David MacLennan – Plays, Politics and Popularity

--> This is a slightly longer and more personal version of the obituary I wrote for The Morning Star. That version can be accessed here.

David MacLennan (June 19, 1948 - June 13, 2014)

I was in Italy when the news came through via a friend on Twitter. David MacLennan, the theatre writer, director and producer, had lost his short battle with Motor Neurone Disease. The co-founder of 7:84 Theatre Company and Wildcat Productions, the man who had been part of the foundation of MayFest, and who created the Play, Pie and a Pint format, who was in a new ascendancy with the National Theatre of Scotland (NToS) commissioning him and David Greig to co-curate The Yes, No, Don't Know, Show, had left us and in particular, left a huge hole at the centre of Scottish Theatre, Political Theatre and Popular Theatre.

I first came across David when Nalgo, one of UNISON's predecessor unions made their first break through in joint working with political theatre. They reunited 7:84 Theatre company co-founders, John McGrath and David by commissioning their production, On the pigs back, in 1983. The show was a street theatre production of typical 7:84/Wildcat wit and political polemic that toured all across Scotland in a double decker bus that doubled as the backdrop! Getting the bus onto ferries to Stornoway and Lerwick was not the least of the problems!

This was part of Nalgo's first major campaign against cuts and sparked a raft of similar union-supported productions with both Wildcat and 7:84 dealing with the politics of the Thatcher years. including Bed Pan Alley sponsored by NUPE. It also included Nalgo's sponsorship of The Steamie which opened at a disused public wash house in Govan, one of my favourite venues! Ultimately, these initiatives also led to the establishment of MayFest in 1983, an arts festival based on trade union MayDay celebrations. Typically David (and his then wife Ferelith Lean) were in at the start of this too!

David's (and Wildcat's) uncompromising, if extremely humorous, politics – they produced plays on the Miners’ Strike, Ireland and Rock and Roll! - eventually led to a falling out with the then Scottish Arts Council, and funding was withdrawn. Despite a lengthy campaign, it was the end for Wildcat. MayFest too, shut after a different funder withdrew support (for different reasons).

After some years on individual projects and commissions, David launched another innovative and popular initiative. Entrepreneur Colin Beattie's new bar and venue, Oran Mor, was looking for artistic projects to fill its cavernous spaces! And A Play, a Pie and a Pint was born! This format, allowing people to leave work, have a drink and a bite to eat and see a short play - all in the space of a lunch hour - quickly established itself in a completely commercial environment. Spin-offs to both other venues, and other art forms (a Cocktail, a Canapé, and a Concerto, anyone?) showed its versatility, and ultimately the idea of short, popular plays in non standard venues was taken up by the NToS itself in its Five Minute Theatre initiatives.

Although now successful commercially, David's political commitment was maintained right till the end. He addressed one of the first Morning Star cultural events in Scotland, shortly after the success of A Play, A Pie & A Pint. He introduced himself as a 'convinced Marxist'! His final project - co-curating the Yes, No, Don't Know Show - involved a series of 5 minute plays all dealing with the current referendum on Scottish Independence, (David's 'No' view, being balanced by David Greig's 'Yes' one!)

Political, yes, but not didactic, David knew the need to entertain was part of the production. In John McGrath, his brother-in-law's phrase, the production had to offer an audience, 'A good night out', if it was to connect politically.

His vision, and the ability to sense a successful theatre idea, kept with him from The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black, Black Oil, 7:84 Scotland's magnificent opener (from a film of which there is a rare shot of a MacLennan appearance on stage!) through his other joint collaborations (with Dave Anderson) in Wildcat, right up to the hugely successful Play, Pie and Pint, series. This last has been copied all over the world. It would be a fitting tribute, were David's political ideas similarly distributed! The story, as yet, has no end.

David’s loss is keenly felt by the Scottish theatre community, the many colleagues who worked with him and the close friends he had, but the biggest loss will be to his wife, Juliet and their son Shane. My sympathy goes out to them both.

