2022
January: Working with mezzo soprano Andrea Baker and composer Howard Moody Yard Heads are developing a new performance project inspired by the work of late American composer Serge Hovey.
Yard Heads are working to develop a new digital product with Top Level Studio Leith and the Leith For Ever team supported by Creative Informatics after successfully participating in their Challenge Round Five.
March/ April: Working for the Lyceum’s inaugural Wonder Festival, a festival of work-in-progress as a producer. The event featured workshops and talks at the Lyceum as well as presentations of R&D performances from members of the L20 artists development programme.
May-September: Working for the Lyceum to produce four shows presented as part of their Fringe programme 2022: Tim Crouch: Truth’s A Dog Must to Kennel; Mara Menzies’ Blood and Gold; The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart and, in a co-production with Edinburgh International Book Festival, This is Memorial Device.
September: The Tiger Lillies remounting of The Last Days of Mankind at Wiltons Music Hall.
2021
Oct-Nov: Alexandra joined the Little Amal team as local producer for Good Chance Theatre for two events during COP26, one staged show in George Square involving child and community performers from Glasgow, rehearsed and choreographed by Robbie Graham and Natali McCleary, the other an encounter with grass roots community groups at The Bowling Green in Pollokshields.
August: Alexandra produced the Edinburgh International Book Festival – Lyceum collaboration Playing with Books which featured the outcomes of three R&D processes, script in hand, Sea State by Tabitha Lasley, directed by Pamela Carter, The Long Drop by Denise Mina, directed by Dominic Hill and The Yellow Door by Kathleen Jamie, on her first appearance as the new Makar, directed by David Greig.
May-August: Contacted by global food systems NGO Food Tank we agreed to become the local producer for an innovative interactive musical dance show <<WeCameToDance>> directed by Leith-based dance studio director Ashley Jack from House of Jack for Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2021.
March-Sept: We participated in City of Edinburgh Archive’s ReDrawing Edinburgh initiative which met regularly to shape a city-wide response to the Edinburgh City Boundaries Extension Act centenary. The emerging project was a series of online video presentations made by local historians and broadcast via the library pages followed by a unique creative project to make a new film Cinescapes: Redrawing Edinburgh using archive footage researched by director filmmaker Amanda Rogers of Cinetopia, featuring the changing nature of the City, with an original script by Alistair Rutherford. We collaborated in the fundraising and publicity for the project as well as organising a public screening event in Leith on September 19th.
Jan-Feb: We worked on a film for one of the songs of the Band of Holy Joy for their Notes from a Gallery series of livestream sessions presenting a mix of performance, film, art and music. Our commission was to respond to This is the Festival Scene, a comment on consumerism and waste, the film can be viewed online at Band of Holy Joy’s YouTube channel https://youtu.be/u3GHEeXDDlk
2020
December: Alexandra heard that her submission to join the Lyceum’s L20 Artist Development programme was successful, a one-year bursary-supported programme of engagement with professional teams and peers in creative and producing aspects of theatre in Edinburgh.
November: Alexandra produced the US Election Cabaret, a one-off livestream event, for the Royal Lyceum Edinburgh on the evening of the US Election. This was the Lyceum’s first ever livestream live performance event ann experimented with remotely controlled cameras to ensure social-distancing and the innovative ticketing/ streaming platform Ticketco, which tech-savvy audiences can use as an app on their usual service.
June-November: Fundraising and development of the creative community project for Leith’s amalgamation into the city of Edinburgh progressed with National Lottery Awards for All allowing the recruitment of three part-time co-producers.
In November on the centenary date we launched Leith For Ever a platform for exhibition of 100 Days of Leith, a concept suggested by local creative Duncan Bremner, supported by the Leith Trust Culture and Heritage Group, in which 100 ‘things’ about Leith, celebrating People, Places and Events over 100 days.
May: Pivoting seems to be the word of the moment. As our plans to bring Ryan Cunningham to Edinburgh clearly could not go ahead we pivoted towards the development of a creative community project in the context of the amalgamation of the burgh of Leith into the city of Edinburgh – a piece of civic history that still stings some Leithers’ memories. We joined Leith Civic Trust as members in order to manage funding applications and meetings in support of the project.
April: Together we completed the final part of the certificated NFTS course Producing Your First Feature led by film producer Carole Sheridan, providing a useful foundation for understanding the roles, finance structuring and processes involved in feature film production. Fascinating to learn about the way that Video On Demand, subscription Video On Demand models are disrupting the sector’s financing, revenue and rights norms.
March: Locked down as everyone was for the first wave of the covid pandemic in Scotland.
Feb: Working with artist Ryan Cunningham in Toronto, Canada with British Council Momentum programme. We outlined plans for a June 2020 exchange in which Ryan would present work-in-progress on his project featuring Pegahmagabow, a Canadian First Nations soldier, politician and activist, who fought in World War I and on return to Canada campaigned for the rights of First Nations people.
We were awarded support from Culture Service Project Fund (Promoting Access) in partnership with The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo 19/20 in order to develop our Leith project in the context of the amalgamation of Leith into Edinburgh 100 years ago.
Jan: We met with William Haddow, local author, who wrote the novel ‘Leithers‘ tracing a Leith family through the centuries and optioned the material for adaptation.
We secured the use of facilities at Leith’s Ex-servicemens’ Club on a weekly basis for rehearsal and meeting space for project development.
2019
Feb-April: Working with Pearlfisher, Philip Howard and Caitlin Skinner’s company on early stages of funding and planning for a touring project.
Feb-October: Programming WOW What Now? Perth 2019 with Horsecross Arts, taking place on Saturday 5th October. A day of action and conversation about gender equality, building on the work of Women of the World, WOW Foundation – founder Jude Kelly OBE.
April- August: Working with Lauren Booth’s Fringe show Accidentally Muslim as associate producers for the world premiere of her self-produced autobiographical show charting her life and the experiences that led her to follow Islam.
June-October: Working with Lubna Kerr, Scottish Pakistani comedian and actor, producing her work-in-progress project Tickbox, funded by Creative Scotland’s Create Inclusion Fund
June-December: Working on Leith Theatre-Yard Heads workshop and script development project, collaborating with Citizen Curator to investigate the potential for North Edinburgh Performing Arts Informal Network and the sort of work that could emerge from it.
March-ongoing: Working with musician Joseph Malik and his new ensemble ‘Out of the Ordinary’ filming and recording their progress, including live performances, working with film-maker Glenda Rome who filmed this performance of the singe Take a Left at the Voodoo Rooms, directed by John Paul McGroarty.
2018
Produced and directed major European Cultural Co-operation project production of The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Kraus with co-director Yuri Birte Anderson, a full-scale production featuring the Tiger Lillies and 27 performers from seven European countries at Leith Theatre, on the centenary of the Armistice of World War One.
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