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Tom McGrath (23 October 1940 – 29 April 2009 [1] ) was a Scottish playwright and jazz pianist.
McGrath was born in Rutherglen, Glasgow. [2] During the mid 1960s he was associated with the emerging UK underground culture, participating in Alexander Trocchi's Project Sigma, [3] working as features editor of Peace News, and becoming founding editor of the International Times. During the early 1970s he worked with Billy Connolly on The Great Northern Welly-Boot Show. From 1974-77 he was director of the Third Eye Centre (named after the influence of Sri Chinmoy), an arts centre on Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow.
During this time, he wrote the popular play Laurel and Hardy . [2] In 1977 he worked with Jimmy Boyle (then recently released from the Special Unit at Barlinnie jail) on the play The Hardman. [2] McGrath's autobiographical 1979 play The Innocent relates his drug use and addiction during the 1960s. His play Animal, an excursion into the anthropoid substructure of society, featured in the programme of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1980 and was staged again by the Scottish Theatre Company in 1981. [4]
In 1986 he wrote the script for a short film commissioned by COSLA and produced by Glasgow Film and Video Workshop. The film was written as a comedy-drama and toured Scotland on a bus after being shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival.
The Scottish Renaissance was a mainly literary movement of the early to mid-20th century that can be seen as the Scottish version of modernism. It is sometimes referred to as the Scottish literary renaissance, although its influence went beyond literature into music, visual arts, and politics. The writers and artists of the Scottish Renaissance displayed a profound interest in both modern philosophy and technology, as well as incorporating folk influences, and a strong concern for the fate of Scotland's declining languages.
John Peter McGrath was a British playwright and theatre theorist who took up the cause of Socialism in his plays.
James Bridie was the pseudonym of a Scottish playwright, screenwriter and physician whose real name was Osborne Henry Mavor. He took his pen-name from his paternal grandfather's first name and his grandmother's maiden name.
Laurance Rudic is a British theatre artist best known for his long association as a leading member of the Glasgow Citizens Theatre company - 1972-1996.
David Anderson is a Scottish actor, playwright and jazz musician based in Glasgow.
Blythe Duff is a Scottish actress best known for her role as Jackie Reid in the ITV television series drama, Taggart.
Robert McLellan OBE (1907–1985) was a Scottish Renaissance dramatist, writer and poet and a leading figure in the twentieth century movement to recover Scotland’s distinctive theatrical traditions. He found popular success with plays and stories written in his native Scots tongue and is regarded, alongside William Lorimer, as one of the most important modern exponents of fine prose in the language.
Elizabeth Margaret Ross MacLennan was a Scottish actress, writer and radical popular theatre practitioner.
Robert Urquhart was a Scottish character actor who worked on the stage, for British television, and in film. His breakthrough role was Paul Krempe in The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957, along with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
Steven McNicoll is a Scottish actor, director, playwright and television presenter.
The Scottish Theatre Company was started in 1980 under the direction of Dundee-born actor Ewan Hooper who had revived the Greenwich Theatre, London in 1969, but for most of its 8 years it was directed by his successor Tom Fleming. From its production base in Glasgow, where its home theatre was the Theatre Royal, it set out its policy of presenting Scottish and international classic drama, and commissioned new plays of Scottish drama. It was launched with a performance of Let Wives Tak Tent, Robert Kemp's translation into Scots of Molière's L'Ecole des Femmes, at the McRobert Centre at the University of Stirling on 16 March 1981. It toured nationally and appeared at the Edinburgh International Festival. The company represented British Theatre at the International Theatre Biennale in Warsaw in 1986 with Sir David Lyndsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaites.
Theatre in Scotland refers to the history of the performing arts in Scotland, or those written, acted and produced by Scots. Scottish theatre generally falls into the Western theatre tradition, although many performances and plays have investigated other cultural areas. The main influences are from North America, England, Ireland and from Continental Europe. Scotland's theatrical arts were generally linked to the broader traditions of Scottish and English-language literature and to British and Irish theatre, American literature and theatrical artists. As a result of mass migration, both to and from Scotland, in the modern period, Scottish literature has been introduced to a global audience, and has also created an increasingly multicultural Scottish theatre.
Thomas Welsh Watson was a Scottish-born stage, television and film actor.
Molly Sinclair Urquhart was a Scottish actress.
Ronald Eaglesham Porter, known professionally as Ron Donachie, is a Scottish actor. He is known for starring as DI John Rebus in the BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of the Ian Rankin "Rebus" detective novels and for his supporting roles in films The Jungle Book (1994), Titanic and television series Doctor Who and Game of Thrones.
Literature in modern Scotland is literature written in Scotland, or by Scottish writers, since the beginning of the twentieth century. It includes literature written in English, Scottish Gaelic and Scots in forms including poetry, novels, drama and the short story.
Scott James Kyle, is a Scottish actor, best known for his roles as Ross in Outlander, Clancy in The Angels' Share, and Corporal Stu Pearson in the film Kajaki: The True Story. Kyle received the 2010 Stage Awards Best Actor Award for his role in the play Singin' I'm No A Billy He's A Tim.
Graham Eatough is an English theatre director and playwright, based in Scotland. He was a founding member of theatre company Suspect Culture.
Wildcat Stage Productions was an influential left-wing theatre and music production company based in Glasgow. Founded in 1978 as a spin-off from the 7:84 Company, it formed a key part of the Scottish touring theatre network for the next 20 years, creating more than 80 shows and giving many thousands of performances across Scotland, the UK and internationally. The company was named after the term for unofficial industrial action, excluding the word “theatre” from its name to avoid middle-class or bourgeois associations.
Tom Buchan (1931–1995) Scottish poet, novelist and playwright/dramatist.