  

Hoping for a Cultural Feast in a year of challenges

Rows over Creative Scotland and accusations of political bias aren’t the whole story, says CHRIS BARTTER

This is my Voices of Scotland feature for Tuesday's Morning Star.

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AS WE begin to hit the busiest time of the cultural year in Scotland, it’s worthwhile to take a look around the scene in this year of referendum, war anniversary and Commonwealth Games.

After huge political furore over funding and direction at Creative Scotland resulted in a change of director, has that resulted in a change of direction?

A similar change at the top of the National Theatre of Scotland (NToS) seems at least in part to have been prompted by criticisms of the ethnic origins of the founding artistic director.

And how have the nascent cultural initiatives begun by the Scottish trade union and labour movement at May Day and elsewhere been holding up?

The — still relatively new — attempts by the STUC and local trade union councils to build up the celebration side of May Day seems to be increasing in its reach and support.

The programme produced by Glasgow Friends of May Day, the body set up to channel those

initiatives, shows an increase in its coverage, running cabarets in Dumfries and Blantyre with singer-songwriter Rab Noakes as well as a repeat of last year’s successful Oran Mor production, where Mark Thomas headlines a superb line-up.

While this carefully avoids being seen as a replacement for the much-lamented MayFest, started by former STUC arts officer Alex Clark, there is no doubt that the base threads of trade union and local community involvement in the programme have similarities to the aims of that festival.

There are no overt references to this year’s independence referendum in the May Day celebrations — possibly marking the decision of many unions and the STUC to concentrate on using the debate to argue for the kind of Scotland they want rather then engage in the constitutional bitterness.

But we might well expect some references in the Scottish Left Review’s comedy fundraiser. It stars one of the Yes campaign’s leading cheerleaders in Elaine C Smith.

Similarly, last year’s furore over Sir Jonathan Mills’s claimed exclusion of referendum material from August’s Edinburgh International Festival seems now to have been a tad misplaced.

Laurie Sansom. NToS

A major production of Scottish playwright Rona Munro’s James work, directed by new NToS artistic director Laurie Sansom, will put Scottish identity and the governance of the nation front and centre-stage.

Both Edinburgh’s Book Festival and a major fringe venue, the Assembly Rooms, have promised more referendum material this year, although whether this proves overkill remains to be seen. Certainly, the Yes campaign has largely captured Scotland’s artists, with only a small handful declaring for No.

Sansom himself has been easing himself into the hot seat at NToS. As the second English artistic director he has already been the subject of warning shots from bloggers on the pro-independence Bella Caledonia site.

However, he has managed to commission pro- and anti- theatre practitioners David Greig and Dave

Dave MacLennan

MacLennan to curate The Yes, No, Don’t Know 5 Minute Theatre Show, and promises a revival of Joe Corrie’s In Time of Strife, a seminal Scottish play last revived by 7:84 Theatre Company in 1982.

Creative Scotland’s new chief executive faced an even more difficult baptism. Janet Archer followed the much-harassed Andrew Dixon after funding withdrawal from a large number of companies prompted a furious response in 2012.

Like him — and Laurie Sansom — she too was from south of the border. While ethnic origin shouldn’t matter, in the current febrile atmosphere it does (thank you Alasdair Gray).

Janet Archer

Rightly divining that funding was at the root of the crisis, Archer spent some time “crowd-sourcing” views on a(nother) new funding structure. This was finally revealed recently,and seems to be a bit of a return to the past. The reintroduction of a regular three-year funding for companies will be welcomed, at least by those that get it.

A successful first step perhaps, yet there is still much to do to rebuild fences. For example, previous funding and artistic decisions led to a virtual demise of Scottish touring theatre — especially those companies with a social message.

We have had to rely on NToS commissions and the occasional project-funded tour by venue-based companies. Is it too much to hope that along with longer-term funding we could see a return to regular Scottish touring companies bringing theatre to the village halls and pubs of Scotland?

Ironically the companies least caught up in the furore over funding are those companies that used to form the nexus of the debate.

