Bill McLaren-FIGHTING THE ENEMY:
THE FILM
By Firebrand Theatre Company
In celebration of the Hawick rugby legend's centenary, Firebrand joined forces with the Bill McLaren Foundation and with the generosity from crowdfunders were able to produce a filmed version of their hit stage play which was screened at Heart of Hawick in October 2023.
WHITE RABBIT RED RABBIT
By Nassim Soleimanpour
Firebrand in association with Aurora Nova were delighted to bring the 'audacious theatrical experiment' that is White Rabbit Red Rabbit to Duns Play Fest for one night only on. May 4th 2023. Performed by Ellie Zeegen this world famous 'enigmatic, haunting solo show' had no director, no set and no rehearsal.
A JOURNEY WITH
Nan Shepherd - LIVE
by Firebrand Theatre Company
With the support of The British Academy, Firebrand Theatre Company made their debut as Associate Company to Pitlochry Festival Theatre's Winter Words Festival with a performed reading of A Journey with Nan Shepherd - Live on Saturday 11th February 2023, directed by Richard Baron.
THE RACE
TO 1984
by Firebrand Theatre Company
With the support of Live Borders Arts & Creativity, award-winning Firebrand Theatre Company returned to Heart of Hawick on Saturday 12th November 2022 with an imaginative semi-staged showcase of their moving and highly-entertaining new play, The Race to 1984, directed by Richard Baron.
Bill McLaren: FIGHTING THE ENEMY
by Firebrand Theatre Company
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With generous support from Live Borders and the Bill McLaren Foundation, our first live production in two long years went down a storm with audiences at Heart of Hawick and ended with a standing ovation for our superb and highly versatile cast of Crawford Logan, David Rankine and newcomer Dannielle Stevenson, who made an outstanding professional debut.
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Bill McLaren: THE VOICE OF RUGBY
by Rob Robertson in collaboration with Firebrand Theatre Company
Based on an original script by rugby journalist Rob Robertson, Firebrand employed its script development skills, three talented actors and a range of storytelling techniques, including Jamie MacDonald’s superb video projection, to create a gripping, moving and humorous exploration of the man behind the famous rugby commentator’s voice. The showcase production played to standing ovations and six sold-out performances at Heart of Hawick, McLaren’s home town, and celebrated the romantic love story at the heart of an extraordinary life which involved horrific wartime experiences at the battle of Monte Cassino, his personal battle with tuberculosis in his mid-20s and the lifelong passion for his sport and its values which brought him international fame and worldwide popular affection.
The match box
by Frank McGuinness
Award-winning Firebrand in co-production with The Byre Theatre and Heart of Hawick presents the Scottish premiere of a spine-tingling and brilliantly witty new monologue about grief, revenge and the temptations of evil by one of Ireland's greatest dramatists.
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The ties that bond can never be broken and the shocking events that bring Sal to exile on a remote Irish island are as unexpected as they brutal.
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Her compelling story begs only one question; what would you do if pushed to the very edge?
Letter of last resort
by David Greig
Set in the near future, David Greig's brilliant play is a conversation between the new prime minister (in this case a women) and the Head of Arrangements, John, at the end of her first day. It unpacks the arguments around nuclear deterrents - and the surreal position a new prime minister must find themselves in.
Grounded
by George Brant
"My pulse quickens. It is not a fair fight, but it quickens"
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She's a hot-rod F16 fighter pilot. She's pregnant. Her career in the sky is over. Now she sits in an air-conditioned trailer in Las Vegas flying remote-controlled drones over the Middle East. She struggle through surreal twelve-hour shifts far from the battlefield, hunting terrorists by day and being a wife and mother at night. As the pressure mounts, the boundaries begin to blur.
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Thrillingly targeting our perceptions about modern warfare and how we live and fight in an increasingly virtual world, this strikingly topical and internationally acclaimed solo drama stars Janet Coulson as The Pilot and is directed by Richard Baron, with a searing sound design by the award-winning composer Jon Beales.
