#travfest18

‘Honest. Inspiring. Fierce.’ 

Susan Bear is a Glasgow-based multi-instrumentalist, sound designer and performer. Here she responds to our 10 Questions sharing her experience of performing in What Girls Are Made Of.

Susan Bear in What Girls Are Made Of. Image Sid Scott

1. To kick things off, can you tell us a little bit about What Girls Are Made Of and your role in the show?

What Girls Are Made Of is the story of one woman trying to exist in the music industry, being a teenager, growing up, feeling lost, finding herself again and ultimately finding happiness.

I play Cathryn, the drummer in Darlingheart. I also do lots of the other little music bits in the show on drums guitar and piano.

2. Without giving anything away, what’s your favourite line from the show?

‘There must be like BILLIONS of sperm in there, that just seems ...a bit unnecessary’

3. What initially drew you to performing in What Girls Are Made Of?

I'm really chuffed to be a part of this show and to help communicate Cora's story. Although the story is about so much more than just being a woman in music, I felt related and connected to that struggle. 

A lot of stories about bands bypass all the messy, difficult stuff and exaggerate the 'glamour' (of which there are really very little!) - this is a really honest depiction of Cora's experience that I hope goes to show people that music isn't all fun and games!

I think it's a really important story to tell just now, for anyone but especially for women, that if you stay strong and persevere you can choose your own path in life.

Also, I really love playing the drums and am very excited about getting to play every day during the fringe!

Cora Bissett in What Girls Are Made Of. Image Sid Scott

4. How do you want audiences to feel having watched the show?

Like they can do anything. Like they will be able to push through the dark and difficult times, and that everyone struggles sometimes. And that sometimes happiness does prevail. Also, don't let photographers tell you how to pose!

5. What song defined your teenage years?

The Anniversary - All Things Ordinary Listen to Susan’s playlist in response to ‘The songs that made me’, here >>

6. Who was your teenage idol and why?

Katie Sketch from a Canadian band called The Organ. I'd never seen an all-female 'rock' band before, I loved them so much, but particularly Katie Sketch the lead singer. I snuck into King Tuts for their over 18′s show when I was 17 (I put a tipex dot on my driver's license DOB on the 8 of 1988 so it said 1983...). She looked so cool and in control, not nervous at all. I really wished I was her - I was an awkward looking scruff ball not a cool lead singer type.

I had grown up around boys and wasn't aware of many women in music until later in my teenage years - listening to them made me think that if these women are doing this, then it's totally a possibility for me too.  

Susan Bear and Cora Bissett in What Girls Are Made Of. Image Sid Scott

7. What has been your most memorable theatre experience – either as a member of the audience or as part of the creative team?

I went up to Civic House in Glasgow, for an NTS event: Just Start Here at the beginning of the year and saw a work-in-progress of 'Girl Meets Boy' by Debbie Hannan, an adaptation of the novel by Ali Smith. Minimal sound design and lighting but it was amazing and so moving and powerful and funny. Best thing I've seen in ages.

8. Can you tell us about the first play you ever performed in?

This is pretty much the first play I've ever performed in! Or rather acted in, I play drums/bass/vocals in a show called Blow Off but yes there's no acting for me in that just drums and bass. 

9. What’s your favourite Edinburgh haunt?

I really like Henry's Cellar Bar, it's a fun little dive bar. 

10. Finally, what three words would you use to sum up What Girls Are Made Of?

Honest. Inspiring. Fierce.

Simon Donaldson, Susan Bear, Cora Bissett and Grant O’Rourke in What Girls Are Made Of. Image Sid Scott

Christopher Haydon was Artistic Director at the Gate Theatre (2012-2017) and formerly an Associate Director at the Bush Theatre. This August he returns for his fourth festival at the Traverse as he directs Martín Zimmerman’s On the Exhale - a startlingly original examination of grief and gun violence in America. Ahead of that, he recalls some of his favourite memories of the Traverse.

Diary of a Madman, 2016. Image: Sally Jubb

I love the Trav. On The Exhale will be the fourth show I have brought to the theatre for the Festival (after Grounded, The Christians and Diary of A Madman). But my relationship with this place goes back much further than that. As a student, when I first came up to the fringe, I had some of my most formative experiences here as an audience member. I have vivid memories of watching Zinnie Harris’ Further Than The Furthest Thing and Gregory Burke’s Gagarin Way and being utterly thrilled by the theatricality and narrative brilliance of those shows. Since then I must have seen dozens and dozens of shows here – both in and out of festival – and I always get a profound thrill when I head down those stairs.

