WHATEVER GETS YOU THROUGH THE NIGHT
AFTER-HOURS ARTISTS Interviews: Anna Burnside
STEF SMITH PLAYWRIGHT
DREW WRIGHT WOUNDED KNEE
ANNIE GRIFFIN KIERAN HURLEY
FILMMAKER
PERFORMER & THEATREMAKER
‘Everyone knows what 4am feels like. How exciting to
explore the secrets, silences
and stolen moments that take place then. My piece is about an elderly man driving through the night to get to Loch Lomond. I felt it was
important to show that it’s not just drunk twentysomethings who stay up all night. I also
wanted to explore how personal that time of night is: so often we are simply left alone with our thoughts as our only company. The silence in the countryside at night is unlike anything you can get in the city. You can hear your own breath and
your mind starts to play tricks with you. You also feel miles away from humanity and this emphasises the aloneness, the stillness and the privacy that time of night brings.’
‘For me, this is another typically atypical project.
There is one solo piece using voice and loop pedal which is quite abstract and builds around a scene where a guy is taking his wife’s ashes to Loch Lomond. The other is a collaboration with beatboxer
Bigg Taj, soundtracking a club scene. We are trying to sound like pumping techno
‘As a Cora Bissett fan, I was delighted to be asked to be involved, and I liked the idea of across Scotland through
the night.
We discussed some of the more unexpected places in Scotland, including the temples and meditation
centres to be found in more remote areas of the country. The piece I submitted is
using just our voices. It based on a Buddhist prayer,
seems to work. Over the last two or three years I’ve been
and the state of mind of someone who needs to calm
down. Badly. I sent it off months ago, have no idea what she and David have done with it, and can’t wait to
see the show.’
involved in a few projects that have gone beyond
straight-up gigs, working with musicians and actors, often devising ideas from scratch. I already do things that blur the boundaries between music, performance, theatre. To me it’s all poetry, in the radical
sense of the word.’
‘I’m playing around with ideas about the weird emptiness that you sometimes feel at the end of a night out. One of the most recent full-length things I’ve written was about
rave culture [BEATS] so my head is still in a place connected to all that stuff. I defi nitely wouldn’t have written this piece without
the stimulus of this particular gig. I’m fascinated to see what the relationship with the different elements will
be. Scotland’s got a brilliant music scene, and produces great theatre so it is certainly
an exciting premise. It’s very cool to be involved in something alongside some excellent playwrights and truly brilliant musicians.’
DAN WILLSON WITHERED HAND
‘I started writing songs in the coffee break of one of the development days, having seen some actors
improvising around a couple of scenarios. We began to use them as reference points, like a script. It was interesting
seeing the different forms – songs, script, acting – inform and infl uence each other. I picked up on ideas from the improvisations, which I found very funny and moving, and
made them personal so I
can sing them as part of the ensemble without feeling like a phoney. Expect a fl ower seller hawking plastic roses and a omniscient security guard. I have never written new songs in a coffee break
before. Usually I write one every six months, when I am in some kind of daze. I should do it more often.’
20 THE LIST 21 Jun–19 Jul 2012