New Writing: Daisies & Fairy Dog

Whether due to the success of the Oran Mor’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint series or the effect of the recession on arts budgets, stripped down lunchtime plays are shaking up Glasgow’s theatre scene – and this year’s Fiendish Plot season at the CCA is no exception. Having kicked off in May, the season continues with pieces from two emerging writers: Daisies by Lisa Nicoll and Karen Barclay’s Fairy Dog.

Barclay, a former winner of the Playwright Studio Scotland’s Ignite competition, loves Fiendish Plot’s 30-minute format. ‘You can pack quite a lot into a half hour,’ she says. ‘There’s lots of little things that you couldn’t put into a full length play because you wouldn’t be able to stretch it out.’ Certainly, Fairy Dog – in which two friends confront their simmering resentments on top of a mountain – embodies a quirky idea that could be difficult to sustain as a longer piece.

Similarly, Fiendish Plot’s concentrated format may serve to intensify the grief portrayed in Nicoll’s Daisies, which focuses on a young couple dealing with the sudden loss of their unborn baby. Both incorporate what Barclay calls ‘a sense of poignancy about people moving on in life, people – that sad stage when you’re going from being really young to going out into the world, and you have to either make it or fall.’ It’s this quality that could translate the experience of watching these short plays into memories that last much longer.

Daisies - CCA, Glasgow, Tue 2–Sat 6 June
Fairy Dog - CCA, Glasgow, Tue 9–Sat 13 June

More: Theatre, Previews (Theatre), CCA, Daisies, Fairy Dog, Karen Barclay, Lisa Nicoll, Lunchtime Theatre, New Writing

Comments

No comments yet – be the first.

To post a comment you'll first need to sign in: Forgotten your password?

Sign in

Email
Password
Remember

Not registered? Sign up – it only takes a minute.

RSS feed of these comments