In fact, my first ever professional engagement as a theatre maker was as at the Trav. I was the assistant director on a 2005 festival show called The Found Man by Riccardo Galgani. It starred the brilliant Liam Brennan (who, ten years later would play the lead in my production of Diary Of A Madman) and told the story of an unidentified man washing up on the beach near a small and isolated community on the Scottish coast in the mid-nineteenth century. I was offered the job in my final week at drama school – so I found myself graduating on the Friday and being in rehearsals the following Monday. It was a hot summer then too and I have vivid memories of rehearsing in a large room above an Indian restaurant in Leith. The smell of curry slowly cooking below was probably not the most appropriate thing for the setting of the play, but it certainly made it a unique experience!

The Christians, 2015. Image: Mihaela Bodlovic

What is it about the theatre that makes it feel so special? Well, there is something truly epic about Traverse 1 as a space. The vertiginous rake of the auditorium and the width of the stage gives the space a cinematic widescreen feel – it is the ideal place for stories that combine emotional intimacy with big, political ideas. It is a great place for an audience to reimagine who we are and what we might be as a community. Trav 2 feels even more intimate. When you walk down all those winding steps, you feel as if you are adventuring into some hidden, subterranean, imaginative world. This was where I first saw Gary Owen’s The Drowned World – still one of my favourite plays. It is where I first introduced audiences to the character of The Pilot in Grounded and was able to take people on an intense journey into the frightening world of Drone Warfare.

Yet it is not just the theatres themselves. The bar has an extraordinary vibe – at peak hours during the festival, you have to fight your way through two queues – one for each space – in order to buy some Traverse Nachos – the best nachos in the world. And the expectant buzz of these audiences mingling together is addictive and exciting. The walls are plastered with posters for all the shows and so the whole experience ends up feeling utterly immersive. The festival is as much a social experience as it is an artistic one, and the bar becomes the ideal place to hang out and meet the artists who you have just seen performing – its democratic, accessible and fun.

Grounded, 2013. Image: Jeremy Abrahams

There are other great things about working at the Trav that might be less obvious to the casual visitor. The backstage team are immensely good at what they do. I have a habit of creating shows that are technically very demanding. But the tech team here never bat an eyelid – they can work wonders with an electric drill and some gaffer tape to fix even the most challenging of problems. I sometimes think that you should be able to buy tickets just to watch the turnarounds between shows – when one large complicated set is dismantled and got out and another assembled and got in. The planning and choreography that goes into ensuring everything runs on time is acutely impressive. The skill of the tech team is matched by all the other departments – from marketing to producing – so you always feel incredibly well looked after.

So yes, I cannot wait to come back this year. On The Exhale, like all the plays I have brought to the Trav in the past, is both gripping and politically astute. It will take place down those stairs in Trav 2. So come and join us in the basement for a visceral and surprising story.

Polly Frame is an Edinburgh-born actor who makes her Fringe debut in On the Exhale as a grieving mother in a one-woman play about gun violence. Ahead of that, we caught up with her in rehearsals and set her our 10 Questions.

Polly Frame in rehearsals for On the Exhale. Image by Iona Firouzabadi.

1. To start things off, can you tell us a bit about On the Exhale and your character?

On the Exhale is a solo account of college professor / single mother who finds herself a victim of America’s gun violence and has to navigate her way through the devastating and acute ‘upside down’ logic of grief, anger and revenge.  I think she’s an extraordinary character-driven, articulate, never self-pitying and with an incredible inbuilt bullshit detector!

2. Without giving anything away, what’s your favourite line from the show?

I could choose any to be honest, so might as well start at the beginning, ‘You always imagined it happening to you’.

3. If you spent a day with your character, what would you do together and what do you think they’d make of you?

I’d like to fly a microlight over the north west of Scotland with her. I’d want to do something neither of us had done, something that would still our minds and I think she’d appreciate not having to make small talk! I’m not sure what she’d think of me, disorganised probably.

