Cast & Creative Biographies

THE PAISLEY SUITE MONOLOGUES 2021

THE PAISLEY SUITE

3 new monologues recorded at NTS Rockvilla in 19-25th March 2021

To be released as YouTube premieres May 2021.

Directed by Mary McCluskey

& Designed by Kenny Miller

ACTORS BIOGRAPHIES

Janette Foggo – Lovely Peas

Janette graduated from RSAMD in 1976 and has over the years performed with most Scottish Theatre companies. Most Recently playing Queen Lear and Volumnia for Bard in The Botanics. She also performed Peter Arnott’s two one woman plays Face: Morag and Face: Isobel at Oran Mor followed by Stephen Dick’s ‘Hot Water’ about an elderly woman stuck in the bath for 5 days. Career includes 2 Stints in London’s West End, National Tour of The Crucible and tours with Borderline, Solar Bear and Mull Theatre. Mrs Danvers in Rebecca, Oedipus, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Steamie, The Breathing House at Edinburgh Lyceum; Hyde at Dundee, Men Should Weep NTS. Pitlochry theatre and Perth rep.

TV and film include The Slab Boys, The Lost Tribe, Dream Baby, Britannia Hospital and most recently safety campaign ‘Drive Like Gran is in The Car.’

Ann Louise Ross – Something in the Air

Ann Louise has appeared in leading roles in most Scottish theatres and is part of the original ensemble at Dundee Rep Theatre.  With their productions she has won a CATS Award for Best Female Performance as Mill Laverello in Further Than The Furthest Thing, a TMA award for Best Supporting Performance in a Musical as Jean in Sunshine on Leith and a Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Paulina in The Winter’s Tale. She also won huge critical acclaim in the pivotal role of Rose in the musical Gypsy.  

Other recent theatre credits include: Peter Gynt with the National Theatre and Edinburgh International Festival; The Dark Carnival, a co-production between Vanishing Point TC and Glasgow Citizens’, and in association with Dundee Rep Ensemble; Doctor Faustus, a co-production between the Glasgow Citizens’ and West Yorkshire Playhouse; and The Guid Sisters, a co-production with the NTS and the Royal Lyceum.

Film credits include: Stone of Destiny; Split Second; Trainspotting; The Witch’s Daughter; and The Acid House Trilogy: Granton Star Cause. 

Television credits include: The Farm: Series 1 & 2 (BBC); Katie Morag (Struay Pictures/BBC); Shetland (ITV); River City (BBC); Case Histories (Ruby Films); Bob Servant Independent (BBC); Rebus: Let It Bleed (STV); The Bill (Thames TV); The Key (BBC); Life Support (BBC); Looking After Jo (BBC); and Hamish Macbeth (BBC).

Benny Young – The Registrar’s Last Entry

Recent theatre: Midsummer (NTS); Eulogy (Glasgow Oran Mor/Edinburgh Traverse); Hay Fever (Citizens’/Lyceum); Monarch of the Glen (Pitlochry Festival Theatre); Still Game Live (Phil McIntyre); The Tempest (Xinchan Performing Arts); Waiting for Godot (Lyceum’s 50th Anniversary); Unfaithful (Traverse, Winner of The Stage Award for Acting Excellence); Macbeth (MIF / Armory Park, New York); Philadelphia, Here I Come! (Donmar); The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (CFT / West End); and 27, A Christmas Carol, The Wheel, Be Near Me, and Six Characters in Search of an Author (all NTS). Previously he has spent seasons with the National, the RSC and The Wrestling School.

Recent television and film: Scot Squad; Still Game; One Day Like This; Garrow’s Law; Waking The Dead; Spooks (all for BBC).

Film credits include: Tom Harper’s Wild Rose (Three Chords Production Ltd); David Mackenzie’s Outlaw King (Sigma Films/Netflix); Chariots of Fire (Enigma Productions); Out of Africa (Mirage Entertainment/Universal Pictures); Funny Man (Encore Entertainment).

