What would the keepers of the Play, Pie and a Pint flame look for – ideally - when recruiting a new artistic director? Here’s a guess; someone who has working knowledge of running a small theatre, a person with a history of playwriting and performance - and an acute awareness of how theatre has to be inventive, edgy, funny, and bold.
Oh, and that person has to have the imagination and energy to stage 30 plays a season.
Brian Logan, it seems, ticks all the boxes. Not only has he run Camden People’s Theatre successfully for 13 years, but he also brings an added work-life experience. In parallel with a career in theatre he’s also a journalist, working as a theatre and comedy writer, and was a former assistant theatre editor of Time Out London.
Logan rewinds on how the career duality came about. Growing up in Newport-on-Tay, in secondary school he became involved in theatre and followed this up with summers spent at Scottish Youth Theatre in Glasgow. “I flirted with the idea of drama college at one point but, and I don’t want to misrepresent my mum and dad here, but I think they strongly implied that may not be the best idea,” he says, grinning.
Logan studied English and Modern History at Queen Mary College in London (duality emerging again in not limiting to just one subject). “My lecturer at university, Professor Peter Hennessy had worked in newspapers, and he would say to me ‘You must write!’ And he opened a few doors in journalism for me.” Which is how he found his spiritual home on the arts desk, writing about theatre and comedy.
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Meantime, Logan set up a touring theatre company which ran for 17 years, taking shows to the likes of Edinburgh, writing his own plays. In 2011, he became artistic director of Camden People’s Theatre. “I got the job initially with my partner Jenny Paton (partner, as in the mother of his children) who at the time was a theatre producer.”
He once said of the time: “We were going to make this flyblown corner of Hampstead Road a hothouse of radical theatre! But first we had to unblock the loos.” And cope with traffic noise, and water from the ceiling plinking into a bucket - and sometimes rampant public disinterest.
But Logan persevered, won the community over and the theatre’s reputation went from strength to strength. Although the professional partnership ended after two and a half years. He laughs. “I thought it was all working out really well but after two and a half years, Jenny revealed she did not enjoy working with her life partner.”
Brian Logan says he felt a growing call to return home. “I’ve been living in London for most of my professional life and for some time I’ve been pining for Scottish cultural life.” He laughs. “In London I was writing plays, but most of them were in Scots. And I can’t think of a better way to contribute than become part of the theatre world in Scotland.”
What impresses immediately about the new front man is his realisation that so much of the job is medical; he has to be able to take the temperature of his audience each and every week and treat them with the prescription of comedy-drama-musical comedy as required. He has to delve deeply down into the remit, the responsibility for generating work for a range of skills, for developing young talent.
However, the new artistic director at Oran Mor admits that some people have raised eyebrows at his parallel working life. “In some ways I’ve had a weird new career that makes no sense,” he says grinning. “And some may say that given I have these two roles I’m not fully committed. But I find the jobs to be mutually reinforcing. I was a theatre writer for years before I specialised in comedy. Then I got the chance to interview the best theatre writers in the world, to pick their brains about how they do it. And I’m sure so much of this (experience) has fed into my theatre making and producing career.”
He adds: “To me, they are all different ways of making a living in theatre, of loving performance and being fascinated by how it all works.” Logan smiles. “It’s all about different ways of story construction and narrative, and I get a massive buzz out of both of them.”
Play, Pie and Pint are set to celebrate its 20th anniversary. To mark the occasion Elaine C. Smith will host a fundraising gala on October 13 at Òran Mór, ‘with an evening of reflection, laughter and great food.’ Tickets on sale now.
The new season of A Play, A Pie and A Pint runs from September 2-7 with Greg Hemphill’s Poker Alice, featuring Anne Grace.
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The Fallen Angels of the Moine by George Gunn was written partly in response to the Sutherland Spaceport, the rocket launch site in the highlands, asking how the land and its inhabitants respond to such developments. Dogstar Theatre, on tour, until September 7.
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