Off the Rails / Back on Track: Springburn Winter Gardens Trust (SWGT).

Manned totally by volunteers, The Trust exists to protect and celebrate North East Glasgow’s heritage infrastructure past, present and future. SWGT was established in July 2014 as a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO). The Trust’s primary purpose is to save the A-Listed Winter Gardens and embed this once-magnificent structure back into the community for the benefit of local people as an all-purpose venue and community space, currently encapsulated by the concept of an “urban croft and living ruin.”

Right now - as you’ll see if you’re coming along on on Saturday - there’s a bit of a way to go, with stabilisation of the structure as the goal of Phase 1. But as you’ll also notice, this grand old Victorian lady still holds her head up high despite challenging conditions - in fact, our original plan was to stage the script-in-hand rehearsed reading as a site-specific event in the shadow of this iron and brick miracle. Saner heads eventually prevailed - remember this IS Glasgow and 11am on a September morning can be chilly, even with sunshine. However, I hope the Winter Gardens will be the venue for a full staged version of our Spoken Language in the not-too-distant future.

To find out more, support or volunteer with SWGT, email [email protected] And DO take a wander down on Saturday to just stop, stare and conjure what once was..and what could be again.

Script-in-Hand Rehearsed Reading Scottish Society of Playwrights

15/09/2024

With only SIX sleeps until our script-in-hand reading on Saturday 21st September, let's find our a wee bit more about how "Off the Rails / Back on Track" came about.

"Off the Rails / Back on Track" is one of 10 Fellowship Awards and part of the Scottish Society of Playwrights’ 50th birthday celebrations designed to encourage innovative, inspiring, boundary-stretching projects that honour, celebrate and promote playwriting in Scotland.

The Awards aims:-
To offer opportunities for writers to create new work and provide opportunities for the development of future projects
To foster and strengthen bonds between playwrights and their communities all over Scotland
To encourage experimentation and new ideas about what theatre is - and could become
To celebrate everything that playwrights have achieved over the last 50 years - and look forward to the next 50 and beyond

This Scottish Society of Playwrights Award has enabled me to host three Community Writing Workshops with local people in July and curate what we all generated AT those workshops into the Spoken Landscape you'll see next Saturday. The Award is also funding our three professional actors and director over two days of rehearsal and the script-in-hand performance, along with funding the printing of our very lovely Souvenir Programmes AND the hot soup afterwards. I cannot thank them enough for giving me the freedom to pursue my own track and trusting me to deliver what we all know will be something "a wee bit different":)

The Society itself serves as our union: affiliated to the STUC and run totally by playwrights on a voluntary basis, SSP fights for our rights and has always been there for me over the years. £20 a year subs - so if you're a professional playwright in Scotland and have NOT joined, kindly remedy that state of affairs by getting in touch here:-
[email protected]

BIG shout out, btw, to Hayley Sinclair who has been invaluable with behind-the-scenes support through this entire process: from handholding to contacting actors, this literally would not have happened without Hayley!

Still a few tickets left for Saturday - it's free and there's soup! - here:- https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/off-the-rails-back-on-track-script-in-hand-rehearsed-reading-tickets-1013674386377?aff=oddtdtcreator&fbclid=IwY2xjawFTf8NleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHWqBsBrSiTQTiE0auzsd5tJEwVr99svblcJjBjjrvRX0v_O56_Giwimy4A_aem_yO7I8-dPKf1ln-l293XuNw

12/09/2024

Last but far from least, we have George Docherty, playing St Roch: yes, we get a double-helping of this remarkable individual as he’s also directing the Off the Rails / Back on Track Spoken Landscape.

George was in the first “Play Pie and a Pint” I ever saw, playing Russian painter Valentin Serov in Peter Arnott’s Serov’s People, in - yikes! - 2012. Back then, I had no idea who he was but his performance stuck with me and, over the years, we got to know each other a bit and my admiration grew.

George’s stage, film and TV credits are too numerous to list here so I was very pleased when he agreed to play Alfred Nobel / HJW Dam in The Girls of Cartridge Hut No. 7 in 2022.

A polymath of great experience and generosity, I can’t wait to see him bring a fourteenth century saint to life for a twenty first century audience.

(photo by Cooper)

Springburn Auditorium CIC Springburn Auditorium CIC Scottish Society of Playwrights

09/09/2024

And we have the Creative Team for our script-in-hand reading of Off the Rails / Back on Track’s Spoken Language, happening on Saturday 21st September!

Please meet our director, the inestimable Mr George Docherty.

George has worked as an actor for over 30 years. He grew up here: Glebe street, Townhead; Springburn Road, Springburn; Rosemount Street, RoystonHill and Pinkston Drive, Sighthill. All knocked down but he’s still going. George is old enough to have seen them drain the Monklands to build the M8 and young enough not to be able to get a job in The Caley when he left St Roch’s. He’s proud to be back in Springburn, speaking your words.

(photo: J Cooper)

Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival Springburn Winter Gardens Trust Spirit of Springburn Springburn Auditorium CIC