The Great train race
by Robert Dawson Scott
The incredible but true story of the death-defying London to Aberdeen train race of 1895. Set at a time when the mighty Forth Bridge had recently opened, Robert Dawson Scott's hilarious new play charts the contest between the two great Victorian north-south railway companies, the Caledonian (West Coast) and the North British (East Coast) for the fastest service to the North, in a hugely entertaining, informative and fun-filled salute to the romance of the railways.
The Effect
by Lucy Prebble
Connie is a psychology student. Tristan is a charming drifter. Both have signed up to a clinical trial for a new antidepressant super-drug. Sealed off from the outside world, the attraction between them turns into deeper feelings as their doses get stronger. They've been warned of side effects - can they trust their feelings, or is this just chemical romance?
Outlying islands
by David Greig
It is summer 1939 and two young Cambridge naturalists arrive on a remote Hebridean island to conduct a wildlife survey on behalf of the Government. They are accompanied by Kirk, the island's tenant, and his attractive young niece Ellen. When Kirk inadvertently reveals to the boys the true reason for their mission, they are drawn into a primeval world of emotional discovery, sexual passion, voyeurism and murder. Outlying Islands is an at times comic, touching and hauntingly beautiful Scottish play about loss of innocence.
Blackbird
by David Harrower
Fifteen years ago Ray and Una had an illicit relationship. She was 12, he was 40. They haven't set eyes on ech other since. Now years later she's found him again...
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Neither condoning nor condemning, David Harrower's most celebrated and controversil play won the 2006 Laurence Olivier Award and has been acclaimed as the most powerful and dramtatic two-hander since David Mamet's Oleanna.
White Rose
by Peter Arnott
Peter Arnott's acclaimed play tells the tale of female Russian World War II fighter pilot Lily Litvak, the so-caled 'White Rose of Stalingrad'. White Rose, unseen since its hugely successful debut at the 1985 Edinburgh Festival, is a powerfil trianglular love story about men and women fighting in the air, on the ground and in the bedroom.
One thousand extremely talented women ilots volunteered for the Red Air Force during the Second World War. An impressive thirty Citations of Hero of the Soviet Union went to women pilots, and three regiments of the Air Force were made up entirely of women, some of whom, like Lily, became legendary combat pilots.
Seen from the point of view of Lily and her mechanic Ina, two women in a male-dominated world, White Rose offers an insight into modern warfare and concepts of patriotism that are as exciting, moving and thought-provoking theatrical experience.
iron
by Rona Munro
Iron told the story of Fay, a woman in prison for the murder of her husband, who receives a visit from her daughter, Josie, whom she hasn't seen for 15 years. This shatteringly powerful play unravels the lives of both women with scalpel-like precision as Josie struggles to understand the stranger before her and above all to find out what really happened on the night her father was killed.
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Being norwegian
by David Greig
Poignant in its awkwardness and romantic in its seeming lack of grace, the brief time we spend in the company of Lisa and Sean in David Greig’s Being Norwegian reveals so much about these two apparent outsiders, tentatively reaching out to make a connection, we cannot help but fall in love with them a little ourselves.
Originally performed by Firebrand in March 2011 to sell-out audiences at The Wynd Theatre, David Greig’s poignant and thought-provoking one-act play Being Norwegian was revived at the Heart of Hawick on 18 and 19 February 2012 to launch a new ‘Play, A Pie and A Pint’ venture there in association with Oran Mor.
Talking heads
by Alan Bennett
Firebrand's inaugural production, in November 2010, brought Melrose audiences up close and personal with two of Alan Bennett's most intriguing characters, revealing the complexities of human nature in two of his darkly humorous and much celebrated Talking Heads monologues.
In Her Big Chance, Lesley, an actress who has just completed a video (“targeted chiefly at West Germany”) in which she plays Travis, a career girl who enjoys life, speaks candidly of her experiences, unwittingly revealing her naivety and allowing us to see that all is not perhaps as she imagines. Meanwhile, in A Chip In The Sugar, Graham, a middle-aged batchelor who lives with his mother, reveals his own troubled situation and fragile mental health when he finds his life turned upside down by his mother's burgeoning relationship with an old flame.
