PREVIOUS SHOWS | National Theatre of Scotland

Caledonia

Based on Scotland's failed foray into colonialism - the notorious Darien disaster - Caledonia is a story of greed, euphoria and mass delusion written by political satirist Alistair Beaton (The Trial of Tony Blair and A Very Social Secretary).

Long Gone Lonesome

Duncan McLean and the Lone Star Swing Band tell the story of Thomas Fraser: Shetlander, fisherman . . . and world class blues recording artist. A mix of storytelling and music with games, improvisations, tall tales and heartfelt personal confessions.

Exchange 2010

An international event which brings together youth theatres from Scotland and across the world for a week long celebration in July.

Peter Pan

In 2010, the National Theatre of Scotland brings Peter Pan home, presenting a brand new version, especially for families, of one of the most influential and magical stories ever told by a Scottish writer.

Little Johnny's Big Gay Wedding

Little Johnny’s Big Gay Wedding is a theatre show with a difference. You get to be a guest at his wedding reception - but be warned! This is going to be a family wedding that puts the fun into dysfunctional!

Allotment

Last orders at the bar with surprises... A night of social networking style entertainment that will have you moving, playing, sharing and maybe even dating.

The Miracle Man

Holding on to your virginity, getting a ring for your pains and something to believe in, that’s what Dawn, Rob and Fawziya want. Ozzy, their loser PE teacher needs to believe in something too. It will all be fine when the Miracle Man gets here. Won’t it?

Mr Write

It’s a play that’s not written yet and doesn’t have a name. Mr Write aka Rob Drummond (playwright, performer, optimist) will choose the cast, the story and the title on the night. It’s not written because it will be one of your stories and Rob hasn’t met

Empty

When you’re only sixteen, could the events of one night really shape the course of your life? Divert you from becoming the man you might have become, stunt you, burden you, trap you, destroy you, change the very core of you? Leave you empty.

Transform Aberdeen

Transform Aberdeen: The Cabaret of Impossible Dreams explores the weird and wonderful world between sleep and wakefulness using a combination of music, puppetry, animation, movement and text.

Wall of Death: A Way of Life

Theatre as you have never seen it before. A carefully choreographed ballet for kick-start and carburettor performed to the roar of antique 1928 Indian Scout motorcycle engines. Presented alongisde the premiere of a major new installation by Stephen Skrynk

Architecting (2009)

Rocketing from a condemned bar in post-Katrina New Orleans to the deep south of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind, Architecting tells the story of Americans trying to survive as the world changes under their feet.

Transform Glasgow

Gaelic singing, urban poetry and fearless physical theatre collide in this freshly-minted theatre event co-created by the National Theatre of Scotland, Glasgow East school students, college students and local community participants.

The House of Bernarda Alba

Boiling tension and impending tragedy in the east End of Glasgow. Following the gangland execution of her husband, formidable matriarch Bernarda Alba will do anything to safeguard her fortune and the future of her five daughters.

Exchange09

Now in its fourth year, the National Theatre of Scotland's Exchange programme provides youth theatre groups with the opportunity for enthusiastic young theatre-makers to create and perform new and exciting pieces of theatre.

Peer Gynt (2009)

This raucous and radical interpretation of Ibsen’s classic play takes the audience on a truly wild theatrical journey. An exhilarating tale of a life lived on the edge, this production is a mix of trolls, madmen, dancing girls and live music.

Transform Caithness

Hunter is a major new theatre event created and performed by 150 Thurso High School students and local people. This mysterious thriller takes audiences on a surprising and magical evening journey through the streets of Thurso.

Transform Orkney

The National Theatre of Scotland returns to Orkney with a unique performance event - part theatre, part art installation - at the St Magnus Festival.

Transform Moray

An unforgettable evening of entertainment filled with tall tales, songs, music and performance unfolding in the mesmerising, mirrored pavilion of the Moulin Rouge Spiegeltent.

Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off

First performed in 1987, Liz Lochhead’s "Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off" is a modern Scottish classic - feisty, bolshy and peppered with live music, wit, and a fair bit of smeddum.

