The Traverse Theatre announces three new appointments to its Artistic and Creative Engagement team, who will jointly focus on expanding the reach of the Company’s many creative engagement activities and programmes that include Class Act, Breakthrough Writers, and Creating Space. These strategic appointments seek to connect the art that collaborators and partners of the Company create, with communities and potential audience, and to provide the platforms to help people create and participate in culture.
Mahri Reilly, who joins the Traverse today from her position as Creative Director of Scottish Youth Theatre, takes the role of Creative Engagement Producer, with oversight of all creative engagement strands. Class Act activities will be led by Robbie Gordon as Creative Producer – Class Act, supported by Jennifer Galt as Class Act Producing Assistant, as the project moves into a new phase nationally and internationally.
Creative Engagement Producer Mahri Reilly says “I am delighted to be taking up the new position of Creative Engagement Producer at the Traverse Theatre. I am inspired by the radical programming and diversity of thought quietly taking place at Scotland’s new writing theatre institution, particularly in this time of post pandemic recovery and cost of living crisis, when arts and culture have never been so essential and yet so under threat. I believe participation in cultural and creative life is key to positive wellbeing, social inclusion, community cohesion and critical thought. Theatre opens the opportunity to connect, to escape, to debate and sometimes, to make change.
I am committed to amplifying and growing the brilliant work already underway at the Traverse and am especially excited to collaborate with my colleagues and the creative community to develop new pieces of work, both physical and digital, that will inspire and engage audiences, forging unity and solidarity as we venture forward into the new.”
The Creative Engagement Producer position is supported by Adapt and Thrive, part of the Scottish Government’s Community and Third Sector Recovery Programme and delivered in partnership by Firstport, Corra Foundation, SCVO, Just Enterprise, Community Enterprise and Social Investment Scotland.
The Traverse also confirms the names of the artists who will be participating in our new Creating Space Writers’ Group for Scotland-based writers of the Global Majority that has been developed in collaboration with Scottish BPOC Writers Network. Led by playwright Mariem Omari, and with support from Traverse Associate director Shilpa T-Hyland, the group will be guided through online and in-person sessions covering the playwriting process, industry mentorship and feedback on their writing.
At the culmination of the course, participants will have an opportunity to hear an extract of their writing read by actors, as well as receiving a bespoke one to one meeting with the Traverse Team.
New for 2022, Breakthrough Writers: In Residence, supported by the Idlewild Trust, is a reset of the Traverse’s much lauded Open Submissions initiative. Developed to identify the most exciting voices writing in the UK & Ireland, Breakthrough Writers: In Residence invited writers over the age of 18 at any stage of their career, currently living in the UK and Ireland, to submit an anonymised, full-length stage script to the Traverse.
The Autumn/Winter 2022 Traverse Young Writers course will be led by playwright Douglas Maxwell.
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 