Dramaturgy with Flair: it's Gary McNair!

Gary McNair- Trailer- Donald Robertson Is Not A Standup Comedian from Gary McNair on Vimeo.


What was the inspiration for this performance?

That answer comes in three parts. 

First has to do with form. I was given the opportunity by the NTS to experiment with a form that I found interesting and given that I'd often been referred to as a stand-up even though I'd never done it in my puff, so I wanted to explore the world of it through a theatrical lens and discover where, if anywhere, the differences lay. 

Secondly, was societal. I wanted to ask questions of how humour functions in society- as defence mechanism, as power tactic, as deflection, to suppress the voices of others to raise our own status, to make others feel good, to analyse, to reflect.

Thirdly was story: I wanted to put all of this thought and research into a tight story about someone we can connect with and feel great empathy for, so I wanted to find a terrible comic and put that on stage in the space.


How did you become interested in making performance?
It's hard to pin point the moment to something specifically, I never went to amateur dramatics or drama clubs as a boy. A lot of it has more to do, I think, with the big performers that I grew watching- Michael Stipe, Rik Mayall, Bjork etc. 

And, while I don't make the kind of things that they make, they gave me the inspiration to find what I want to say to the world and to try and find the right format to do so. Also, I had a great drama teacher, who really encouraged me to think of myself as a maker which was invaluable. 

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
Yes. I do a lot of research and through myself into the world of the subject in hand. I visited comedy clubs over the world where I saw hundreds of acts, read all the books, interviewed scores of comics and even got up and tried it myself to really know what it's like. 

Then when I've done the research it's all about finding a way to connect it to an audience and that's when the hard writing, the collaboration and test audiences starts. 

With this show, I was lucky enough to work with my most frequent

collaborator- Gareth Nicholls from really early on in the development which meant that the experience was given as much consideration from the off as the words.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?
I hope that they will have an immersive experience, that it will feel like they are at a comedy club, but over the hour, it will start to shift and they will find themselves engaged in the narrative, more concerned with asking questions of the form than looking for a light laugh. 

We've performed the show more than 50 times since we opened at the Arches in 2013 and they seem to be having experiences very similar to that which is very encouraging. We're constantly being told things like "I've never been to the theatre before but I loved that" which delights me because I always want to make very accessible work that can speak to people who have no experience of the theatre.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
While we wanted, of course, to get the audience to a place where they will ask questions of what they've just seen and of the world around them, we had to first lure them in by making the space feel as safe and familiar as possible- to make them feel like they are at a comedy club, about to see a comedy act, where they could bring a pint, they can shout out, enjoy cringing at the failures of the act and relax in for a good night but then we get to slowly degrade that familiarity and trust to open them up to something bigger. 

We got some great advice from people like Greg Hemphill on how to push both the authenticity of the club experience and the undercutting of it which proved really important in the show. 


Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
Chaucer, Hemmingway, McGonnagle? I don't know really, I just enjoy making the work. I've certainly taken experience from plenty of wide ranging influences and been hugely advanced in my making by all the people I've had the pleasure of working with over the years but I've never really identified as a particular tradition or form. I guess, perhaps, because I'm open to creating work in any number of forms depending on the idea and the best way to communicate the idea. 

So, in that respect... David Byrne. Aye, I know, I've no modesty. 



Donald Robertson Is Not A Stand-up Comedian 
will be continue its UK tour 
with dates around Scotland this Spring.

For dates and tickets click here.


A Gambler's Guide To Dying 
Will be in Charleston, South Carolina
from June 9th- 15th
And will tour the UK in Autumn.

My TV Guide.

Ali Bawbag and the Four Dramaturgies: Gary McNair talks panto

Christmas Panto
Ali Bawbag and the Four Tealeafs
Mon, 30 November, 2015 — Wed, 23 December, 2015
By Dave Anderson and Gary McNair

Featuring Dave Anderson, George Drennan, Frances Thorburn and Anita Vettesse

Ali is a very poor man, with a brother who is wealthy. He also has a wife who looks, let’s face it, like a man. One day, Ali is in the woods – don’t ask – when he sees a (budget) band of robbers. 

The leader says a magic password and a boulder rolls away from a rock face. Ali discovers, after they’ve gone, a cave full of riches, and his life is never the same again. A strange tale unfolds, involving Ali’s greedy brother, his aspirational wife, the band of robbers, and more besides.

Drennan and trumpet

Òran Mór’s annual Christmas Panto for grown-up children has become a not to miss Festive Season comedy treat. Join us this December for Dave Anderson and Gary McNair’s irreverent take on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Boo, cheer and sing-along, Oh, yes you will!