Our Teacher's a Troll

When their new Head Teacher turns out to be a troll, Sean and Holly have to plunder their bag of tricks to stop him wrecking their school. But how naughty can they get before they become the troll's lunch . . . ?

Be Near Me

A captivating and moving story about love, morality, identity and regret, adapted for the stage by Ian McDiarmid from the Booker Prize nominated novel by Andrew O’Hagan.

Transform East Renfrewshire

A site-specific theatre event involving drama, film, creative writing, movement, design and music. Devised, created and performed by students from Barrhead High School, with contributions from the community of Barrhead.

Transform Dumfries

Transform Dumfries brings together a divese mix of creative energies to stage a unique piece of site-specific theatre.

Transform Fife

A multi-platform spectacle set in the former Dunlop factory in Dunfermline's Pilmuir Street - includes dance, a live rock band, solo and group singing as well as a multimedia installation.

Dolls

Dolls is a film of extraordinary beauty from Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano. Now, for the first time, this deeply touching visual feast has been adapted for the stage by exciting young director Carrie Cracknell.

Black Watch

Viewed through the eyes of those on the ground, Black Watch reveals what it means to be part of the legendary Scottish regiment, what it means to be part of the war on terror and what it means to make the journey home again.

Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us

Living on their wits, stalked by violence and death, defending themselves with the blackest humour, Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us is the story of a family under siege.

Nasty, Brutish & Short and The Dogstone

A double bill of two shorts plays that look into the darker side of Scottish family life: Kenny Lindsay’s The Dogstone and Andy Duffy’s Nasty, Brutish and Short.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

A spine-tingling battle between good and evil, packed with a irresistably sinister collection of characters. Ray Bradbury's terrifying novel is now a deliciously scary adventure created by the magical Catherine Wheels theatre company.

Cockroach

A seemingly normal detention in a seemingly normal modern day comprehensive. A teacher valiantly battles on with biology revision. But as she has taught her pupils in her biology lessons, only the fittest will survive . . . just like the cockroach.

One Giant Leap

The truth is out there, it always was, we just couldn’t see it. Then one day, one man took one giant leap and the rest, as they say, is history. Wee Stories take their unique, inventive story-telling style into space for an illuminating, funny and rewardi

365

J is a jumbled mixture of melted memories and until she can make some sense of them, she hasn’t really got a chance. Tonight, in the silence, she must begin to learn her lifetime . . .

Architecting

An exhilirating saga that weaves through America's past and future to create a requiem for the modern USA. A time bending musical epic, peopled with Scarlett O'Hara pageant contestants, anarchistic architects and a president's grandson.

The Bacchae (2008)

The Bacchae is back. Alan Cumming gives an award-winning, tour-de-force central performance as Dionysus, the charismatic and dangerous god and his chorus of Bacchae are a high-octane line-up of scarlet-clad, soulful female singers.

Peeping at Bosch

"The Garden of Earthly Delights" is Hieronymus Bosch's most famous painting, appearing everywhere from 1960s LP covers and 1980s Athena prints, to good old fashioned books. But hardly anyone takes a good hard look. So let's begin.

Exchange 08

Now in its third year, the National Theatre of Scotland’s vibrant Exchange Festival brings together youth theatres from across Scotland with a team of professional theatre artists.

The Emperor's New Kilt

Hans Christian Anderson's famous children's fable has been wittily re-imagined as a family musical comedy, told with Wee Stories' trademark style of story telling, interwoven with Scottish music hall, pantomime and ceilidh.

Little Otik

Czech artist Jan Svankmajer's disturbing tale of a childlesss couple who develop an intense relationship with a tree stump carved to look like a baby. As their obsession grow, so does the "baby" and its monstrous appetite . . .

Transform East Ayrshire

Celebrating the birth of the new Grange Campus in Kilmarnock by performing the ritual burial of the old school, FLIT marks a momentus change in the lives of this community in East Ayrshire.

