Made in Scotland Showcase, Edinburgh Fringe

So my shows Home is Not the Place, and Twa – with visual artist Flore Gardner – are up and running in Summerhall, at Edinburgh Fringe, as part of the MiS showcase. Here’s a video interview with Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman newspaper’s chief theatre critic talking about the shows. The two shows are alternating daily, so two, hour-long scripts for me to keep in my head. It’s hard work but I’m getting through it, let’s just say. Wish me luck!

Readings and new writing

Busy past few days. Performed in a rehearsed reading of ‘Maryland’ by Lucy Kirkwood at the Traverse (24/25 Nov), then directed and provided dramaturgy for a rehearsed reading of ‘We Need to Talk About Safe’ by Sophie Goode and Corinne Salisbury, edited from the testimonies of a broad range of women in Scotland, at Assembly Roxy (26/27 Nov). Both about male violence against women, and the latter about spaces in which women feel safe/unsafe. Even managed to squeeze in chairing an hour long panel on ‘Staying Connected to Your Roots’, for Scottish BAME Writers Network just before the ‘….Safe’ show. You can imagine I stayed connected to my bed (28 Nov)!

Life in the Time exhibition

A couple of months back I did some writing workshops with women, for Amina Muslim Women’s Resource Centre in Glasgow. I turned some of their writing into very short films which are part of an exhibition Life in the Time, using some stock video, which daughter Eve edited and did the sound design for. To view the films (each approx. 1-2 mins long), click the link to the exhibition, which includes work by other groups on the project and, scroll down to the four thumbnails at the bottom of the page – starts with Intro and Between Two Worlds. Themes looked beyond participants’ experience of life during a pandemic to ‘a reflection on the past, an acknowledgement of our present and a message for the future: when all this is over, and forgotten. A message to generations to come and the future selves of the women who created this work. “We were not voiceless, it’s just no one was listening”’