WRITERS BIOGRAPHIES

Jack Dickson – The Registrar’s Last Entry

Jack Dickson is a playwright, screenwriter and novelist from Saltcoats who now lives in Glasgow. His “Jas Anderson Investigates” series of crime novels was recently republished by Requeered Tales, to some acclaim, and The Happy Place – the very first play he ever wrote! – will premier in November 2020 on Zoom, performed by a Community Theatre Company based at the Hood River Valley Adult Centre in Oregon. Jack’s currently working on The Girls of Cartridge Hut Number 7 – a play to mark, in 2021, the 150th anniversary of the founding of Nobel Explosives at Ardeer, Stevenston – with Irvine’s Showworks Theatre and North Ayrshire Council’s Arts and Heritage Department.

Through plays featuring heroin addicts, elderly ladies “on the lam” and talking Ash trees, Jack has always sought out the untold stories and so is particularly excited to be working with Outspoken Arts on The Paisley Suite. “Monologues are challenging: both to write and to witness. There’s something highly intimate and not a little uncomfortable about watching – AND listening to – a character as they bare their soul to us,” says Jack. In these pandemic times, maybe the very act of listening is a skill worth honing.

Lisa Nicoll – Lovely Peas

Lisa Nicoll is a producer, playwright & actress who trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.  Lisa has a passion for writing things that are inspired by real people and events. Lisa established and is Creative Director & Producer of new writing theatre company In Motion Theatre where she was commissioned and toured with Where The Crow Flies in 2016 (funded by Glasgow City Council), Shattered (funded by the Big Lottery) in 2018 and in 2019 was commissioned to write Other Side of the River as a co-production between In Motion and Renfrewshire Arts & Leisure for a Scottish and English tour in 2021.

Between 2008 and 2013, Lisa wrote, produced and toured theatre work all across Scotland under her own name including her touring self-penned one woman plays Acceptance, Touched & Home Run. Acceptance toured for six years to venues across the length and breadth of Scotland funded by various public & private sources. Off of the back of this play she was also commissioned to write the main characters’ diaries in The Metro Newspaper for ten weeks.

In 2010 Lisa was commissioned to write short novel Leathered for teenagers for Alcohol Focus Scotland which was put on the curriculum in some schools in Scotland she also secured funding from various sources to write & produce eight short films which combined community casts with professional actors.

Lisa’s writing has been instrumental in two motions being passed in the Scottish Parliament for her writing work with communities for short films Shattered Walls and Wasted. She has received a Care Accolade for one of her short film The Protector and was also part of the Scottish Charity of The Year Finalists 2019 for her play ‘Shattered’ with The Scottish Cot Death Trust.

In 2019 Lisa was asked by Oxfam to research and write a paper for the Scottish Government on Food Poverty which is now being looked at for the basis of a new play. 2018/19 also saw Lisa work with Sky Arts as a script developer for Martha Keith Barnett’s play And The Band Marches On which was presented at The Bush and Barbican Theatre as rehearsed readings. During this time, she also worked on the script development of rehearsed readings of Jennifer Adam’s new play The House That Melts with The Rain which was performed at Assembly Roxy in Edinburgh and the development of Jo Lennie’s play Lily – A Play with Songs which was then presented as a reading at The Traverse Theatre.

Between 2013 and September 2017 she was a producer at the Tron Theatre. In this position she created The Progressive Playwright Award and set up and ran The Tron 100 Club – an artistic membership for creatives & produced the Tron 100 Festival in 2016 & 2017 – a festival of 30 short new plays.

Lisa is delighted to have been commissioned by Out Spoken Arts to write Lovely Peas and feels her work has come in a full circle as Steven Thomson of Outspoken Arts was the person who gave her space and support to develop her first one woman play Acceptance.

Zoë Strachan and Louise Welsh – Something in the Air

Zoë is currently working on a range of projects, including creative non-fiction investigating memory and identity through the Neolithic landscape, an extended experimental radio piece with long-term collaborator Nichola Scrutton (part of which will be broadcast in this year’s Radiophrenia festival), and an intersectional social history book with Louise Welsh. 

“Louise and I will be very happy to work together on a drama again – we’ve co-written stories but haven’t tackled a play since Panic Patterns. We’re delighted that Outspoken Arts has enabled this, and look forward to trying to create something hopeful and humorous after a dark year!”