How did you get involved in this PPP panto business?
Gary McNair: I’ve got a good relationship with the guys at PPP. I had my very first commission their with Crunch and I’ve gone on to write and direct several other pieces for them. I’m also a part of the group the DM collective, founded by David MacLennan,  we create political satire shows there every year or so. 

It was through this that I first got to work with the wonderful Dave Anderson, we’ve really got a lot out of working together on those shows and from there, he invited me in to collaborate with him on the writing process for the summer Panto which was a real honour and a great laugh so, thankfully, he’s asked me back along.  


Will you be performing in it? After all you’re known as a monologist who performs his own scripts.
Oh no I won’t! 

I know that I’m perhaps more known to people as someone who performs my own scripts, but I tend to only do that once a year and so I save performing for the projects that I feel are right for me to do or the stories that I feel that only I could tell. But for the rest of the year, I create shows for other people to perform, which I enjoy just as much as performing. I really love the art of writing. 

I love getting to craft a story and watching other people bring it to life. Also, I can’t sing for toffee so I wouldn’t unleash that agony on a paying public. 

Were you a panto fan growing up?
Not massively. But that’s only because I never really went to any. Our school didn’t do any panto trips as far as I remember so it never really got into my blood in the way that it has for other people. It was only in later years, and, actually it was through watching the panto’s at Oran Mor, that I realised that it’s such a brilliant medium for satire and social commentary which is right up my street. 

Show seems more aimed at adults is that a statement about panto’s potential as a more mature entertainment?
I guess it is a little more adult, yes. But not in a Jim Davidson way. Far from it. I think that, yes, panto has the potential to be mature entertainment, but I think that’s always the case. When you go and see the best ones like Johnny McKnight’s or Brian James’, for example, they’re working on multiple levels; the kids love it because it works for them but the adults are hooked in as well on big laughs that are perhaps going over the kids heads, kind of like the Simpsons in that manner.

Panto’s always have so many themes relevant to everyone; hardship suffered by the poor, greed versus good, the toppling of evil empires, I think if the show was particularly mature in anyway, I guess it would be that with the knowledge that it is a venue that has a more mature audience as well, we’re freed up a little more to push these themes more to the direct political reference to what’s going on the world and so we’re able ramp up the satire a little. It’s also very very silly. 

That’s the joy of writing it with Dave, his comic timing is exceptional and he has real integrity in his work too because he cares a great deal about the world. And it helps that we can have a bloody good swear into the bargain. 

Is the show set in Glasgow? Will there be familiar characters to those of us that hang around the west end?
It’s set in panto land, of course. But it is peculiar how similar panto land can be to Glasgow at times.

Gary in his previous Xmas show...

Gambling on Dramaturgy: Gary McNair @ Edfringe 2015

The Traverse to host the world premiere of

A Gambler's Guide To Dying

Written and performed by Gary McNair

Directed by Gareth Nicholls

7-30 August in Traverse 2

From the team behind 2014's award-winning hit Donald Robertson Is Not A Stand-Up Comedian

What are the odds on living an extraordinary life? This is the story of one boy's granddad who won a fortune betting on the 1966 World Cup and, when diagnosed with cancer, gambled it all on living to see the year 2000. An inter-generational tale of what we live for and what we leave behind. Gary McNair returns to the Traverse after last year's award-winning five-star show Donald Robertson Is Not A Stand-Up Comedian. 

Writer/performer and theatre maker Gary McNair is making a welcome return to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival following the runs of the critically acclaimed Crunch at Forest Fringe in 2011 and Born To Run in 2012 and award winning Donald Robertson is not a Stand Up Comedian in 2014 at The Traverse.

The Fringe

What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a

script or an object? 

Gary McNair: It began with a memory and the imagination. My shows are generally borne out of a memory or a need to speak about something important. That’s not to say that the memory pieces don’t strive to be important and that the important pieces don’t look to the past. Also, the memories I work from don’t tend to be tangible tracing of  events (i.e. the time we went to Spain) but rather they tend to be based on an emotional memory (i.e. how I remember feeling at a moment in time or how i was trying to make sense of the world). 

Why bring your work to Edinburgh? 

The fringe is like nothing else on earth. You get to put your work in a context where art becomes the centre of the universe for three weeks. There are thousands of people who have made the commitment to present work and many thousands more who want to experience it. You get to have your work seen by people from all over the world and I'm only 55 minutes from home! Why wouldn't you want to be a part of that? 
What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production? 

I hope that people will engage in the story. There are some laughs to help them along the way but it is certainly my most story driven piece of work yet and the one that has the most emotional engagement. Crucially, whatever ever people take from it, you've cracked it with the question- I always hope that my audiences leave both thinking and feeling something that they didn't feel or hadn't thought about before they went in.

