TRAVERSE AT 50 Above: Playwright John Byrne. Below: Robert Carlyle in Dead Dad Dog, 1988. Right: The Team’s 2011 Fringe success Mission Drift.
Y o u c a n expect a bombardment of birthday celebrations this October when the National Theatre turns 50. But before London’s luvvies go wild, there’s another new- minted quinquagenarian closer to home worth championing: Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre.
Yes, the heart and home of Scottish new writing is 50 years young – and boy, has it had a colourful half-century. What else would you expect from a theatre founded in a former brothel and doss-house just off the Lawnmarket? In 1962, 15 James Court was a temporary Fringe venue before a group of friends (led by actor John Malcolm), moved in the following January. Their intention was to keep the Fringe spirit of radicalism running all year round. They certainly managed that. At only the second performance, actress Colette O’Neill was stabbed onstage because the company
couldn’t afford a proper stage knife. The incident sent O’Neill off to hospital and the Traverse straight into the press. Controversy followed controversy: in 1965, there was a complaint in the House of Commons about obscenity but, undeterred, Gerald Scarfe produced six-foot genitalia costumes in 1967 for Ubu in Chains. And the following year, a student production, Mass in F, featured a topless woman recounting her sexual exploits But to reduce the Traverse’s history to just its choicest anecdotes – the night, for example, when a radio mix-up resulted in the chatter of local cabbies broadcasting in lieu of the voice of God – would be to do it a major disservice. What began as a 60-seat theatre club, allowing it to evade the red pen of the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship, can today lay good claim to being one of the five most important new writing theatres in Britain. It’s even been described as
a sort of unofficial national theatre of Scotland. There are a number of factors behind this success. First, perhaps, there’s the turnover of leaders. In its first 25 years, the Traverse had ten different artistic directors, compared with two at the National over the same period. Each brought their own set of governing principles, righting what they saw as an imbalance of the previous order. In 1964, Jim Haynes put the emphasis on new work, staging 31 world premieres in two years, while his successor Gordon McDougall pushed against programming for the sake of newness. Max Stafford-Clark programmed avant-garde experimentation, Michael Rudman sought to counter financial instability with populist dead certs and Mike Ockrent introduced an internationalist feeling. Then, in 1975, Chris Parr placed the emphasis squarely on Scottish writers. With all these shifts, today’s Traverse
14 THE LIST 16 May–13 Jun 2013