Bio

Zoë Strachan is the author of three novels: Ever Fallen in Love, Spin Cycle and Negative Space. Ever Fallen in Love was shortlisted for the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards and the Green Carnation Prize and nominated for the London Book Awards. Negative Space won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book of the Year Award.

Zoë’s short stories and essays have appeared in various magazines and anthologies internationally and been broadcast numerous times on BBC Radio. Works for theatre include Panic Patterns (with Louise Welsh, Citizen’s Theatre and BBC Radio Scotland) and Old Girls (which opened the 2009/10 season of A Play, a Pie and a Pint at Òran Mór). Her short opera Sublimation (with composer Nick Fells) toured Scotland in May 2010 with Scottish Opera before going to Cape Town, South Africa in November 2010. The Lady from the Sea, a full-length opera composed by Craig Armstrong and based on the play by Ibsen, premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2012, where it won a Herald Angel Award. She has a long-standing sound art/experimental radio collaboration with composer Nichola Scrutton. 

Between 2011 and 2014 she co-edited New Writing Scotland, Scotland’s principle forum for poetry and short fiction, and in 2014 she curated a new anthology of LGBT writing from Scotland, Out There (Freight) – the first of its kind in over a decade. In 2020, she was one of the judges for the Dublin International Literary Award.

Zoë has been UNESCO City of Literature writer-in-residence at the National Museum of Scotland, a Hermann Kesten Stipendiaten, a Hawthornden Fellow, and a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellow. In 2011 she undertook a British Council visiting fellowship at the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa and in 2012 she was visiting faculty at Dartmouth College. Her day job is as Reader in Creative Writing at University of Glasgow.

CREATIVE TEAM BIOGRAPHIES

Mary McCluskey – Director

Mary McCluskey retired as Artistic Director/CEO  of Scottish Youth Theatre in October 2018, where she had been in post since March 1992.  Educated in Scotland and the USA – Mary has worked for many theatre companies including: – Dundee Rep; Wildcat Theatre; Scottish Opera; Scottish Ballet; Face to Face; Ibsen Festival (Skien, Norway); Royal Shakespeare Company; Citizens Theatre; A Play, A Pie & A Pint; Otago Theatre; Edinburgh College and the Royal Shakespeare Company. 

Mary has directed over 100 productions for SYT including:- Prom Night of the Living Dead; ‘Sweeney Todd, Dying For It, Geordie, His Dark Materials Part One, When A Star Falls, Hamlet, Love But Her, Tam O’Shanter, Jerusalem: Song of Deeds, The Weegie Board,  Twelfth Night, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, Thebans, The Tempest, and Dye In The Goldfish Bowl.  Between 2005 and 2017, Mary devised and directed more than ten immersive Festive Shows for 3-7 year olds. In 2018, Mary directed the first collaboration between Scotland’s National Youth Performing Arts companies (NYCOS, NYOS, SYT & Y-dance). Tell Us Who We Are by Gary McNair played at the Fruit Market as part of Festival 2018. 

Mary, as a playwright adapted Wee Macgreegor, Wee Macgreegor Enlists, Medea, Hamlet, Macbeth, The Glory, The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie and The Tempest for Scottish Youth Theatre. In recent years, she has adapted Anthony & Cleopatra, Romeo & Juliet, The Seagull & Don Giovanni for Oran Mors Classics Cuts Season.  In February and June of 2016, Mary directed Frances and Ethel for A Play, A Pie and A Pint at Oran Mor. In April 2017, Mary directed Scottish Operas Connect company in Dido and Aeneas. More recently Mary has directed In For A Penny by David Cosgrove for Otago Theatre as part of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival 2019;  Lion by Sue Glover for A Play, A Pie and A Pint in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen; and Fissure – a new devised piece for PASS, Edinburgh College at the Traverse.  In June 2019, Mary directed Etta’s War – a community production marking the contribution the women of Haghill made during WWI.  From August – October 2019.  she rehearsed, directed and toured Amadeus and the Bard – a new touring production, Mary had created the script for Scottish Opera.