The Dramaturgy Questions
How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work? 

Dramaturgy is hugely important, from the smallest detail to the bigger questions of structure and the wider importance of the piece. This goes for all work, I believe, with very few exceptions, I believe that all work is stronger for a dramaturgical scrutiny.

What particular traditions and influences would you acknowledge on your work - have any particular artists, or genres inspired you and do you see yourself within their tradition? 

I gather inspiration from all kinds of places. The people that have had the most profound influence in me as an artist are not necessarily in the same field or discipline as me but I may have taken hope from their work. For example- I don't think I would ever write the way that Kurt Vonnegut wrote, I have no desire to make music like Joni Mitchell or sculpt like Anish Kapoor, but knowing that they could express themselves in such incredible ways gives me hope to find ways to express myself in my art form. 

Do you have a particular process of making that you could describe - where it begins, how you develop it, and whether there is any collaboration in the process?
It doesn't always start the same but generally an idea will float about in my head for a while and if it won't leave me alone I'll run it past my wife and that's where it will begin- she is a writer and I trust her ability to tell me if she thinks its a goer. From then on it becomes an equally solitary and collaborative process inasmuch as that I need to go away and work on my own for sometime to shape it into something worthwhile before regularly sharing it with trusted regular collaborators like my wife or the pieces director. This piece has had lots of valuable input and questions thrown at it by Katy before more work and then being scrutinised further by Gareth in the rehearsal room.

What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work? 

For me, the audience is hugely important. Of course they are- without them theatre is merely rehearsal. The beauty of live performance is that you can learn things from an audience it becomes a conversation of sorts and they can help you, if you read them well, to develop and craft the work to help it resonate the way that you hoped it would. Of course every audience member is different and will interpret the work differently so you should you should never try to change your work to please one of them that you feel didn't enjoy it- then you're not being true to the work. The key is to respect them and to trust that they respect you to make the work.

Gary McNair says:

“I’m thrilled to be back at the Traverse performing my brand new show, A Gambler’s Guide to Dying, at this year’s festival. It was a brilliant venue for performing Donald Robertson Is Not A Stand Up Comedian in last year and I was delighted to be welcomed with such appreciative audiences and reviews there. I’ve always loved the Traverse, so to be back for a third time feels like coming home.

I’m also excited to be included in this year’s Made In Scotland Showcase. The panel continually selects an incredible line up and looking at the other artists on board this year, it seems that there is just so much to look forward to once again.”

Orla O’ Loughlin, Traverse Artistic Director comments:

“After the success of Donald Robertson is not a Stand Up Comedian last year, it’s brilliant to have Gary back at The Traverse. Having his show included as part of Made in Scotland is a tribute to the quality of Gary’s joyful performance”

VENUE: TRAVERSE 2

PREVIEW: Thu 6 Aug (9pm) 

DATES & TIMES: 7 August – 30 August (not Mondays) Various times

PREVIEW TICKETS: £13 (£7 concession)

TICKETS: Full Price £18 

Standard Concession £13 

Other Concessions £8

BOX OFFICE: 0131 228 1404 or www.traverse.co.uk

Gary McNair is a writer, performer and director from Glasgow. His specialty is work that directly addresses his audiences, while entertaining and challenging them in equal measures. His previous visits to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe have included;

Crunch (Forest Fringe 2011) a satirical motivational speech about the power of money, which received global headlines for its controversial ending that invited audience members to shred the money in their pockets (“A very smart hour worth something more than money: your time” **** The Guardian).

Born To Run (Traverse 2012) which saw performer Shauna McDonald perform McNair’s humorous and heartfelt 60-minute monologue, about a woman with epilepsy becoming obsessed with running 100s of miles to keep her condition at bay, while running on a treadmill (Received various 5 star reviews and was nominated for the Carol Tambor Award).

Donald Robertson is Not a Stand Up Comedian (Traverse 2014) which saw McNair perform at his “brilliant best” (****Scotsman) to sold out audiences. The show is part play part stand up that saw Gary teach a young boy, Donald, the darker side of comedy, only for it to have darker repercussions for McNair himself.  Winner of the Edinburgh Art Club/Edinburgh Guide Flying Artichoke Award (“A tour de force with a whole lot of heart and a must-see”***** The Stage)

In recent years Gary has created work for National Theatre of Scotland, Oran Mor, The Citizens, The Arches, Trigger, The Traverse, has toured across the UK and had work translated and presented work across the world.

