The Playwrights Database
HARRY GILES
Nationality: Scottish
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Harry Giles is from Orkney, Scotland, and is a poet, performer and general doer of things. He has lived on four islands, each larger than the last. He trained in Theatre Directing (MA with Merit, East 15 Acting School, 2010) and Sustainable Development (MA 1st Class, University of St Andrews, 2009) and his work generally happens in the crunchy places where performance and politics get muddled up. As a performer, Harry has been featured in the SPILL National Platform, and programmed by festivals and venues including the Ovalhouse, Forest Fringe and Sprint. His performance lecture This is not a riot toured to Italy in 2012, and his one-to-one show What We Owe toured the European Imagine 2020 venues in 2013. What We Owe was listed in the Guardian's "Best of the Edinburgh Fringe" round-up in the "But is it art section". As a poet, Harry has toured North America, given feature performances at venues from the Bowery Poetry Club to the Soho Theatre; hosted events at festivals from StAnza to Edinburgh's Hogmanay, won multiple slams including the UK Student Slam (2008), the BBC Scotland Slam (2009), the Glasgow Slam (2010); and been published in journals including Magma, Gutter, PANK and New Writing Scotland. His pamphlets Visa Wedding (2012) andOam were published by Stewed Rhubarb. Sabotage Reviews said of Visa Wedding that it "seems to veer between an intellectual, formal severity and a desire to celebrate, a naughtiness that charms", and also that it "feels a bit as if he's lashed himself to the mast of anarchism". He won the IdeasTap National Poetry Competition in 2012, and in 2014 was on the shortlist of 6 for the UK's biggest poetry prize, the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Harry has developed and delivered workshops for organisations including Keats House, People & Planet, and the Edinburgh International Science Festival. He's designed participatory games for the Scottish Book Trust and Hatch Nottingham. He was artist-in-residence for Govanhill Baths in 2013, and with the Crichton Carbon Centre for Nil By Mouth in 2013-14. In Edinburgh, Harry founded Inky Fingers, a nationally-funded spoken word events organisation, co-directs the quarterly performance art platform ANATOMY at Summerhall, and is part of the collective behind the Forest Cafe, Edinburgh's open access arts space. Sometimes other things happen. He occasionally writes interactive fiction and sometimes appears as a rebel clown. He tweets too much. He gets enthusiastic about half the world and furious about the other half. His emails have too many exclamation marks in.
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below is a list of Harry Giles's plays - click on a Play Title for more information
Class Act Everything I Bought and How it Made Me Feel I Want To Blow Up The Palace Of Holyroodhouse What We OweClass Act
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1st Produced:
Old Shop (The) - Glasgow
2013
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Top of PageEverything I Bought and How it Made Me Feel
Synopsis:
Harry's got a problem. Maybe you do too. He keeps buying things to feel better, but they just make him more miserable. So he started keeping a diary... For a full year, Harry logged every transaction he made at everythingibought.tumblr.com. In painstaking detail, he wrote about how each purchase made him feel - his hopes, dreams, fears, andutter failure to come to a liveable compromise with consumerism. Now he's sharing what he's learned in a performance lecture that dissects shopping until it all falls apart. Framed as a presentation of piecharts and bell curves and statistics about consumption, it's really about being miserable, being afraid, and trying to find a way out. Everything I Bought And How It Made Me Feel is now a new stage show, asking: Why do we buy what we do? Is there any way to do it better? And how does consumerism really make us feel?
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1st Produced:
New Theatre Institute of Latvia
Sep 2014
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Top of PageI Want To Blow Up The Palace Of Holyroodhouse
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Harry wants to blow up the Palace of Holyroodhouse because huge royal estates make him furious and he has to cycle past this one daily. It's probably not right to, and he doesn't want to go to prison anyway, so he's building a scale model and blowing that up instead. He's inviting you to build and destroy models of the buildings and institutions you despise, and to join the explosive exploration of our hurt, our rage, and our struggle to figure out what to do about it. This is a performance about futility and urban planning, the limitations of art and activism, and discovering what the state can do to you. All participation will be monitored for monitoring purposes.
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1st Produced:
Police Station, Ipswich
30 Oct 2014
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Spill Festival
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Top of PageWhat We Owe
Synopsis:
What We Owe is a highly unqualified debt counselling service. In a one-on-one session, Harry will take you through a discussion of what you owe - not just financially, but emotionally, socially and ecologically. Together, you'll create a personalised Debt Action Plan which will leave you happier - or, at least, with a colour-coded spreadsheet. In an economy driven by huge financial debts, What We Owe is a tragicomic glance at what we mean by debt, and how we struggle to even begin to deal with it.
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Arches Live!
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piece 15 min
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