A POP-UP festival featuring work by emerging and established artists is be the “beginning of something new” when it arrives in Aberdeen next week, says its producer.
Just Start Here, which is presented by the National Theatre of Scotland, is a “bold live presentation of fresh ideas” offering performances of works-in-progress, experiments in crossing art forms and discussions on the future of the arts in the city.
Highlights include a discussion on Aberdeen’s music scene with Kathryn Joseph, a six-artist experiment led by performance poet Jenny Lindsay and a performance from Gaelic electronica duo WHYTE.
Also featuring will be Vicki Manderson and Finn den Hertog’s new dance/theatre piece The Afflicted, and The Shelter, a work by artist Kate Steenhauer and writer Shane Strachan exploring modern life around bus shelters in Aberdeen. These two works-in-progress performances from the Aberdeen artists will feature alongside Sketches (left), a set of dance pieces by Katie Armstrong.
The Glasgow-based performer recently collaborated with Aberdeen’s Citymoves Dance Agency, who present Just Start Here in partnership with the National Theatre of Scotland’s artistic development project Engine Room.
“Just Start Here is about providing a platform for artists to showcase their work,” says Engine Room’s producer Anna Hodgart. “Though there are never enough opportunities for everyone, what we try to do with the festival is to give some collaborators time to work things out and get things to a point where having an audience is helpful, where getting that feedback is really important.”
She continues: “The Shelter and The Afflicted are works which have been in development privately in development for a while and this will be the first time they’ve performed it in front of an audience.”
Hodgart says Just Start Here features a number of artists and organisations based in Aberdeen, and that the festival has been programmed in response to the particular needs and character of the city and its arts scene.
Aberdeen’s lively spoken word scene is represented in events led by Speakin’ Weird, the city’s longest established spoken word night. In the coming months, Engine Room will travel to Inverness, Dundee, Orkney and the Borders.
“Engine Room responds to geography, to funding and what is going on in a particular place,” says Hodgart. “We’ve found that outside the central belt, there is often not so much theatre going on, while a place might have a strong music or visual arts community. It’s about working in partnership with artists and groups on a more grassroots level and helping to facilitate collaborations, new ideas and networks.”
The festival, she says, is both a chance for all kinds of artists to spark new ideas off each other and for audiences to be part of the creative process by seeing work at an earlier, more experimental stage of development.
The weekend follows The Fierce Urgency Of Now, a one-day theatrical event held in the city in December 2018 on the theme of climate change. Now, playwright and director Clare Duffy and Dr Leslie Mabon from Robert Gordon University will present With Fiercer Urgency, a discussion on how artists can respond to climate change.
Aberdeen’s status as a place whose fate is bound to the price of oil has long affected its artists, says Hodgart.
“They’re always responding to that in some way,” she says. “Money comes in and then it leaves. There’s an ebb and flow and sometimes when it leaves there can be a depression.”
The city may have suffered financially in recent years but its creative community is beginning to flourish again.
“There’s this energy bubbling at the grassroots level,” says Hodgart. “I really get the sense that people are excited about being able to create something new, a creative scene, a new culture. Things are just about to really blossom.”
Holding the festival in the city centre’s Anatomy Rooms – also home to Citymoves – was part of the plan, she says.
“We are careful about where we hold the festival,” Hodgart says. “We look upon our audiences as participants and everyone has to feel like they are part of it. I think there is something massively empowering about going into a room and being surrounded by creative conversations and getting up close with creative process.”
She adds: “You leave feeling energised and thinking: ‘Yeah, things really are possible’, whether you’re an artist or whatever you do.”
March 8 and 9, The Anatomy Rooms, Aberdeen, 4pm to 11pm, day and evening tickets: £5 each, combined tickets £8. Tickets: www.nationaltheatrescotland.com
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