Gareth Nicholls is the Main-stage Director In Residence at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow and co-artistic director of new work company Utter.  His directing credits include Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny (Citizens Theatre), The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot by Oliver Emanuel (Macrobert/Arches), Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas (Tron Theatre), Donald Robertson Is Not A Stand-Up Comedian by Gary McNair (Traverse Theatre). Gareth is also an Associate Artist of Company of Angels while previously he’s been a National Theatre of Scotland Emerging Artist and an Imaginate Artist in Residence.

Lest We Forget, eh?

Jackie Wylie of The Arches discusses the new programme for Behaviour, featuring new works by Gary McNair, Kieran Hurley, Rob Drummond and Nic Green

Although the transition from The Arches Theatre Festival into Behaviour has seen it expand past its original vision of a sudden burst of creativity into a longer season of intriguing performance on the boundaries of theatre, dance and live art, it remains the flagship brand for The Arches' distinctive identity. Now that the National Theatre of Scotland has become involved – showcasing their Auteurs' project – and off-site events are common (Brick Award winner #TORYCORE is visiting the Southside's Glad Cafe), The Arches' status as Glasgow's home of innovative theatre is clearly recognised.

The NTS Auteurs programme takes five emerging performers and supports them to create new work that follows on from their earlier successes, with four of the performers already enjoying strong associations with the venue (Gary McNair, Kieran Hurley and Nic Green are all previous winners of the Platform 18 award, an annual prize that encourages young artists to be more ambitious, while Rob Drummond knocked out his Wrestling there in 2011). 

"They are all also connected to the NTS," says Jackie Wylie, The Arches' artistic director. "When we selected the artists, one of the criteria was this connection: [artists who] have gone through their development programme but were a stage beyond that – beyond Platform 18 or Arches Live!

"These artists need a platform because they work with their own energy and determination," she continues. "There has been a change in the way that artists develop. The auteurs are capable of driving things forward - not necessarily all of the areas all of the time – but in an overlapping combination of areas." 

This independence, however, is not the only thing that they share. "I wonder if there is something about all of them starting with a conceptual spark," adds Wylie. "What is special about all of them is their ability to come up with original, pioneering ideas." These performances form the backbone of Behaviour, simultaneously expressing The Arches' committment to local artists and experimental techniques.

This combination of themes is supported in the two winners of this year's Platform 18 – Amanda Monfrooe and Peter McMaster. They come from very different backgrounds: Monfrooe is, amongst other things, a puppeteer and a prophet of enlightenment through post-modern pessimism, while McMaster is a graduate of The RCS and enjoys tinkering with classic texts – in this case Wuthering Heights – to examine assumptions about masculinty. And while they both grapple with serious topics – Monfrooe's Poke parallels the escalating sexual violence of the early twenty-first century and McMaster prods at the nature of men in feminist times – neither are afraid to entertain.

Looking across Behaviour, Wylie identifies the quality that makes the Arches' seasons distinctive. "A lot of the work is politicised, even if we define political in a broad way.#TORYCORE is Political with a big P, but something like Peggy Shaw is political with a small p. Both of the Platform 18 shows are looking at identity politics, gender in very specific contemporary frameworks."

This mixture, present in all of the Behaviour programme, from Gary McNair's look at standup comedy through to Taylor Mac's political songbook, encapsulates The Arches' attitude to the possibilities of performance.


Behaviour Festival, 3 Apr-11 May, various venues across Glasgow

http://www.thearches.co.uk/events/arts/behaviour-2013

Five Shows Not To Miss From Made in Scotland 2015

A Gambler's Guide To Dying | Gary McNair with Show And Tell
Traverse Theatre
What are the odds of living an extraordinary life? The story of one boy's granddad, who won a fortune betting on the 1966 World Cup and, when diagnosed with cancer, gambled it all on living to see the year 2000. An inter-generational tale of what we live for and what we leave behind. 

Gary McNair returns to the Traverse after last year's award-winning five-star show Donald Robertson Is Not a Stand-Up Comedian.
August 6 – 30 (Not Mondays) Various times, see planner (70 mins) | £18, £13 conc, £8 unemployed, £12 preview, £12 preview concs (6 Aug)

McNair has established himself as Scotland's funniest non-comedian: if the subject matter looks a little darker this time (death, gambling and cancer), his dead-pan humour and charisma will lighten the mood. 
Butterfly | Ramesh Meyyappan
Greenside @ Infirmary Street
A striking adaptation of Madame Butterfly, exploring themes of love, loss and hope. Told without words, this haunting piece uses visually poetic narrative, handcrafted puppets (by Gavin Glover, National Theatre of Scotland’s A Christmas Carol) and a beautiful score (by David Paul Jones) to tell the tale of Butterfly, a kite-maker. This lush, textured, innovative piece of theatre played to sold-out audiences across Scotland, earlier in 2014.
Aug 8 – 29 (not Sundays) 20.45 (60mins) | £12, £10 concs

Meyyappan is a restless creator: he has done aerial swinging, mime and here he goes physical theatre. There's more to this than a simple retread of the opera: opposing ideals of masculinity (neither very pleasant), competing symbolisms and plenty of resonance through the open-ended nature of Meyyappan's movement vocabulary.


