In this episode of Live and Now, Steve talks with Robert Softley Gale about his solo show If These Spasms Could Speak, making My Left / Right Foot – The Musical for National Theatre of Scotland – and the pragmatics of taking ‘experimental’ work to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Robert’s prolific career calls attention to the specific circumstances in which live art and new performance becomes possible – as well as the potential for such work to cross over into mainstream spaces in ways that challenge any neat distinction between ‘fringe’ and not. In framing the chat, Steve also offers a pocket history of The Arches (a major Glasgow performance and club venue forced to close in 2015) as a space straddling those worlds – and whose absence raises persistent questions about the conditions of possibility for experimental practices and creative risk in Scotland.

Contexts and documents:

Birds of Paradise Theatre Company
Documentation of If These Spasms Could Speak, performed at the Going Solo International Theatre Festival, Mumbai, in 2015.
A Conversation With Robert Softley Gale – Disability Arts Online
My Left / Right Foot – The Musical for National Theatre Scotland
DISCOURSE OR INTERCOURSE / TALKING & F*CKING (2017) at Arika, Episode 9: Other Worlds Already Exist
Kirstin Innes and David Bratchpiece’s Brickwork: A Biography of The Arches (2021)
‘The Right To Fail: Remembering Glasgow Venue The Arches’ – The Quietus
Take Me Somewhere, the international biennial festival and year-round sector support organisation that exists to position Scotland as the place to create and see radical performance, created to build on the legacy of The Arches

Live and Now: Robert Softley Gale