January 2008

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Looking back on 2007...

Last year was a great year for David. He began by becoming Dr Leddy when he passed his practice-based PhD. This was followed by his hugely successful show Home Hindrance, a collaboration with the marvellous Vanishing Point theatre company - you can see it online on the Watch and Listen page. In the autumn he tried out two new sound pieces (Verrocchio and Pater Noster) as well as taking a remarkable trip to Japan to research Sei Shonagon. He got funding to write Faction and to produce Sub Rosa, an elaborate co-production with the celebrated Citizen’s Theatre. He ended the year with a really stimulating project working with an exciting and energetic group of Contemporary Theatre Practice students at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Then to cap it all off, he was awarded the prestigious Robert Louis Stevenson fellowship for writers. Phew.

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Looking forward to 2008…

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For these are jolly good fellowships

David will be packing up his portmanteau in the middle of February and going away to write without being disturbed by the cat. He has been offered a fellowship at the Global Arts Village in Delhi and has also been awarded the Robert Louis Stevenson fellowship, in France. As luck would have it they happen back to back, so he’ll be away for a total of nearly four months. So, he’d better have got plenty of work done by the time he gets back or there’ll be trouble.

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Sub Rosa

Currently scheduled for Autumn 08 is David’s co-production with the Citizen’s Theatre, Sub Rosa. This is a late night performance that takes a tiny audience on a tour of the little used backstage spaces in this Victorian music hall and eventually into the completely disused top circle of the auditorium, where the theatre’s ghosts are reputed to hang out.

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Faction

Recent funding news is that Scottish Arts Council have recently awarded David New Work Funding to write and do development for Faction. This a play that aims to apply Jean Genet’s artistic devices to a biographical play about his life. Thus, we should end up with lots of whores and petty thieves abusing and betraying each other before we find out that they are all pretending to be somebody they are not…

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Pater Noster

Last December, David did a trial-run of a new sound piece called Pater Noster at the UBU Gallery. The piece involves sitting alone in a small, dark space listening on headphones as you take a ten-minute long journey in David’s lift (!). The piece was very well received and he’s currently negotiating with a venue to show it again this Spring.

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Sei Shonagon

Last September, David took a remarkable research trip to Tokyo and Kyoto thanks to those lovely people at the arts council. This was in order to photograph and film material that will be used in Sei Shonagon, his piece that takes influence from the Japanese courtier who wrote one of the world’s first great works of literature, The Pillow Book. The trip was exciting and inspiring and he can’t wait to sit down and start writing.

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North Utsire, South Utsire, Fisher, Dogger, German Bight…

The literature department of Scottish Arts Council have given David a writer’s bursary to write Utsire, a series of seven interweaving narratives which will later be presented in print as well as a site-specific sonic art installation. The piece is planned to be a site-specific audio performance that uses infra-red technology and the physics of harmonic resonance. Audience members wear wireless infra-red headphones and move in and out of the infra-red field of various transmitters placed in the space. The transmissions that the audience hear are a series of interweaving stories that draw on themes of ships, drowning, betrayal, smuggling and abuse of power.

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