The Jennifer Tremblay Trilogy | Stellar Quines
Each play is a story in its own right; together they form a powerful piece of theatre. Set in Quebec they follow a woman’s journey of discovery about her past.
The List: A woman struggles to adjust to an isolated new life and her obsession with lists leads to tragic consequences. Scotsman Fringe First and Herald Angel Award winner 2012
The Carousel: Nothing can stop the carousel. A woman is on an emotional journey into her past. Can she reconcile herself with her discoveries? Scotsman Fringe First Award 2014
The Deliverance: A woman struggles to fulfil her dying mother's last wish. Will her journey end in redemption?
Aug 6-31, Various Dates & Times for each part of the Trilogy, (60mins approx.)
Peak: 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 23, 28, 29 & 30 Aug £14.50, £13 concs
Off peak: 8, 9, 13, 17, 20, 24, 27 and 31 Aug £12.50, £11 concs
Preview: 6 & 7 August £10
£35 peak & £30 off peak if all 3 shows purchased at same time

Words, words, words: theatre stripped back to its basics. 
Swallow | Stef Smith & Traverse Theatre Company
Traverse Theatre
Balanced precariously on the tipping point, three strangers are about to face their demons head on.
They might just be able to save one another if they can only overcome their urge to self-destruct.
Painful yet playful, poignant but uplifting, this world premiere from Olivier Award-winning writer Stef Smith takes a long hard look at the extremes of everyday life. Questions of identity, heartbreak and hope are explored with vivid, poetic intensity. Directed by award-winning Traverse Artistic Director Orla O’Loughlin, acclaimed for previous Festival hits Spoiling and Ciara.
Aug 7 – 30 Various times (70mins) | £20, £15 standard concession, £8 other concession, £14 previews, £8 previews concs (Aug 7 & 8)
BSL Interpreted and Audio Described performance: Aug 22 19:30
Age Rating 14+

I like Stef Smith's writing, and it is good to see it at The Traverse!
The Garden | John and Zinnie Harris
Traverse Theatre
Set at a time when humanity has run out of resources, John and Zinnie Harris’ The Garden tells a dystopian tale of a couple at the end of their tether. Living on the 10th floor of a “high-rise block” they discover hope in the form of a strange tree growing through the floor of their kitchen.
Based on an original short play of the same name by Zinnie Harris, commissioned by the Traverse Theatre in 2009 and winning a Scotsman Fringe First Award, this new operatic version was commissioned by soundfestival and premiered in Aberdeen in 2012.
Aug 18-23, 25 – 30 15:00 and 18:00 (50mins) | £18, £13 standard concession, £8 other concession

Theatre Venue of the Month: The Arches 2011

Perhaps thanks to the credit crunch, Glasgow's performance landscape is shifting. The Arches usually begins its push for Behaviour around this time - the annual jamboree of international experimental work. Yet this year, it has focused on local, emerging artists, leaving May free for the Tron's festival

FEATURE BY MARGARET KIRK.
PUBLISHED IN THE SKINNY  04 APRIL 2011


Strictly speaking, neither Davey Anderson, author of Brick Award winner Thickskin nor Claire Cunningham, now an international touring dancer, are emerging talents. The cast of Gareth Nicols' Platform 18 piece are Gary McNair and Kieran  Hurley, who have impressive previous form. But the two awards – the Brick scoops up two pieces from the Fringe, while Platform 18 is all about the new blood – alongside the announcement of Tom Pritchard as artist in residence adds to the feeling that The Arches are supporting young artists who do more than boast about their celebrity friends.

Gareth Nicols has been working his way up the directing hierarchy for the past few years: a graduate of the RSAMD's contemporary performance degree, Platform 18 acknowledges his rising star by supporting his creation of What Happened Is This, a play that combines storytelling, scripted and devised drama. With musical support from Michael John of Zoey Van Goey, this line up is something of a performance supergroup, although the inspiration for the piece was a little more mundane.

"I was sitting at home, giggling at these coincidence stories in Bella," Nicols laughs. "Everyone seems to have one, or people strive to pull threads together to make a coincidence." From this shared human need to make up stories, and the humour in telling them, Nicols pulled together his supergroup and won the Platform 18 Award.

Glasgow does have a strong dance community, and the appointment of Pritchard as associate artist connects The Arches to Dance House, for whom he runs a community company, and the many improvisers, in dance, criticism and music and film, who have been part of Pritchard's investigations. 