Six Characters in Search of an Author

Six characters abandoned by their author desperately need a writer to complete their story. Trapped inside a traumatic event from which they long to escape, only acting out the scenes that were written for them will release them. One way or another

Transform Inverclyde

Inspired by the River Clyde and the dramatic impact it has had on the people of Inverclyde, Bolt brings together elements of drama, film, and design installations with the physical street art-form 'parkour'.

Aalst

A disturbing and revelatory glimpse into the thoughts of two murderers. Based on the real events of a 1999 Belgian family drama. Cast includes multiaward winning Kate Dickie (Red Road), David McKay (My Name is Joe) and Gary Lewis (Billy Elliot).

Molly Sweeney

Molly Sweeney has been unable to see since she was a child. Her lack of sight has never lessened her sheer joy at everyday life. As a girl, her father taught her to recognise by touch every flower, shrub and tree in their walled garden to make her at ease

A Sheep Called Skye

Skye the sheep is used to being different. She never knew her mother and was brought up in a B&B, not a farm. She longs to discover the place where someone like her, a sheep who doesn't feel . . . well . . . sheepish, really belongs.

Venus as a Boy

Adapted from Luke Sutherland’s acclaimed novel and performed by award-winning actor Tam Dean Burn (River City, The Cutting Room and Tutti Frutti), Venus as a Boy is an explosive and haunting story about the miraculous power of sex.

Black Watch - US Tour 2007

The triumph of the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Black Watch is a taut and uncompromising piece of theatre about the service of Scotland's most famous military regiment in the Iraq War.

The Wolves in the Walls

Lucy hears creeping, creaking, crumpling noises coming from behind the wallpaper and is convinced that there are wolves in the walls of her house. For everyone over 5 who isn't a scaredy cat.

Peer Gynt

Peer Gynt is a dreamer, a liar and a serial womaniser. Cast out from his hometown, Peer embarks on a wild and astonishing journey in search of fame and fortune that takes him from Norway to Africa and eventually back home again. An exhilarating tale

Rupture

Rupture is a dark and funny 21st century thriller that takes a scalpel to the shiny surface of city life. Six characters collide in the twilight urban underworld of post-Blair Britain. Rupture exposes the links between private security and personal trauma

The Bacchae (2007)

Savage, comic, intensely lyrical and one of the greatest of all Greek tragedies, the Bacchae powerfully dramatises the conflict between the emotional and rational sides of the human psyche. World premiere of a new adaptation by David Greig.

Half Life

A major new landscape performance and the National Theatre of Scotland’s first co-production with NVA, one of the UK’s foremost environmental arts charities renowned for cutting edge rural landscape installations.

Exchange 07

In partnership with Macrobert. Youth theatres, their leaders and theatre practitioners form creative partnerships in order to exchange experience and knowledge of creating innovative, international theatre with, by & for young people.

Fusion

Devised and performed by the students of Calderglen Learning Community, AMEC staff and local community groups, this exciting event celebrates the merger of Claremont and Hunter High Schools.

Elgin Macbeth

Witness the historical Macbeth at war with Shakespeare's myth in a battle to redefine his 21st century identity. Presented as Moray District's contribution to the Highland Year of Culture.

The Wonderful World of Dissocia

Produced originally for the 2004 Edinburgh International Festival, The Wonderful World of Dissocia wowed critics and audiences alike. This is a hugely original play that confirmed Anthony Neilson as one of the major voices in British Theatre.

Black Watch - Scottish Tour 2007

Following a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival in summer 2006, unanimous critical acclaim and a stunning audience response, the award-winning Black Watch is on tour throughout Scotland.

Futurology - A Global Revue

Suspect Culture's black comedy asks the only question anyone really cares about: Is everything going to be all right? Futurology: A Global Revue explores the big questions with a darkly comic show packed full of song, dance and ventriloquism.

Tutti Frutti

John Byrne has created a hugely popular stage version of his legendary TV show and it returns with a classic Scottish cast following a sell out run in 2006.

