NEXT month sees the return of director and writer Cora Bissett to the stage for the first time in eight years as part of the Traverse’s Fringe programme.
The creator of Glasgow Girls – a hugely successful musical about the group of young activists fighting deportation of asylum seekers – and the director of numerous plays, such as the National Theatre of Scotland’s 2017 hit Adam, Bissett will take the stage for What Girls Are Made Of, her roller-coaster memoir of her teenage years in the indie band Darlingheart.
“Cora is such a magnetic performer, it’s crazy to think she hasn’t been on stage in such a long time,” says Traverse artistic director Orla O’Loughlin, pictured, who directs the show.
What Girls Are Made Of charts Bissett’s true life adventures from being a Glenrothes schoolgirl to touring with the likes of Blur and Radiohead. Performed with a live band, it’s one of two main productions presented by the Traverse Theatre Company at the Fringe this year.
The other is Ulster American, David Ireland’s hard-hitting look at power and cultural identity in the entertainment industry. Though touching on similar themes, the plays are very different in tone, says O’Loughlin.
“Cora’s piece is vivid, hyper-real, with these larger-than-life characters,” O’Loughlin says. “It’s ultimately a hopeful, joyous celebration of growing up.”
She continues: “Cora’s world is quite a different theatrical world from David’s. Her journey is very much about the perspective of somebody who grows stronger because of the knocks she experiences.”
Also set behind-the-scenes of the entertainment industry, Ulster American is, O’Loughlin says, “very funny, very hard hitting, and not for the faint hearted”.
“David skewers the villainy and the double standards in the entertainment industry on very timely issues like consent,” she says. “It’s a brilliant piece of writing.”
Ireland was one of the first writers O’Loughlin did development work with when she first joined the Traverse in 2012. The play they worked on, Most Favoured, went on to be performed in Canada, and Ireland has since written numerous acclaimed works for theatres around the UK.
As Scotland’s only theatre wholly dedicated to new writing, the Traverse prides itself on nurturing new voices, and O’Loughlin has played a key part in the development of some of the country’s most exciting young playwrights.
Having recently announced she is to step down as Traverse artistic director, December’s world premiere of Kieran Hurley’s Mouthpiece will be her last directing role for the theatre. Hurley’s new work, F***ing Millenials, also features in this year’s Breakfast Plays where graduates from the Traverse’s Young Writers group join forces with more established names for a series of early morning script-in-hand readings.
“Laurie Motherwell, Natalie Mackinnon and Rebecca Sweeney all took part in the Young Writers group in the last couple of years,” says O’Loughlin. “They are just beginning fledgling careers as playwrights themselves. It’s a great launch pad for them.”
The Breakfast Plays are often the beginning of a much longer story for new work. Douglas Maxwell’s ribald A Respectable Widow Takes To Vulgarity and Clean by Sabrina Mahfouz – another of this year’s “mentors” – went on to show in New York after beginning life here. This year, the BBC World Service will beam the plays live to 40 million people across the world.
A key part of the Traverse, O’Loughlin says, is its “deeply international heart and perspective”. As well as productions from around the UK, the festival programme includes Martin Zimmerman’s On The Exhale, an examination of gun violence in the United States, and Underground Railroad Game, presented by New York company Ars Nova.
“Underground Railroad Game is an extraordinary piece of work,” says O’Loughlin. “It takes you down some very confronting, complex, sophisticated, adult roads. It tackles – head-on – race, the history of race relations in the United States right up to the Black Lives Matter movement, education, how we teach history and decide what history is.
“It goes to places that are necessary. We’re in a real fix about a lot of this stuff, particularly in an American context, when you look at who the president of the United States is. If there was ever a time to play this, it is now.”
Relevance to the times we live is a feature O’Loughlin has always looked for when putting together Traverse programmes.
“They have something to say about where we are now, or where we are headed,” she explains. “Take a show like Check Up by Mark Thomas which looks at the state of the NHS in its 70th year. He’s spent months and months speaking with doctors, experts and residents in hospitals around the UK, and I imagine he’s going to ask some difficult questions about what we’re willing to stand for, or not stand for, in terms of what the future might hold for the NHS.”
The future for O’Loughlin herself involves taking up a new role as vice principal at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
“This is my seventh festival, and seven years feels like I’ve done my time,” she says. “I’ve had an absolute blast. I’ve always embraced change, we have to evolve to survive. Change doesn’t worry me, it worries me when things don’t change.”
Change is also the beating heart of the Traverse itself, she says.
“The Traverse has always been an agitator of some kind. It’s always stood in its own orbit. It’s there to challenge and provoke a conversation about where we are and where we’re going.”
She adds: “It’s an institution that believes change is possible, or otherwise, why are we involved in this endeavour? I hope I have, in some small way, played a part in continuing that powerful and important legacy. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for the Traverse.”
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