And while he is best known for his radical approach to creating dance, he is clearly no elitist. "Education plays a big part in my work, because it is here that I really gauge how well I can communicate ideas on a physical or intellectual level," he explains, before disavowing the idea that experimental means incomprehensible."Experimental for me translates as someone who is simply questioning what it is they are doing and how they might do it."

The return of Claire Cunningham's ME to Glasgow, after success at the 2009 Fringe and an international tour moves The Arches to the West End: although the University's G12 venue has been quiet for the past year, it serves as a better place for Cunningham's spectacular high wire acrobatics. ME pairs her two semi-autobiographical works, Mobile and Evolution, and showcases Cunningham as both dancer and aerialist.

"Mobile came initially from seeing an exhibition by the sculptor who invented mobiles," she begins. "It was something about the confusing distribution of weight." This inspired her to consider how she incorporates crutches into her work, "get them away from their quite negative associations," and use them to explore balance and suspension in an aesthetic form.

The third dance entry, When We Meet Again, was part of Dance Base's programme during the Fringe, and was described by Shimmy critic Mark Harding as "part ghost train, part date, part fair ground ride, part out of body experience." It refuses the rules of most art forms, and is a disorienting delight for stoner and philosopher alike.

With Clare Duffy bringing Money – The Game Show as another new work, and the version of Thickskin coming on the back of Fringe five stars, the programme is not only full but surveys the best of Scotland's new companies and artists.

Revealing the New (venue of the month)

A Venue without Walls

FEATURE BY GARETH K VILE.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE SKINNY 25 FEBRUARY 2011

When the National Theatre of Scotland was born five years ago, after a protracted conception and labour, it boasted that it was "theatre without walls." In much the same way, this venue of the month is a venue without walls, featuring the Reveal programme, part of the NTS' debate about its identity as Scotland's national theatre.

Reveal is clearly designed to introduce the NTS's audience to the new generation of theatre makers. Gary McNair, last seen bothering global capitalism with Crunch, Robert Softley getting political about the right to self-determination and Molly Taylor loving the transport system are all working for the first time with the company, while a rehearsed reading of Martin Travers' Roman Bridge and a platform performance of Ian Finlay MacLeod's Somersaults give insights into works in progress. 

With both the Traverse and, more surprisingly, the Citizens enlisted to stage the season – with additional help from The Play, A Pie and A Pint team at Òran Mór, Reveal aims to locate the NTS at the experimental edge of theatre and made good its inclusive manifesto.

Given the energy and experimentalism that characterises much new Scottish work, the NTS's audience may be introduced to unfamiliar styles. McNair, although a veteran of The Arches and The Òran Mór, straddles a variety of genres: "I've tried to avoid labelling myself – people have said it is a hybrid of stand up and monologues," he explains. "But I am just making what I am making." And while he avoids easy classification, McNair's skill is to unite radical ideas and an easy-going, audience friendly performance. 

Unsurprisingly, McNair is diving into new territory. "I tend to tackle subjects i don't understand," he laughs. "If I did make shows about things I do understand, I'd make one show, about REM, and then I'd have to get a job." And after heading to the apocalypse and financial meltdown, there was an obvious topic. "I realised as a 25 year old, it's not good to know nothing about politics. That why I went for this."

Across the NTS's programme, there has always been a diversity of subjects and styles. In the past, this has led to criticism from critics who believe that its remit ought to be to preserve the best of Scottish drama. While that is catered for elsewhere in this year's selection, Reveal consciously goes beyond the parochial, as in the teaming of Robert Softley with Pol Heyvaert, the Belgian creator of Aalst, one of the NTS's great successes.

Softley, like McNair, is excited by the opportunity to collaborate with the national company, especially as it allows him to maintain the distinctive identity of his work. "It’s inevitable every time I perform, being disabled, that the audience reads layers into the work that wouldn't be there with a non-disabled performer," he begins. "But I usually focus on other issues.  My previous work has always tended towards the overtly political – I guess at the core of what I want to do is engage with people and then challenge them to change their preconceptions of the world around them."

The seriousness of Softley's approach is also  reflected in McNair's content, yet they share a desire to be more than just agit-prop. "Girl X fits in with my political work," he continues. "Although I hope audiences are also entertained while they’re being challenged – there’re quite a few laughs here too!" And in this mixture, Reveal's intentions are precisely revealed.

