Contemporary Scottish Plays: Caledonia; Bullet Catch; The Artist Man and Mother Woman; Narrative; Rantin

(Paperback)

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To paraphrase Alistair Beaton's Caledonia - the first play in this collection - 'The English have anthologies, the Spanish have anthologies, the French have anthologies . . . why should not Scotland have its anthology' Scotland is entering a crucial period in its history, where its identity is being debated daily, from everyday conversation to the national and international press. At the same time, its theatre is resurgent, with key Scottish playwrights, theatres and theatre companies expanding their performance vocabularies while coming to prominence in national and international contexts. Caledonia is a tale of hubris and delusion, portraying a crucial slice of Scotland's history and its foray into imperial colonialism told with dark humour and creative flair, by award-winning playwright and satirist Alistair Beaton. Bullet Catch, by Rob Drummond, is a unique theatrical experience exploring the world of magic, featuring mind-reading, levitation, and the most notorious finale in show business. Morna Pearson's The Artist Man and the Mother Woman is a wickedly funny, deceptively simple, surreal portrait of a spectacularly dysfunctional relationship. Rantin', by Kieran Hurley draws on storytelling, live music and an unapologetically haphazard take on Scottish folk tradition, in an attempt to stitch together fragmented stories to reveal a botched patchwork of a nation. First performed at the Royal Court in 2013, Narrative by Anthony Neilson is a theatrical exploration of the the boundaries and possibilities of storytelling. Featuring plays from Alistair Beaton, Rob Drummond, Morna Pearson, Kieran Hurley and Anthony Neilson, this collection is edited by Dr. Trish Reid, a leading critical voice on Scottish theatre.

Reviews

Very well researched, clear and educational. -- Daniele Berton-Charriere, Universit Blaise Pascal - Clermont-Ferrand 2 * tudes cossaises, [Bloomsbury translation] *
[A]n ambitious attempt to educate the audience about the Darien disaster of the 1690s and the thumpingly obvious parallels with the financial meltdown of more recent times. It is a breezy satire, a broad, gallus comedy, a quasi-musical, a pseudo pantomime and a morality tale. * Daily Express on Caledonia *
Wonderfully entertaining but emotionally devastating . . . Remarkable, multi-layered and utterly gripping. * Guardian on Bullet Catch *
This new work more than confirms the promise of one of the freshest, most fearless and taboo-busting voices to be heard anywhere right now . . . both scabrously funny and damningly bleak. -- Neil Cooper * The Herald, Scotland, on The Artist Man and the Mother Woman *
What Hurley is doing, though, is setting out on an ambitious and tremendously worthwhile journey that seeks to link Scotlands familiar past to its fast-changing present -- Joyce McMillan * Scotsman on Rantin' *
Neilson riffs endlessly on the modern cult of selfhood, inauthencity, the way we increasingly mediate reality through film and other forms of fiction and, tantalisingly, on whether coherent cause and effect in todays fragmented reality is even possible at all. * Metro on Narrative *
Reids selection of plays hints at the current strength of Scottish new writing, supported by companies and venues around the country ... Contemporary Scottish plays will inevitably become a chronicle of triumphs past, like the texts that precede it, but it is to be hoped that at least a few of these plays will come to define early twenty-first century theatre. -- Scottish Journal of Performance * Ben Fletcher-Watson, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland & the University of St Andrews *

Author Bio

Trish Reid is Deputy Head of the School of Performance and Screen Studies at Kingston University, UK. She is a leading scholar of Scottish drama and performance studies and the author of Theatre and Scotland (2012) and The Theatre of Anthony Neilson (forthcoming, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016).