The Recovery Position

Young Company's site-specific promenading production in collaboration with physical theatre expert Mark Murphy throws us headlong into a high-speed world of pain, panic and paramedics.

Oedipus the King

Starting round the camp fire in the depths of a dark forest at night, the brilliance of this compelling story spirals out from four young friends, with terrifying consequences. Touching and powerful, Oedipus the King is one of the greatest tragedies ever

Snuff

As larger world events implode in living rooms all over the country, Snuff provides an unflinching commentary on the war on terror and an age of sensationalist media.

Mary Stuart

One of European theatre’s major plays, Schiller’s masterpiece hinges on a brilliantly imagined meeting between Mary Queen of Scots, focus of simmering Catholic dissent, and her cousin, Elizabeth, Queen of England, who has imprisoned her.

Project Macbeth

Scotland’s king, hero or villain? The real Macbeth at war with Shakespeare’s myth in a battle to redefine his 21st century identity.

Gobbo

A show with live music, lots of dancing, some funny bits and a raffle with good prizes, Gobbo is a production for the whole family aged five and over.

Mancub

Vanishing Point’s 2005 production of Mancub, reached the parts other theatre often fails to reach - young people - who immediately empathised with the comedy and tragedy of the story’s hero.

Julie

"Miss Julie" is Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s masterpiece, written in the late nineteenth century. Zinnie Harris’s new version heightens the social and sexual tension, relocating the play to the central Scotland between the wars.

Self Contained

Using the Arches setting as a stimulus, this devised performance created by the National Theatre of Scotland Young Company delves into the world of extraordinary characters living in a not so implausible scenario . . .

Side Effects

Side Effects is a whirlwind ride through the dark places where people hide, flushing bad dreams, hard truths and dirty linen into the light.

Black Watch - Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2006

The sensational hit of the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Black Watch is a highly physical piece of political theatre. Performed in a disused drill hall, with a cast of ten dynamic young actors.

Realism

The world premiere of a new play by award winning playwright Anthony Neilson

Elizabeth Gordon Quinn

Written in 1985, Elizabeth Gordon Quinn is a contemporary classic, widely considered to be one of the best women's roles ever to emerge from Scottish theatre.

The Crucible

A riveting drama of individual conscience set against a community consumed by hysteria, The Crucible puts truth on trial as the actions of a group of young girls fuel a lethal climate of fear and intolerance.

Roam

Roam is Grid Iron’s tenth anniversary production and their most ambitious to date. Set in and around the lounges and gates of Edinburgh International Airport, the production explores the phenomenon of mass global air travel.

Falling

A promenading site-specific performance through the heart of Glasgow.

HOME Shetland

Everyone on this ferry route is on a journey either to or from their home - a place where lives and stories cross and connect. HOME Shetland will be an evocative multimedia experience in a unique setting.

HOME Caithness

Trapped in an old folk’s home, one night Elsie is visited by characters from the film Once Upon a Time in the West.

HOME Aberdeen

48 Logie Place has been abandoned for years - home only to local pigeons.

HOME Stornoway

An exploration of the home in miniature. Working with a brilliant team of model-makers a doll’s house will be built in shop window in Stornoway.

HOME Inverness

HOME Inverness is a highly energetic performance inspired by a series of specially created photographs of local families in their own homes..

HOME Dundee

With live performance and filmed interviews with residents of care homes, HOME Dundee recreates a theatrical youth culture from half a century ago.

HOME Edinburgh

A mock session of First Minister’s Questions, scripted by children between the ages of 10 and 12 years old and performed by a collection of Scotland’s finest actors.

HOME East Lothian

Audiences will be transported to a secret location in East Lothian where, in a unique and atmospheric setting, they will uncover a modern take on a familiar fairytale about fear, hope, strength and love.

HOME Glasgow

HOME Glasgow will be an outdoor spectacular featuring abseiling, dance and live film creating a fantastical glimpse into secret lives.

HOME Dumfries

A powerful, multimedia exploration of home, memory and death bringing together sound, visuals and live performance in a unique installation that will encompass both audiences and performers.