Gary McNair and Trevor Griffiths

It’s unsurprising that Gary McNair’s Donald Robertson is not a Comedian lacks the particular edge of Punch or Trevor Griffith’s Comedians. McNair’s liberal credentials were evident in his Count Me In – a gentle plea for a more representative democracy – and his on-stage persona has always juggled amiability and satirical intention. While it might seem a move away from the more explicitly political bent of his earlier work (Crunch had a poke at economics), it fits precisely into his personal, idiosyncratic style. He might be concerned with the wider world, but McNair is cautious to avoid vapid generalisations.

A few months ago, there was much pondering, specifically in The Guardian, about the state of contemporary political theatre. Michael Billington showed his age by bemoaning the lack of “working class drama,” remembering some Golden Age when every other playwright was getting realistic. Lyn Gardner noted that there were young writers – especially in Scotland – who were ready to take on the Big Ideas, including McNair.

There is a sharp contrast, however, between the political vitality of the 1970s, when Griffiths wrote

Comedians and the twenty-first century’s crop of activist authors. Although Griffiths was never as blunt as I’ve described him in the past – he consistently undermined the pomposity of the Marxist revolutionaries and gave their opponents some of the best arguments – there is no question that he saw social change as being a product of left wing dialectics. Donald Robertson does engage with the possibility of change, although there is no necessary link to the dreams of the SWP.

Indeed, the change that Donald Robertson imagines is well within the existing, brutal confines of capitalism. The hero, a young boy at the bottom of the school hierarchy, uses vicious humour to win a place in the feral pack of youths of roam Glasgow. His successful routine, which necessitates him attacking his mentor, doesn’t bring him opportunities beyond a place in a gang. There’s even a subtle suggestion (in his misuse of “Castle Greyskull” as a place of villainy) that he has rejected his intelligence for popularity.

McNair’s genius is to have recognised how contemporary comedy is not the force for liberation that Lenny Bruce or Bill Hicks might have claimed. In Comedians, the tension is between old fashioned, musical hall style comics and the modern, more aggressive acts: Griffiths opposes them and questions the difference between humour at the expense of the weak and comedy that tells “truth to power.” Donald Robertson may have a brief moment when he does the latter – specifically, telling a teacher who has betrayed him that he is a bit of a cunt. But it’s clear that the comedy he adopts is merely another form of bullying.

McNair’s genial monologue does hide a pessimistic vision of both comedy and society. Like Comedians, the central relationship is between a student and teacher and the climax is a performance: both students ultimately resist their teacher, and the audience is not given a clear moral finale. Yet where Comedians ends in an unresolved conversation between the two, Donald Robertson describes the final parting of ways: McNair remains on the bus, while Donald runs free with his pack, lobbing bricks at it.

Comedy in both works has a social function, but Griffiths’ belief in the possibility of grand change (the “revolution” that so many 1970s’ authors could at least imagine) is replaced by McNair’s characters’ compromises within an existing hierarchy. Throughout Comedians, the comedians debate whether success is worth selling out: for Donald, success is a matter of not being at the bottom of the pile.

The limited horizons of McNair’s protagonists are palpable in the scale of their ambitions, and the cultural reference points they share. In Comedians, a final issue becomes the teacher’s visit to Belsen: a variation on the old “no poetry after Auschwitz,” the importance of comedy is questioned in a world where such atrocities can happen. For Griffiths, the correct response to the location of the mass extermination of a religious group is crucial (and it isn’t the erection that the teacher gets). McNair uses the correct knowledge of He-Man’s sanctuary as a symbol of how Donald has sold out his mentor.

The pessimism of Donald Robertson isn’t so much in the inevitable failure of comedy to change anything – Griffiths questions that potential – but in the way it maintains the status quo. McNair’s world is circumscribed – a bus, a school – geographically, morally and socially. His best hope is that the victim of Donald’s routine “deserved it” and Donald’s best bet is to become part of the tyrannical gang, not defeat them. The irony that Donald betrays him is never revealed to McNair, and he becomes the perfect victim: his smart suit and coiffure suggest he is part of a middle-class that Donald could not join anyway, and he receives no consequences from his metaphorical beating. The compassion that led him to help Donald does little to alleviate the divisions that have cursed the student: there is no reconciliation, or even acknowledgement of the huge social gap between man and boy.

In the past, McNair’s gentle person has hidden the edge of serious complaints (Crunch hit at the faith in money) or matched some pleasantly liberal investigations (Count Me In). Donald Robertson is a more cunning performance – certain of the jokes have fridge brilliance, and the perspectives of McNair and Donald are switched in the finale, deconstructing McNair’s confidence and Donald’s apparent innocence. Even his asides, revealing the structures and tricks of comedy, are deconstructed when the truth of persona, story and details are called into question in the final moments. The darkness in which Donald Robertson exists is wrapped in charm and apparent hesitancy and its meaning is a slow reveal, unfurling over hours after the echo of the last laugh has finally faded. 

