29th Arts & Business Awards

Community Award

BAA Edinburgh with Grid Iron

WHAT THE JUDGES SAID

Trying to perform in front of an audience with 150 fascinated Japanese tourists wandering past with their luggage in a busy airport is nothing unusual for Grid Iron Theatre Company.

The Edinburgh-based group has established a reputation for performing in unusual places from underground vaults to a department store.

Last year, celebrating its tenth anniversary, it staged its trickiest work to date – at Edinburgh Airport.  The work, Roam, is primarily responsible for Grid Iron winning this year’s Art & Business community award.  Not only did they use non-professionals from all parts of the community as cast, they also had to fit in with a community in its own right – an airport with managers, security staff, check-in workers and cleaners.

“The airport show all seemed a bit unreal looking back on it.  That was a challenge,” admits Jude Doherty, producer and co-artistic director of Grid Iron.

“For Roam we treated the audience like travellers and got them to assemble at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and bussed them to the airport, where we got them to check in.  The airport was open and real travellers were there checking in.  We worked closely with the security and ground staff, we didn’t want to upset or confuse any travellers.”

With Roam they had a multinational cast of ten, but then two non-professional community casts of fifteen that were made up of children and teenagers and also senior citizens.

“We were representing the fact that an airport is a microcosm of the world.  The senior citizens were checking in for a Saga-style holiday, we had a mother checking in with her three unruly children – they were vignettes and everybody behaved extremely professionally.  It was great fun.”

Roam ran for three weeks last April and Doherty says that it could not have happened without the involvement of the National Theatre of Scotland, who co-produced and opened doors which might otherwise have remained shut.

“BAA had to make a considerable leap of faith to even begin working with us – there was lots of bureaucracy.”

They were helped by the fact that the airport terminal’s Projects Manager and the Head of Security had both studied English together at University.

Roam was a tremendous success, winning three Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland – Best Ensemble, Best Technical Presentation and Best Overall Production in 2006.  Roam was also nominated in two other categories.

Mark Brown