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Sandy Thomson

SANDY THOMSON

  
Nationality:    Scottish
email:    n/a     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    n/a

Sandy Thomson grew up on the North East Coast of Scotland and trained at RADA in London. She has written scripts for groups as diverse as teenagers in the community outreach programmes of Aberdeenshire to the National Theatre of Scotland. She is a playwright and dramaturge. She is also Artistic Director of Poorboy Theatre for whom she regularly writes new stage and audio works. She was a Playwright Studio Award winner in 2012 and the resulting text Damned Rebel Bitches goes into development with support from Creative Scotland and Mull Theatre in summer 2014. Her work includes the theatrical audio adventure Blood and Roses. The play was part of both the IETM and the Made in Scotland national showcases and told the epic, everyday and otherworldly stories of two families from Russia and Scotland during the run up to a contentious wedding. It paid a heartfelt and wry tribute to Glasgow's music scene in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Commissioned by the National Theatre of Scotland for the inaugural season, she wrote Falling- a promenade adventure that took its audience by foot, train and van across the centre of Glasgow in the company of Lucifer as he is chased by his brothers the archangels. Of her works for children she is proudest of The Big Blue Box because half way through the writing of the piece she visited Denmark, understood every play she saw in a foriegn language, questioned the need for words and on her return to Scotland threw out her existing script and rewrote the entire thing without speech of any kind. She may still be the only Scottish playwright to have written a script for kazoos and squeaky hammers. Her current work Pirates and Mermaids was co-written with Poorboy Associate Jeremiah Reynolds and is a transatlantic love story told by voice, music and iPhone set between Brooklyn, New York and Auchmithie, Scotland. It has been staged in the USA, nominated for a Stage Award (Best Solo Performer) at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2013 and is touring rural Scotland and the USA in 2014. As a dramaturge she works with both new and classic works. Her raucous and cheeky re-edit of The Bad Quarto of Hamlet - The Players' Hamlet - played at the Tron in 2012 and resulted in performances in Toronto, Canada working with classical dramaturge Dr Toby Malone on a new version of the play.

Research:    http://www.playwrightsstudio.co.uk/playwrights/sandy-thomson.aspx

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below is a list of Sandy Thomson's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

         Bad Quarto of Hamlet, The - The Players' Hamlet         Big Blue Box         Blood And Roses         Bridgebuilders         Damned Rebel Bitches         Falling         Pirates and Mermaids: A Fairytale for Adults         Spanglebaby

Bad Quarto of Hamlet, The - The Players' Hamlet

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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
re-edit

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
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Big Blue Box

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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
TYA

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Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
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Blood And Roses

Synopsis:
Battle lines are drawn across 400 years, from Glasgow to Russia, as two families prepare to become one. This audio play leads audiences through the public streets and hidden spaces of Glasgow, as Poorboy return to the city bringing their world of rituals, fairytale and the dark corners of family alive with lies, music, soundscape, smells, and their imaginative curation of visual art, photography and film. Critically acclaimed Scottish company, Poorboy return to Glasgow with their latest site-specific sensory adventure. Travelling between sites and installations around the city centre, with an mp3 player as your guide, Blood & Roses invites you to take a non-traditional look at the traditional themes of ritual, loyalty and ideas of home. Experience first-hand the universal, intergenerational ritual of marriage and the ways in which it is celebrated through smells and textures, soundscape and music, photos and short films. Poorboy have a prestigious track record of working in found spaces and of ambitiously appropriating the vistas and visuals of everyday life into their exhilarating and involving stories. their Dramatic re-imaginings have been critically acclaimed and are underpinned by the companys bold explorations of cross disciplinary collaborative working.

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1st Produced:

Organisations:
Poorboy Theatre Company

1st Published:
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Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
site specific

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
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Bridgebuilders

Synopsis:
site specific fragmented collage of scenes on a theme of the sea.

Notes:
by Sandy Thomson And Anna Stewart

1st Produced:
Dundee, City Quay     2005

Organisations:
Poorboy

1st Published:
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Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Piece

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  2            Other:  doubling

Further Reference:

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Damned Rebel Bitches

Synopsis:
The one thing about getting old is that everyone who can tell you off has died. Featuring an international cast from Scotland, England, USA and Canada, aged between 75 and 30, Damned Rebel Bitches follows sisters Ella and Agnes, both in their seventies and still fiercely inhabiting their futures. From the Clydeside Blitz in 1941 to New York in 2012, the women encounter allies, enemies, personal history and fools who think that little old ladies aren't dangerous. As Hurricane Sandy cuts the power across Manhattan, Ella hunts down her feckless missing grandchild and the man who married and abused her sister decades before. Tired of seeing elderly characters representing metaphors for time and death onstage, Damned Rebel Bitches is a very personal tribute by writer/director Sandy Thomson to the resourceful, independent and risk-taking Scottish women of the war years generation, who lost everything - more than once. Damned Rebel Bitches is named after a quote attributed to the Duke of Cumberland during the Jacobite uprising, describing women who accompanied their men folk to the battlefield, bringing their children with them to just behind the frontline so that the men would never retreat. As a result, the army was wildly successful. Some folk never learn. . .

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1st Produced:

Organisations:
Poorboy

1st Published:
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Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
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Falling

Synopsis:
a promenade adventure that took its audience by foot, train and van across the centre of Glasgow in the company of Lucifer as he is chased by his brothers the archangels.

Notes:
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1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
National Theatre of Scotland

1st Published:
-   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
-

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Pirates and Mermaids: A Fairytale for Adults

Synopsis:
Cameron is in NYC. Eilidh lives in Scotland. the technology in their pockets keeps them constantly in touch, but you can't hold someone in your arms over Skype and a text doesn't show you someone's smile. A challenging, ambitious and universal story told on a very human scale, Pirates and Mermaids is an uplifting and surprising show about true love, family advice, favourite sweets and what whisky can do to you. When meaningless, shallow connection is so normal, this show is exquisitely relevant', 'hopeful, real and warm', 'a beautiful, honest story' (preview audience).

Notes:
written by Sandy Thomson and Jeremiah Reynolds

1st Produced:
Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh Festival Fringe     Aug 2013

Organisations:
Poorboy

1st Published:
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Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
drama 1 hour 15 minutes

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:

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Spanglebaby

Synopsis:
Richard's brief is to oversee the creation of BetterLife.com, a virtual world where we can all - at the click of a mouse and the surrender of our credit card details - have the life we want. Online, we can even enter the lawless Red Zone and wreak any kind of havoc - muggings, murder. sexual predation - we choose without censure or reprisals. the only limits are those imposed by our finances and imaginations. Richard. desperate to impress and achieve, talks the talk to us. his assistant, his bosses - and what a wonderful litany of glossy advertorial and motivational cliches it is.
- Mary Brennan, Herald

Notes:
Piece written by Sandy Thomson; show concept by Sandy Thomson And Brian Ferguson

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Poorboy

1st Published:
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Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Piece

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  1            Other:  doubling

Further Reference:
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