Gary McNair is not Joking

The comparisons with stand up comedy in Gary McNair’s previous work were always misleading: he did stand up on stage and make the occasional joke, but his seriousness connected him more closely to the spoken word artists. But by taking these comparisons as inspiration for Donald Robertson is not a Stand Up Comedian, McNair has made peace between his intelligence and amiable persona. He does tell a couple of jokes around the middle of his monologue, but the thrust of his story is a sharp deconstruction of both the need to be funny and the state of contemporary savage stand up.

If McNair hasn’t become a shock comedian, his persona has certainly toughened up. His asides to the audience, explaining each comic strategy, operate as sardonic deconstructions of the comedian’s art and soften his more aggressive moments. After warming up with a series of failed jokes, using Paul Claydon’s stark lighting design to give the impression of a montage, McNair eases into his story. He meets a young boy and tutors him in the way of the comic. Through imbibing McNair’s advice, young Donald becomes a success by stabbing his master in the back.

McNair’s vision of comedy is bleak: it becomes a survival strategy in a world of bullies and victims. Donald has the dream of escaping his victimhood through bad jokes, but McNair encourages him to take a more aggressive approach. The two strands of the tale – a meditation on getting laughs and an ironically poetic version of The Karate Kid – mesh elegantly, allowing McNair to expose the viciousness of the stand up, undercut sentimentality and temper the humour to his thoughtful conclusions.

McNair is at his best when he reveals the tactics behind his monologue, or describes a specific episode of Donald’s journey. He avoids representing too much vicious comedy, preferring explanations of how its nastiness performs a social function. The joke is inevitably aimed at someone, and is an attempt to order a hierarchy. Anger, muses McNair, connects people.

Against the increasingly unpleasant roughhousing of comedians like Frankie Boyle, McNair considers the role of the joke in building communities. It’s a technique to create insiders and outsiders, to affirm one group’s superiority. Even the self-deprecation, which McNair has used in past pieces and is a feature of Reginald D Hunter’s skill at disguising his nastiness, is exposed as a trick to gain sympathy.

McNair’s analysis is unsparing – without mentioning particular acts, he attacks the fashion for brutal comedy, assimilating it into his own reflective process and draws an unsentimental picture of school-yard brutality. That he takes time to win over his audience, and adds an epilogue that smartly deconstructs his persona’s confidence adds to both the charm and the bite. 

Gary McNair - an old interview

Gary McNair  emerged from the loose movement that I decided to call the Glasgow Live Art Young Team and has achieved considerable success over the past few years. Not that his work has suddenly gone all Coldplay: he is currently touring a one man show that involves scads of real money getting torn up, live on stage.

However, I found this old interview with him - done when he had just won the Platform 18 Award from The Arches. We did it over Facebook, I seem to remember. So that makes him a theatre maker who uses radical approaches, and me a critic ready to adapt the latest social media to my discipline.

The Apocalypse! Interesting theme for a piece... what made you pick on this as an idea?

I guess it's something that I've always been interested in. I think the idea is something that we all have a relationship to, but the strange thing about it is that obviously, no-one has ever experienced an apocalypse.

It's more that we have an idea of it, whether that's informed by science, religion, Hollywood or whatever. It's unknown. I always take a particular interest in things that I don't understand, and the biggest thing that I don't understand is our time on earth and how that might come to an end. So many books and films fictionalise the subject. What I wanted to do more than to spread fear, like some blockbusters do, is to give a personal response.

Any particular theories about the end times that attract- or repel- you?

It would be pretty ridiculous if we blew ourselves up. Worryingly, that seems quite high in the list of possibilities.

How does this piece fit with Crunch?

I guess, in a way, Crunch was dealing with similar issues, in that it was imagining a world after one of our biggest structures had collapsed - a sort of financial armageddon. After the world has ended, what use will money be? In that sort of society, if I want your shoes, I'll fight you for them.

It is a big big topic- have you expanded your stage show to fit it, or are you remaining solo and intimate?

I did consider reconstructing the battle scene from Apocalypto, but intimacy won out for many reasons. It's very much a personal response to the idea of apocalypse, rather than creating an apocalyptic scene for you to inhabit. I often find that when I go to a performance and people try to convince me that the world has ended, I can't buy into it. I know that I'll walk back outside afterwards and everything will be the same as it was.

What do you think makes people obsess about the end of things?

People work well to a deadline. Sometimes, I think that we need to imagine that the world is hurtling towards some sort of final conclusion just so that we get things done. Plus, I think that we want to imagine that we are the most sophisticated version of ourselves, and as a result, we will be the last beings to inhabit the earth. It's a lot to do with ego.