New Stellar Quines artistic director on building back better with art

The public health crisis has exposed and exacerbated the inequalities and iniquities in our society. Working-class women have shouldered a disproportionately heavy burden in terms of their work in such professions as nursing and social care.

We also know that women have done, by a considerable distance, the majority of home caring for the vulnerable, not to mention most of the home schooling. Add to that the grief and rage that has followed the appalling murder of Sarah Everard, and it’s clear that this could, and certainly should, be a pivotal ­moment for women and women’s equality.

All of which makes the current ­period an extraordinary one in which to be ­appointed artistic director and chief ­executive of Scotland’s women’s ­theatre company Stellar Quines. Welcome, ­therefore, Caitlin Skinner, the young, but experienced, theatre director who has just been handed the reins of the ­esteemed company.

Based in Edinburgh, Skinner was half of the feminist theatre duo Jordan & Skinner and director of the new writing theatre company Pearlfisher. She also used to run artistic operations for the ­Village Pub Theatre.

Skinner knows the terrain of ­Scottish theatre, having collaborated with many of the nation’s leading companies. Last year, for instance, she directed, for the National Theatre of Scotland and the BBC, the successful, pandemic-era short film Alone, which was written and ­performed by Janey Godley.

In 2019 she worked with Stellar Quines, directing Ellie Stewart’s play Hope and Joy. Most recently, she has been ­associate director at Pitlochry ­Festival Theatre.

So, how does Skinner feel about ­taking over from out-going Stellar Quines ­artistic director Jemima Levick (who has moved on to become director at ­Glasgow’s lunchtime theatre A Play, a Pie and a Pint)? “I’m beyond thrilled,” she says.

“It feels like a dream job… I know the company, I made a show with them in 2019 and I’ve worked with Jemima on various projects over a number of years. So, it feels like an organic progression of the relationship.”

The Stellar Quines position is a very natural fit for her, Skinner observes, bringing together, as it does, artistic and political concerns.

“My goal has always been to combine making brilliant art with making a point politically, and ­making a difference in terms of social justice.

“To be leading an organisation the very being and mission of which is tied up in a combination of those two things is just perfect, really. I can’t imagine a better ­organisation to be running.”

The director believes that she is ­taking up the role at what is “a very difficult time for women… an unprecedented time for women in the UK, in terms of gender equality and what’s happened in the last year.

“Then, of course,” she adds, “we have this most recent moment, in terms of the response to the death of Sarah Everard. So, it’s quite a coming together of ­different and new challenges, but also a real opportunity to respond to those challenges, to be creative and to ­galvanise people around important themes.”

Some people have suggested that the murder of Everard, the sole suspect for which is a Metropolitan Police officer, is similar in its socio-political significance to last year’s killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. That comparison has only been strengthened by the Met’s much-criticised use of Covid restrictions to forcefully disperse and, in some ­cases, arrest women attending the vigil for Everard on Clapham Common in south London on March 13.

For her part, Skinner is unsure of the usefulness of such parallels.

“It’s natural for us, always, to make connections between different movements towards social progress,” she ­says. “I think it’s really easy to say ‘this is a bit like that’, or to say that the feeling [that has arisen following Sarah Everard’s murder] is very similar to the feeling that arose last year around the death of George Floyd. I don’t always know how helpful it is [to draw such comparisons].”

What the director will say, however, is that “the pandemic has made us look at things differently”. In that sense, she hopes Everard’s murder, and the ­response to it, will prove to be a “tipping point”.

“For many of us who have committed our lives to conversations around intersectional feminism, it’s an extraordinary thing when something like this ­happens and, suddenly, everyone’s talking about it.”

IF the current period is one of great import for women, it is also one of considerable challenges for the theatre industry. On that score, Skinner shares the outlook of David Greig, the Scottish playwright and artistic director of Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre.

She remembers Greig saying, early in the pandemic, that “the restaurant industry is in trouble, but food isn’t”. It’s an analogy that, in her opinion, holds up entirely.

“I think [Greig’s] absolutely right. That desire to be in a room with ­people, to make a story together, to tell it to a live audience, is never going to go out of ­fashion, even if the industry is going through a really challenging time.”

Skinner goes into her new job armed with that faith in the future of live ­drama. “Stellar Quines is quite a small ­organisation with quite big ambitions and big ideas,” she says.

Under her leadership, she hopes, the company will move “effortlessly” between collaborating with Scotland’s major theatre institutions and working with smaller scale drama companies and community theatre groups. Indeed, she hopes that Stellar Quines can extend to others the kind of support she has had from within the Scottish theatre industry.

“I’m feeling very well supported by the Scottish theatre community in this ­appointment,” she says. “I am really feeling the love, and feeling hopeful and grateful for being in this community.”