Description of impact
This stage project has influenced Company of Wolves’ creative and pedagogic practice, as they have confirmed in writing since, and it has also benefitted them in economic terms, as they have now received a substantial grant from Creative Scotland for the next phase of the project. It has also had an influence on how the participants in the RCS and ‘Labs’ workshops understand Greek tragedy and its creative potential, and I am hopeful that future feedback will be able to prove that it has had a direct economic impact on those same practitioners.Who is affected
- Company of Wolves (including the members of the team apart from the Artistic Directors Ewan Downie and Anna Porubcansky)- Participants in workshop on 4 November 2023 (students MA/MFA in Classical and Contemporary text at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow)
- Participants in 'Labs' programme, May 20-23 2024
Narrative
The first phase of my consultative work with Ewan Downie from Glasgow theatre collective ‘Company of Wolves’ resulted in a one-person adaptation of the ancient Greek tragedy Bacchae (or ‘Bacchic women’) by Euripides (https://companyofwolves.org/projects/the-bacchae). In light of this experience, we decided to co-devise a workshop on the tragic chorus, and it was for this second stage of our collaboration that Roger Rees and I applied to the Impact & Innovation Small Fund.The money we were awarded allowed Downie to visit St Andrews for two full days in July 2023 (from the early afternoon of Monday 17 to noon on Wednesday 19), and covered his pay for that time as well as travel, accommodation and sustenance costs. We reserved a room in the School of Classics for the duration of his stay, and used a variety of approaches (mini-lectures to one another, discussion, devised activities, etc.) to devise a full-day workshop on the tragic chorus based on my own research on metaphor in Greek tragedy and our shared experience of adapting the rhythms and structures of the choruses of Bacchae to a modern performance idiom.
This workshop was trialled on Saturday 4 November 2023 on a group of around 15 students taking the MA/MFA in Classical and Contemporary text at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. The workshop received exceptionally positive feedback from the participants (of which I have a record in PDF form), and they seemed particularly interested in the intersection between my own research and Downie’s experience of writing and performing Bacchae. This workshop was an important moment in my collaboration with Downie, as since then the strategic goals of Company of Wolves have been closely tied to our work together.
In light of the success of the RSC workshop, Company of Wolves decided to use their ‘Labs’ programme in May 2024 as an opportunity to trial a week-long version of the workshop. Eight theatre practitioners and creative artists – some near the start of their career and others with a track record of producing acclaimed work – were paid to take part in this four-day creative workshop in Tramway, Glasgow (20-23 May 2024): https://companyofwolves.org/news/labs-2024. We focused on the ancient Greek tragedy Agamemnon by Aeschylus, as already at this point Company of Wolves had decided that their next major project is to be a full-cast production of the play based on my own research on Aeschylus. The week therefore provided an opportunity to deepen Company of Wolves’ experimentation with ways of bringing to life choral songs of tragedy (which would have been danced as well as sung in the original performances). This work is breaking fresh ground creatively speaking, but it also proved an opportunity to share ideas and practices with the other creative artists in the hope that this will influence future projects on their part. We gathered feedback from four of the participants in the weeks after the workshop, and all eight have committed to providing longitudinal feedback (at yearly intervals for the following three years).
This stage of the project has influenced Company of Wolves’ creative and pedagogic practice, as they have confirmed in writing since, and it has also benefitted them in economic terms, as they have now received a substantial grant from Creative Scotland for the next phase of the project. It has also had an influence on how the participants in the RCS and ‘Labs’ workshops understand Greek tragedy and its creative potential, and I am hopeful that future feedback will be able to prove that it has had a direct economic impact on those same practitioners.
| Impact status | Closed |
|---|---|
| Impact date | 1 Oct 2020 → 2024 |
| Category of impact | Cultural, Creative Impact |
| Impact level | Involvement - mid or active stage |