Live and Now Steve Greer

In this episode of Live and Now, Steve talks with director and designer Stewart Laing. As the artistic director of Untitled Projects, Stewart has led the creation of some of Scotland’s most adventurous, large-scale experiments in theatre and live art though – as Stewart himself notes – most often by making work that might fall somewhere between those two fields of practice.







In this excerpt, we follow the thread of influences on Stewart’s early practice – making work in and around the National Review of Live Art, and the emerging profile of Tramway as a leading venue for touring and international artists in Scotland – through the creation of a trilogy of works based on the novels of J.G. Ballard.







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* the website of Untitled Projects* Stewart Laing and long-time collaborator Pamela Carter in conversation with Mark Fisher for Theatre Voice about formal experimentation and their continuing creative relationship* Harry Wilson on Untitled’s history of experiments with theatrical form and blurring of the real and imaginary during the development of THEM! for National Theatre Scotland

In this episode of Live and Now, Steve talks with Sheila Ghelani – an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans live art, performance, installation, social art and moving image – and whose most recent work includes Common Salt, a ‘performance around a table’ made with Sue Palmer that explores the colonial, geographical history of England and India.







Starting with Grafting & Budding – a lecture style performance examining ideas surrounding race, heritage, and mixing – we explore the development of Sheila’s practice as a solo artist in relationship to her work with Pacitti Company and Blast Theory, and the significance of a sequence of works presented as part of the National Review of Live Art.







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* the project page for Common Salt and the accompanying book, available to order from Sheila’s website or Unbound.* an interview with Sue Palmer and Sheila Ghelani about Common Salt for Scare the Horses, curated by Paula Crutchlow* documentation of Grafting and Budding on Sheila’s website* documentation of Sugar Sugar White on NRLA30, a website celebrating the 30th anniversary of the National Review of Live Art

In this episode of Live and Now, Steve talks with multi-disciplinary artist, researcher and facilitator, Ashanti Harris. Working with dance, performance, sculpture and installation, Ashanti’s practice often focuses on recontextualising historical narratives – offering an exploration of the social, cultural and historical implications of the movement of people, ideas and things. Based in Scotland, Ashanti is co-director of the dance company Project X, lecturer in Contemporary Performance at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and co-facilitates the British Art Network research group The Re-Action of Black Performance alongside artist and curator, Sabrina Henry.







In this excerpt from a longer interview recorded for the Live Art in Scotland project, we touch on the origins of Project X as an organisation platforming dance and performance from the African and Caribbean diaspora in Scotland, and explore the creative works which emerged from archival research into Les Ballet Nègres, known as the first British black dance company, as well as Ashanti’s wider explorations of diasporic knowledge and experience through performance.







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* Ashanti’s website, AshantiHarris.com* The Re-Action of Black Performance, a research group exploring ‘how the state of being re-active is used as a theme in Black British performance art, not only as an act of agency and resistance but as a creative catalyst in the form, process, intention and legacy of the works created’.* Project X,  a multi-disciplinary collectively run organisation working to platform dance of the African and Caribbean diaspora in Scotland and further afield.* A conversation between Ashanti Harris and Dr Ranjana Thapalyal to accompany Dancing a Peripheral Quadrille, a new commission for the Edinburgh Art Festival 2022.* Review of An Exercise in Exorcism, staged at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA): ‘Built in 1778 for a tobacco merchant who made his fortune through the transatlantic slave trade, GoMA’s site is one of a number of neoclassical piles dispersed across the city that were constructed on the profits of the Caribbean plantations. […] An Exercise in Exorcism is one of a number of works devised by Harris on the theme of Guyanese Jumbies, malign ghosts that often inhabit particular locations’.

In this episode of Live and Now, Steve talks with collaborative performance maker, performer and teacher, Karen Christopher. For the last decade or so, Karen’s practice has focused on creating a series of duet performances devoted to re-examining the collaborative performance-making process. This work follows – and perhaps emerges from – some twenty years as a core member of the Chicago-based collaborative performance group Goat Island, who disbanded in 2009 after creation of their ninth and final work, a piece called The Last Maker.







In this excerpt from a longer interview recorded for the Live Art in Scotland project, we explore the Goat Island Summer school (originally staged at Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts) as one thread of the company’s longstanding relationship with Scotland – and the significance of making space to explore new forms of individual and creative expression, beyond the typical expectations that surround the development of new work.







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* Karen’s ongoing work as Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects* Goat Island Performance Group* Entanglements of Two: A Series of Duets, a book edited by Karen Christopher & Mary Paterson. Available to order from available from Unbound and Intellect Books.* Fractured & Entangled, a recording of the book’s online launch event featuring contributions from Karen Christopher, Tara Fatehi Irani, Mary Paterson, David Williams, Eirini Kartsaki/Joe Kelleher and Jemima Yong.* The introduction to Goat Island’s Goat Island’s Schoolbook 2, published in 2002: ‘Goat Island performance work is a series of responses: to the exercises we give ourselves, to our surroundings, to the events of the world, but mostly, to each other’.* The Glasgow Miracle: Material Towards Alternative Histories. www.glasgowmiraclearchives.org

In this episode of Live and Now, Steve talks with Robert Softley Gale about his solo show If These Spasms Could Speak, making My Left / Right Foot – The Musical for National Theatre of Scotland – and the pragmatics of taking ‘experimental’ work to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.







Robert’s prolific career calls attention to the specific circumstances in which live art and new performance becomes possible – as well as the potential for such work to cross over into mainstream spaces in ways that challenge any neat distinction between ‘fringe’ and not. In framing the chat, Steve also offers a pocket history of The Arches (a major Glasgow performance and club venue forced to close in 2015) as a space straddling those worlds – and whose absence raises persistent questions about the conditions of possibility for experimental practices and creative risk in Scotland.







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* Birds of Paradise Theatre Company* Documentation of If These Spasms Could Speak, performed at the Going Solo International Theatre Festival, Mumbai, in 2015.* A Conversation With Robert Softley Gale – Disability Arts Online* My Left / Right Foot – The Musical for National Theatre Scotland* DISCOURSE OR INTERCOURSE / TALKING & F*CKING (2017) at Arika, Episode 9: Other Worlds Already Exist* Kirstin Innes and David Bratchpiece’s Brickwork: A Biography of The Arches (2021)* ‘The Right To Fail: Remembering Glasgow Venue The Arches’ – The Quietus* Take Me Somewhere, the international biennial festival and year-round sector support organisation that exists to position Scotland as the place to create and see radical performance, created to build on the legacy of The Arches