On the Exhale trailer. Watch here >>

4. What initially drew you to performing in On the Exhale?

It’s an amazing text, utterly truthful and constantly surprising and Chris is a great director.

5. How do you think this show will make audiences feel?

I don’t know, many things, but hopefully with the character every step of the way.

6. What has been your most memorable theatre experience – either as a member of the audience or as part of the creative team?

Hard question-there has been many. Falling through a trap door into the bowels of The National Theatre in dark glasses and a wig on a press night might be one.

7. Can you tell us about the first play you ever performed in?

The first play I remember being equally excited and nervous about was Brecht’s “Good Woman of Szechwan’ when I was 16.  A school friend had to physically push me on stage.

Polly Frame in rehearsals for On the Exhale. Image by Iona Firouzabadi.

8. What is the most useful piece of acting advice you’ve been given?

Currently ‘Stay on Target’

9. Do you have a favourite Edinburgh haunt?

Carlton Hill at night.

10. Finally, what three words would you use to sum up On the Exhale?

STAY ON TARGET

New writing, the 90s and advice for early-career artists, our Artistic Director Orla O’Loughlin responds to our 10 Questions. 

Orla is currently directing What Girls Are Made Of by Cora Bissett which is a glorious celebration of gig-theatre based on the pull-no-punches teenage diaries of Cora charting her journey from indie-rock sensation to the women she wanted to be.

Orla O’Loughlin. Image: Aly Wight

1. What compels you as a director?

The brilliance of the creative teams I lead. A drive to tell stories. A desire to move audiences: to laughter, to tears, to action.

2. What attracted you to the story of What Girls Are Made Of?

As a teenage indie kid in the early 90’s this was my time. How could I resist revisiting: the music, the fashion, the revelation of it all? 

In addition, Cora’s story allows the autobiographical to reach out and become a universal tale of growing up: it’s both a hilarious and deeply humane study of what makes us who we are, all told with a hyper-real and huge-hearted flourish.

3. What are the themes of the play?

What makes us who we are: family, friendship, betrayal, adventure, love, disappointment, loss and hope.

The cast and crew of What Girls Are Made Of.

4. What was your starting point for directing the play? How did you approach it? What sort of references and research did you draw upon?

I thought about all the early 90’s indie gigs I’d been to and dared myself to stage the story using that form.

5. What does your rehearsal process look like?

Calm, supportive and lots of laughter.

6. Who were your teenage idols?

PJ Harvey, Harriet Wheeler, Kim Deal

7. How do you want audiences to feel having watched the show?

Hopeful, exhilarated, moved.

Cora Bisset in rehearsals for What Girls Are Made Of. Image: Lauren McLay

8. What advice would you give to emerging directors and theatre-makers?

Do your own thing while you can. Early career days can be the most liberating artistically. Embrace that opportunity.

9. If you had to describe What Girls Are Made Of in 3 words, what would they be?

(A) Good night out.

10. What do you find particularly exciting and engaging about new writing?

Where to start?

The power of new writing is in its ability to reflect where we are right now and start conversations about where we might be heading. New writing engages with the big questions of our times, challenges the status quo and is an agent for change. And of course, new writing ultimately becomes our cultural legacy and record of our times.

Nigel Slater’s TOAST - Production Photos

A play about growing up. With food.

Based on Nigel Slater’s award-winning autobiography.

Vividly recreating suburban England in the 1960s, Nigel Slater’s childhood is told through the tastes and smells he grew up with. From making the perfect sherry trifle and waging war over cakes through to the playground politics of sweets and the rigid rules of restaurant dining, this is a moving and evocative tale of love, loss and... toast.

Catch it at Traverse Festival 2018!

Nigel Slater’s TOAST Wed 8 – Sun 26 Aug Preview Tue 7 Aug BOOK NOW

What Girls Are Made Of - Research and Development.

We stopped by the rehearsal room to catch the cast of What Girls Are Made Of in action ahead of their sold-out work-in-progress showing at Tron Theatre.

1992. A schoolgirl becomes an indie music star, touring with Radiohead. Performed with a live band, this is the true story of Cora Bissett’s rollercoaster journey to become the woman she wanted to be. 

What Girls Are Made of by Cora Bissett Sun 5 – Sun 26 Aug  Previews Fri 3 & Sat 4 Aug BOOK NOW