The removal of the five “national” Scottish companies — NToS, Scottish Opera, Scottish Ballet, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra — from then Scottish Arts Council funding in 2007 to direct Scottish government funding seems to have given the lie to the truism that politicians shouldn’t get directly involved in the issuing of grants.

Cultural decisions are still a source of huge interest in Scotland. And where people get it wrong they are told so. Most recently the bizarre decision to use the demolition of people’s homes as a centrepiece of the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony was overturned following an outcry from local people and commentators.

The jury is still out on Creative Scotland’s future direction and whether a plethora of pro-independence shows would be a blessing or a curse.

Chris Bartter chairs Glasgow Friends of May Day. He blogs on political and cultural issues at www.captaingrumping.blogspot.co.uk.

Do you like it here now? Are you settling in?

The decision by new National Theatre of Scotland (NToS) supremo Laurie Sansom to commission two of Scotland’s finest drama writers/producers - David Greig and Dave MacLennan - to collaborate in producing drama inspired by the referendum ‘debate’ has prompted this response (at last), and possibly even given the lie to Alasdair Gray’s deliberate polemic against the Anglo-centric control (as he sees it) of Scotland’s art establishment.

David Greig

Dave MacLennan

His attack on English people in the arts certainly stirred up the respective nationalist tribes - as he presumably wanted, Early attackers often did themselves no favours by labelling Gray as a racist without reading the essay, although defenders were often disingenuous in the extreme to suggest that offence was being manufactured by the recipients, rather than given by the perpetrator.

It is clear (I think) that Gray is not a racist, but someone of his huge writing talents must be aware of

Alasdair Gray

the impact that his choice of words has. Labelling people ‘colonists’ is obviously designed to tar them with an imperial brush, but ‘settlers’ too - albeit a lesser accusation - is too often bracketed with the adjective ‘white’ to be a neutral term. Indeed it is not that long ago that the advent of the avowedly anti-English ‘Settler Watch’ in NE Scotland caused the SNP to exclude them as racist.

Vicky Featherstone

It is a matter then of considerable regret, that a man of obvious talent, like Gray chooses to have a pop at the people he says control funding/commissioning of Scottish artistic talent on the basis of their place of birth and nationality. Had he done so on the basis of being fully paid-up members of the establishment there may have been more accuracy in his attacks, but to include people like Vicky Featherstone - Sansom’s predecessor as Director of NToS - indicates how far off the radar Gray has gone.

While one can have reservations about some of the directions taken by NToS at the beginning, (and surely any artistic venture must be given space to experiment?) surely the Director who funded and developed Black Watch has some understanding of Scottish culture? Interestingly enough, Black Watch director, John Tiffany also hails from South of the border (Yorkshire - in fact), and has had some pointed things to say about Gray’s comments - not the least of which is to identify the oft-ignored fact that many parts of England also feel badly ruled by London and the South.

In addition to both (so-far) Heads of NToS, and Janet Archer, the new Head of Creative Scotland (surely a much more poisoned chalice) a cursory look round prominent artists who have contributed to the Scottish arts scene produces a fair sprinkling of ‘non-Scots’. Composer Peter Maxwell Davies, for example, has lived in Orkney for 42 years (as long as I have lived in Scotland - not that there are any other links!). Director and playwright John McGrath was born and brought up in Birkenhead and North Wales - anyone suggest that The Cheviot... or Ane Satire of the Four Estaites shows a lack of understanding of contemporary (or historical) Scottish culture?

Interestingly enough in a recent Herald article, Keith Bruce pointed out that choreographer, Matthew Bourne has asked some really serious points about Scottish national identity in his ballet Highland Fling. Indeed he (unusually) has let Scottish Ballet stage it (he normally reserves his work to his own company). It will not come as a surprise to readers that Matthew Bourne too, comes from anent these shores (Walthamstow, since you ask).

The kind of offensive polemic that Gray unleashed is not the tack that the two David’s will take. Although both are enthusiastic and impassioned political beings, I had to read the article to find out which was heading up which side of the debate! Hopefully we can look forward to articulated drama about the real issues - rather than where we were all born.