In October 2009, Mary formed Theatre Jezebel with Kenny Miller and Anne McCluskey. Their first production was the European premiere of Autobahn by Neil LaBute. This was followed by Doubt, Days of Wine and Roses, Lady M – a new adaptation of Shakespeare’s Scottish Play, and Harold and Maude. In September 2016, Mary directed a critically acclaimed production of Keith Huff’s A Steady Rain at the Tron in Glasgow- the production was named as ‘Evening Times Play of the Year 2016’

Her international work includes leading workshops and masterclasses in Antwerp (Belgium); Dublin (Ireland); Oslo & Skien (Norway); Perth (Australia); Prishtina (Kosovo);  New York (USA); and Toronto (Canada).  Many of Mary’s productions have toured internationally. Mary won the Jury’s Prize for Direction & Pedagogy at the Rainbow Theatre Festival in St. Petersburg for her production of Born Bad – a play, by Sarah Argent. 

In October 2006, Mary was awarded an Unsung Hero Award at the Sunday Mail Great Scot Awards.  March ’07, saw Mary being named as NCH Woman of Influence 2007 at a ceremony in Glasgow.  In December, 2007, Mary became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In November 2015, Dundee University awarded Mary an honorary doctorate for her work in Scottish Theatre and her work with children and young people. In recent years, Mary has sat on many judging panels for Music Theatre Network and Mercury Musical Developments.  She has been a panel member for the Cameron Mackintosh Composer in Residence 2018 & 2019. Mary is currently running the Mercury Musicals Development BEAM Follow Spot Writers’ Group. Since 2014, Mary has been drams tutor/director for the Bridgeton Drama Queens, a group of senior ladies in their 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.  The group meets weekly at the Bridgeton Community Learning Centre.  To date they have produced 6 community productions.

Kenny Miller – Set and Costume Designer

Kenny Miller is a freelance designer and director who was for many years Head of Design/Associate Director at the Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow and has just served his tenure as Associate Artist: Designer for the Sherman Theatre, Cymru.

He has worked in Theatre and Opera both nationally and internationally, designing and directing for many companies such as: Royal Court Theatre London, Royal Shakespeare Company, Oxford Stage Company, Hampstead Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Palace Theatre Watford, Greenwich Theatre, Bush Theatre, Donmar Warehouse, Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, Oldham Coliseum Theatre, Tron Theatre and Dundee Rep Theatre.

He has won three Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland for: Scrooge (Best Production), Smoking With Lulu (Best Technical), and A Little Bit of Ruff (Best Ensemble). He has also won the Manchester Evening News Award for 10 Rillington Place (Best Designed Production).

He is currently designing the stadium production of The Steamie at SCE Hydro as well as directing/designing the UK’s first all-female pantomime Cinderfella. Recent credits include Witness for the Prosecution (directed/ designed, Dundee Rep), And Then There Were NoneFaceJacquoranda, directed and designed April in Paris & And The Beat Goes On (Perth Theatre), The Chooky Brae by Daniel C Jackson (Borderline Theatre & National Tour) and directed and designed SnoutThe SeagullCompany Policy, Romeo and Juliet and Don GiovanniforOran Mór’; designed Born Bad and directed and designed Pinocchio for Scottish Youth Theatre and Harold and Maude and Days of Wine and Roses for Theatre Jezebel of which he is a founding member.

