A QUIRKY installation that opens in Edinburgh this week will send a poignant message to the public to keep a place for theatre in their hearts.
With venues still closed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the project is designed to let audiences know they are badly missed.
Called Take A Seat, it is being staged in the glass foyer of the Royal Lyceum Theatre with the opening night this Thursday, which should have been the launch of the theatre’s autumn season.
Up to 100 seats will be installed from across Scotland and assembled in a creative tableau which will become animated with sound and light at the standard performance times of 7.30pm, Monday to Saturday, and 2.30pm, Tuesday and Thursday. The installation will be viewed by the public from the outside only with the necessary coronavirus precautions in place to keep audiences safe.
READ MORE: Dundee institution's student art and design exhibition moves online
"It’s about trying to give people a connection to each other when they really can’t be in a space together,” said Christine Urquhart, one of the collective of theatre workers behind the project.
"We wanted it to be accessible to everybody and we wanted to focus on stories as the freelancers who are not working at the moment have so many stories.
"We decided to use chairs as a conduit because a chair on the stage tells you a thousand different stories.”
The installation is the second stage of the project which has been organised by a collective of theatre, lighting and sound designers and production managers.
The initial phase was an open invitation to people who work in theatre to use a chair as a base to tell a story of who they are and what they are missing most about live theatre. They were asked to photograph their work and send it to The Envelope Room, an organisation that supports, promotes and connects performance designers based in Scotland. The Envelope Room has now assembled an auditorium of chairs on its website www.takeaseat.org.uk.
A spokesperson for the collective said: “The freelancer response to #TakeASeat shows how talented, urgent, and necessary the Scottish live arts community is. With project submissions ranging from individual spontaneity to collaborative endeavours, we are now looking forward to sharing these with the wider public in the installation.”
David Greig, the Lyceum’s artistic director welcomed the project.
“We miss our audience,” he said. “Inside our auditorium we have a single ghost light glowing, giving the space an eerie, hollow feeling. Standing in this theatre, so perfectly designed for a gathered hush of anticipation, the absence of people is palpable.
“Take A Seat is a brilliant initiative designed to capture some of that feeling, to take the negative and turn it into a positive. The empty chair becomes a muse. I’m thrilled for the Lyceum to host the work of Scottish theatre designers in our foyer. This installation feels like a very tentative sign of return. It is a witty, heartfelt, postcard in absentia – from theatre makers to theatre lovers –there is still a seat for us, even if we can’t quite take our place on the ones inside the auditorium just yet.”
THE PHOTOGRAPHS
1: EMMA JONES
LIGHTING designer and production manager Emma Jones saw her chair on one of her many lockdown walks. It struck her as odd, an upended chair on a beach. So she sat on it as the sun set.
While she sat, she realised, a chair on a beach is not odd at all. Every holiday resort has beaches lined with chairs – in fact you often pay for the privilege of sitting.
Even so, it felt odd, it felt out of place. Like an empty chair in an empty theatre ... its purpose on hold.
Returning to the beach now she sees the chair has a new life, a throne for impromptu beach gatherings – the most important seat on the beach.
Someone turned the chair over, sat on it and it had a function again.
2: BIG HOUSE EVENTS
EDINBURGH-BASED set construction company Big House Events (BHE) operates out of its sister company Edinburgh Open Workshop (EoW). The workshop provides space and facilities to makers of all disciplines on a flexible membership system. The core team at BHE is small, with a large freelance pool that, combined with its EoW members, mean that hundreds of theatre makers and enthusiasts pass through its doors every year.
The first set it built in the current workshop was a four metre diameter revolving bed for 51 Shades of Maggie – a Robert C Kelly production.
Projects are on a hiatus as well as queuing to go out the door for Edinburgh Science and Borders Biscuits.
As it eases from lockdown, the team is currently improving its workshop facilities for its users and themselves.
3: KEITH BRUCE
JOURNALIST Keith Bruce shared his #TakeASeat, which was treated to new canvas during lockdown. This deckchair belonged to his grand-mother and is 100-years-old. A little more than 50 years ago his first family outing to the theatre was to see Leslie Crowther in the Fol-de-Rols in Edinburgh.
His last visit before lockdown was to a wonderfully authentic staging of Threepenny Opera in the Alexander Gibson Opera School at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow on Kurt Weill’s 120th birthday.
Keith says he desperately misses the end-of-term shows there and elsewhere.
4: CHRISTINE URQUHART
DESIGNER Christine Urquhart’s chair photo was taken by photographer Andi Crown and was part of a headshot series she won which was part of a Best Newcomer to Design award in 2016, in New Zealand. She says: “I am not good in front of a camera, and had never had headshots before, so I brought along a little model chair from the last show I had designed. It was quite literally to distract the photographer from my face.”
5: EMILY JAMES
EMILY James is a set and costume designer based in Comrie, Perthshire. Her earliest memory of theatre is going with her grandparents to see Biggar Puppet Theatre – home of Purves Puppets. She remembers vividly being fascinated to meet the puppet operators after the show, dressed in velvety blacks – a first glimpse of the talented people who work out of sight behind the scenes.
She says the humble chair is undoubtedly the item a designer is most frequently required to incorporate into a stage set. Random props may come and go – the watering cans and carpet bags, the hostess trolley, the inflatable lilo. But chairs are eternal. The ornate chaise-longue, the nostalgic striped deckchair, the simple, elegant bentwood, the shapeless, sagging armchair ... the list goes on and on.
Right now, our theatres are empty rows of vacant seats. And designers are sitting in the dark, waiting for the magic to return.
6: SHONA REPPE
THEATRE maker, designer and performer, Shona Reppe makes shows for herself as well as designing and collaborating with and for other companies. She misses the joy of sharing a show with a live audience. For her, a good show is like a perfectly balanced meal.
Shona’s first memory of theatre was panto in Aberdeen and a giant puppet Loch Ness Monster that glowed under UV light. The last show she saw was at the Greli Grelo Festival in France, called Je Brasse de L’air (I Brew Air), a beautiful mechanical object theatre show by Magali Rousseau. She saw it 10 days before lockdown.
If she had known it was to be her last live show for a long time, she says she might have watched it more than once. Pigged out so to speak. Theatre fill us up. There is no dish like it. Shona wants to feast again. Even a nibble would be nice.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here