My new play ALLOTMENT takes place in a real allotment in Inverleith during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It’s directed by Kate Nelson of Nutshell Theatre and is a co-production with Assembly.
Macmillan’s Marvellous Motion Machine
BBC Radio 4 play goes biking
MACMILLAN’S MARVELLOUS MOTION MACHINE for BBC Radio 4 is the story of the Scots blacksmith who invented the pedal bicycle.
The Wife of Usher’s Well
Quondam play with songs
The Wife of Usher’s Well was a Singspiel – play with songs – produced by Quondam Theatre. It’s based on the famous Border ballad about a woman whose dead sons return from war for one last night. In this version, we had just one son (cutbacks), and several songs which were scored by the extraordinary Mr Iain Lowthian.
Gorgeous Avatar
Traverse play on online dating
Gorgeous Avatar was my first full-length play, directed by Philip Howard at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, with a wonderful cast and team behind it. It’s the story of an internet love affair between two people who meet for the first time and find their fantasies and reality collide. It was inspired by hearing that [...]
Particle Fiction
Tiny bite-sized stories
I spent a year writing ‘particle fictions’ – stories written in five minutes (with timer) based on this process: Shut eyes. Go to bookshelf. Pick out book. Open book and insert finger. Read the word where your finger lands. This is the title of your story. Insert this title into Google. Go to the first [...]
The Existentialist Owl
Scots poem inspired by a bird
This is a sound poem in Scots inspired by the work of the German poet Christian Morgenstern. I’d been thinking about his poem ‘Der Werwolf’, which is untranslatably about a werewolf in a graveyard tussling with a grammatical declension, and having an existential crisis. It’s also funny – a party piece beloved of German kids [...]
* (Scots) v dribble, make a mess n a messy eater, as in his jumper was slaistered wi skooshy cream
