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Traverse Theatre

Coordinates: 55°56′51.43″N 3°12′17.25″W / 55.9476194°N 3.2047917°W / 55.9476194; -3.2047917
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Traverse Theatre
Traverse Theatre
Traverse Theatre
Map
Address10 Cambridge Street
Edinburgh
Scotland
Coordinates55°56′51.43″N 3°12′17.25″W / 55.9476194°N 3.2047917°W / 55.9476194; -3.2047917
Capacity256 & 100 (2 stages)
Opened1963
Website
www.traverse.co.uk

The Traverse Theatre is a theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded in 1963 by John Calder, Jim Haynes and Richard Demarco seeking to extend the spirit of the Festival throughout the year.[citation needed]

The Traverse Theatre commissions and develops new plays or adaptations from contemporary playwrights.[citation needed] It also presents a large number of productions from visiting companies from across the UK.[citation needed] These include new plays, adaptations, dance, physical theatre, puppetry and contemporary music.[1]

The Traverse is a pivotal venue in Edinburgh, particularly during the Edinburgh Festivals in August.[citation needed] It is also the home of the Manipulate Visual Theatre Festival and the Imaginate Festival.[citation needed]

Artistic directors

History

The Traverse Theatre began as a theatre club in 15 James Court, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh, a former doss-house and brothel also known as Kelly's Paradise and Hell's Kitchen.[citation needed] It was "a long, low-ceilinged first-floor room barely 15ft wide by 8ft high"[2] with 60 seats salvaged from the Palace Cinema placed in two blocks on either side of the stage. The theatre is named because Terry Lane mistakenly believed that the staging arrangement is called 'traverse'; he later realised that it is 'transverse' but it was already too well known to change it.[citation needed] In its first year of operation, a Theatre Conference was organised by director Jim Haynes, John Calder and Kenneth Tynan and including a Happening involving Allan Kaprow among others.[citation needed] The first performance was on 2 January 1963.[3]

Following a surveyor's report in March 1969 which stated that the internal floors of James Court were unsafe, the Traverse moved to a former sailmakers's loft at 112 West Bow in the east end of the Grassmarket.[citation needed] This larger space had a 100-seat theatre with flexible seating configurations.[citation needed] The first performance in this venue was on 24 August 1969.[citation needed] In its early days the theatre included exhibition space for the visual arts, until 1966 when the administrators for that space – including Richard Demarco – moved away to establish what became the Richard Demarco Gallery.[2]

Current Traverse Theatre building

Cambridge Street, with the Usher Hall on the right

In 1992, the Traverse moved to its current location, 10 Cambridge Street.[citation needed] A £3.3 million purpose-built two theatre space with bar café created as part of Saltire Court development on Castle Terrace.[citation needed] The theatre's first performance at this location was on 3 July 1992.[citation needed]

Traverse 1 is the larger space with flexible seating that can be moved to create many different configurations (e.g. transverse, end on, in the round, etc.).[citation needed] The most common configuration is 'end on' and has 216 seats.[citation needed] Traverse 2 is the smaller studio space.[citation needed] New flexible seating was installed in September 2005 to allow for different staging configurations and the average capacity is approximately 100 seats.[citation needed]

The Traverse and the Edinburgh Festivals

Founded in 1963 by John Calder, Jim Haynes and Richard Demarco, the mission was to continue the spirit of the Edinburgh Festivals all year round.[citation needed]

During the Festivals in August, the Traverse continues to present cutting edge new writing, as well as new work of all kinds to an international audience. The Traverse is occasionally referred to as 'The Fringe venue that got away', reflecting its current status as a permanent and integral part of the Edinburgh arts scene throughout the year.

Today August remains the busiest time for the Traverse. During the 2014 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Traverse played host to 19 shows. In a first for Scottish theatre, a series of specially commissioned rehearsed readings by Enda Walsh, Linda McLean, David Eldridge, Simon Stephens and Marina Carr were broadcast live on 23 August 2010 to cinemas across the UK. One third of 2010 Scotsman Fringe First Award winners were shows performed at the Traverse.

The Guardian theatre critic Lyn Gardner has described the Traverse's programme as, "The backbone to the Fringe programme. What you see there will often set the tone and tenor of the rest of the Fringe."

Notable associations

From its beginning in 1963, the Traverse Theatre has launched the careers of many of Scotland's best-known writers including John Byrne, Gregory Burke, David Greig, David Harrower and Liz Lochhead.

During the 1960s Richard Wilson was a regular performer. Throughout the 1970s the Traverse Theatre became a mecca for actors, including Timothy Dalton, Billy Connolly, Robbie Coltrane, Simon Callow, Bill Paterson and Steven Berkoff. In 1978 David Hayman famously directed John Byrne's Slab Boys which featured Robbie Coltrane.

Tilda Swinton and Forbes Masson memorably performed during the 1980s and Steve Unwin directed Alan Cumming in a 1988 production of The Conquest of the South Pole. Ashley Jensen and Bill Nighy began their acting careers at the Traverse.

Many of the theatre's sponsored seats have personalised plaques, including Robbie Coltrane's "This is a no farting zone" and Tom Conti's "In memory of my longest dry".

Controversies

  • At the second Traverse performance, on 3 January 1963, lead actress Colette O'Neil was accidentally stabbed on stage. The knife, which was real, had caught in the folds of her costume and had gone into her side. The actress went on with the rest of the performance and was seen to at the end by a doctor who had been in the audience and later taken to hospital. John Martin (co-founder of the Traverse and an early chairman of the board) says that the real knife was used because the space was so small and the audience sat so close to the stage a fake knife would have been detected. Richard Demarco says it was because they had no money and could not afford a paper one.
  • Throughout 1965 the Traverse Theatre Club was threatened with police raids due to open homosexual activity in a time when it was illegal.
  • At the 1967 Edinburgh Festival, twenty-two Traverse Theatre shows were performed; including Rochelle Owens' Futz! which the Daily Express described as "Filth on the Fringe", and Alfred Jarry's Ubu in Chains which featured Ma and Pa Ubu as 6-foot tall sexual organs.
  • At a meeting in 1971 Artistic Director Michael Rudman persuaded the Edinburgh Corporation to increase the Traverse grant but refused to give any assurances on the 'decency' of future productions.[4]

See also

References

  1. ^ "About Scotland's new writing theatre". Traverse Theatre Edinburgh. 2012. Retrieved 16 May 2012.
  2. ^ a b Dean Gallery (2008) Focus on Demarco. Edinburgh: Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
  3. ^ Haynes, Jim (2010). "Jim Haynes Web site". jim-haynes.com. Retrieved 16 May 2012.
  4. ^ McMillan, Joyce (1988). The Traverse Theatre Story 1963–1988. Methuen ISBN 0-413-19250-4

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