The Oxford Handbook of Scottish Theatre

The Oxford Handbook of Scottish Theatre tells the story of drama and performing in Scotland from the earliest traces of folk plays, performances, and royal ceremonies in the medieval period right up to the challenges of the present post-pandemic moment in the professional theatre. It brings together distinguished scholars, theatre professionals, critics and reviewers to share their experiences of studying and in some cases producing the most significant landmarks of Scottish stage history, discussing pivotal plays and productions (Lyndsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd, Home's Douglas, adaptations of Rob Roy and the 'National Drama', Lamont Stewart's Men Should Weep, Lochhead's Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Cut Off), writers (including Joanna Baillie, J.M Barrie, James Bridie, John McGrath, and the writers of the radical post-Millenium generation), and companies (including The Scottish National Players, The Glasgow Citizens, 7:84, Wildcat, Communicado, and the National Theatre of Scotland) alongside incisive accounts of the cultural contexts (from the Reformation to the Thatcher government and beyond) that produced and challenged them. Separate chapters explore Scots language and Gaelic drama; the popular theatrical forms of the travelling 'geggies', music hall, variety, and pantomime; theatre for young audiences; radio and television drama; the significant roles of the director and the theatre critic and reviewer in shaping Scottish theatre; and the Scottish stage's long history of dialogue with performance traditions in England, Ireland, and Continental Europe. Contributors describe the often-fierce struggles that led to the opening up of the Scottish stage to working-class voices and audiences, women writers and performers, writers of colour, LGBTQ+ voices, innovators in dramatic form, and the long process leading towards the foundation of the NTS, and its early work alongside other key developments in the twenty-first century.

1 - The Theatre Scene I: Stages, Performers, Audiences: Medieval to 1700
2 - The Theatre Scene II: Stages, Performers, Audiences: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
3 - Major Play I: Sir David Lyndsay, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis: Renaissance Scotland's Best Kept Secret?
4 - The Theatre Scene III: Stages, Performers, Audiences: The Long Eighteenth Century
5 - Major Play II: Allan Ramsay, The Gentle Shepherd (1725 & 1729)
6 - Major Play III: John Home, Douglas (1756)
7 - The London Scots
8 - The Theatre Scene IV: Stages, Performers, Audiences in the early Nineteenth Century
9 - Major Play IV: Rob Roy
10 - Major Playwright I: Joanna Baillie
11 - The Theatre Scene V: Stages, Performers, Audiences in the late Nineteenth Century
12 - J.M. Barrie and Turn-of-the-Century London
13 - The Theatre Scene VI: Stages, Performers, Audiences, 1900-1950
14 - Companies and Writers: 1900 to 1940
15 - The 1920s and After: The Scottish National Players
16 - Major Playwright II: James Bridie and His Theatre
17 - Popular, Political Theatre in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s
18 - Major Play V: Ena Lamont Stewart, Men Should Weep
19 - The Theatre Scene VII: Stages. Performers, Audiences, c.1950-2000
20 - Scottish Playwrights 1950-1970
21 - 'Citizens and Studios': The Glasgow Citizens, Traverse, and Close Theatres
22 - John McGrath and 7:84: 'The Moon Belongs to Everyone'
23 - The Post-1980 (post-Devolution Bill) Scottish Theatre Renaissance
24 - Major Play VI: Liz Lochhead, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off
25 - The Theatre Scene VIII: Stages, Performers, Audiences: The Twenty-First Century
26 - The National Theatre of Scotland: Theatre Without Walls
27 - New Playwrights: Plays and Playwriting in Scotland, the 1990s to the 2020s
28 - Scots Language Drama (including Translation/Adaptation)
29 - The Professionalisation of Gaelic Drama
30 - Popular Theatre, Music Hall, Variety and Pantomime
31 - Theatre for Young Audiences in Scotland
32 - Influences from Abroad
33 - Directing
34 - Radio Drama
35 - A Makeshift Bastard . . .': Peter McDougall's Just Your Luck and Just Another Saturday Night and Troy Kennedy Martin's 'New Drama for Television'
36 - Critics and Reviewers
37 - Afterword

Randall Stevenson is Emeritus Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature in the University of Edinburgh. He began his career in a teacher-training college in North-West State, Nigeria. He has lectured abroad, often for the British Council - in Egypt, Nigeria, South Korea, and Australia, as well as in a dozen European countries - and was a Fellow of the Humanities Research Centre in the Australian National University, Canberra, in 2018. His writing concentrates on twentieth-century fiction and drama and its shaping by the pressures of contemporary history. Greg Walker is Regius Chair of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He was previously Masson Professor of English Literature at Edinburgh, and also worked at the Universities of Leicester, Buckingham, and Queensland. He began his career as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southampton. He writes primarily on the literature and drama of the medieval-to-Renaissance period in England and Scotland.