Additional design work includes Cuttin’ A Rug (Citizens’ Theatre & Royal Lyceum Edinburgh), The WeirBird (& Royal Exchange, Manchester), The Dolls – Abroad (National Tour); A Doll’s House & Romeo and Juliet (Sherman Cymru); The Tin Forest (National Theatre of Scotland), Macbeth & Blithe Spirit (Perth Theatre), In An Alien Landscape (Beacon Arts Centre) and The Man Who Lived Twice (Arches Theatre) for Birds of Paradise Theatre Company both of which toured Nationally, The Snaw QueenSleeping Betty (& Directed), Miracle on 34 Parnie StreetPeter Panto and the Incredible Stinkerbell (& Directed), Cannibal Women of MarsAganeza ScroogePlumeMister Merlin’s Pure Panto Magic, Flo White and Valhalla! (Tron Theatre), Casablana: The Gin Joint Cut for the Tron Theatre, Edinburgh Festival & National Tour, Marilyn for the Citizens’ Theatre & Royal Lyceum Edinburgh, Staircase by Charles Dyer (Tron Theatre), Clockwork an adaptation of an original work by Phillip Pullman for Visible Fictions and Scottish Opera, Lark, Clark and the Puppet Handy and The Ushers (Raindog/Tron Theatre), Douglas Maxwell’s new musical The Bookie (Cumbernauld Theatre & National Tour), A Steady RainDoubt: A Parable and the UK Premiere of Autobahn also co-directed Lady M: His Fiend-Like Queen, (Theatre Jezebel/Tron Theatre), Tartuffe, Fuenteovejuna and Lysistrata (Classic Cuts at Oran Mór’), Ya Beauty and the Beast, Betrayed, From the West Bank, and Address Unknown (Tron Theatre), Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off and Our Teacher’s a Troll (National Theatre of Scotland), Proof and Tam O’Shanter (Perth Theatre).

Samantha Ramsey, Production Manager

Sam is an experienced Production Stage Manager. She received a Bachelor of Arts (BA) Technical Theatre/Theatre Design and Technology in 2005 from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland – RCS). Sam works with Bard in the Botanics as Festival Production Manager and has also worked with the Traverse Theatre, Byre Theatre, RCS, Findhorn Bay Arts Festival, Eden Court Theatre, Visible Fictions, National Theatre of Scotland, and Pachamama Productions. Sam has also worked as a full-time assistant with Tech & Just FX Pyrotechnics and Special Effects and as a carpenter with Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Byre Theatre and Citizens Theatre.

Emma Yeomans, Stage Manager

Emma studied Entertainment and Events Management at Glasgow Caledonian University (2010) and Technical Theatre and Production Arts at Fife College (2015).

After graduating, she worked with the National Theatre of Scotland as Stage Management Assistant, including work on The James Plays, Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, Granite, The 306: Dawn as well as management of the props and furniture stores.

Credits include: The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, Eve, Submarine Time Machine, Shift (National Theatre of Scotland) Breaking The Waves (Scottish Opera) Tinsel Toon (Tron Theatre), Our Fathers (Traverse) One More Sleep Till Christmas, Humbug, The Lost Elves (Citizens Theatre). She also works as a teacher and performer with Glasgow Hula Hoop and Think Circus.

Jamie Wardrop, Film-maker and Editor

Jamie is a Glasgow based artist, theatre maker, VJ and designer who tours work nationally and internationally. He has collaborated with some of Scotland’s leading artists and presented his own critically acclaimed original work at major venues and institutions.

He trained as an actor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland – graduating in 2009. 

He has developed a practice in multiple disciplines, practices and genres – defying easy definition – from the music industry to theatre and dance where his work is frequently in demand. He commonly works with digital mediums like 3D Animation, VR,  Lighting, Sound, Composing and Film.  He has pioneered the use of live VJ techniques and projection mapping in the live performance.

His work follows his interest in how forms collide and influence each other  to create striking and unexpected presentations especially when coupled with the ephemeral quality of  a live performance. His process is one of continual experimentation with form and concepts to create ambitious heartfelt experiences.

This year Jamie created live visuals for First Minister – Nicola Sturgeon, Lewis Capaldi, Basement Jaxx, Gerry Cinnamon and folk legends Capercaillie.  He has presented work at Sonic Arts Research Centre  – Queen’s University Belfast ; SHRIMP Dance @ Winterweft Festival – Frankfurt, For Now I Am , Marc Brew Company @ Katwoice -Poland; DRONE @ Summerhall – Made In Scotland Program; collaborated with Angus Farqhuar (NVA) and National Theatre of Scotland ; created a projection mapped installation on to the Bank of Scotland HQ for Edinburgh Hogmanay 2019 and been awarded a place on the two month Sura Medura Artists Residency, Sri Lanka.

His production The Dwelling Place, a self-produced collaboration with his brother Lewis broke new ground in its use of immersive design to tell the story of a hidden Scotland.

Jamie is founder of Glasgow Theatre Arts Collective – an affordable studio space for emerging artists based in Govan.