Welcome, welcome

I am Ishbel McFarlane, an actor, writer and director currently based in Glasgow, longing for Edinburgh. This is the web-information-house for my creative endeavours. Occasionally I also opine.

Last August I had rather wonderful Fringe with my on-train, one-woman show Even in Edinburgh/Glasgow and the play I was directing and developing with Scandal Theatre, The Translator’s Dilemma. They got five and four stars repectively from ThreeWeeks, which is handy.

I have been working with ScotRail for over a year on shows on trains, performing on various lines including the Airdrie-Bathgate line (I LOVE AIRDRIE) and the Shotts line (I LOVE CARFIN). I am now turning my eyes to the south. Keep your eyes on your timetables. They may become poetic at a moment’s notice.

If you would like to contact me and offer me JOBS! click on ‘Contact Me’ up there, yeah, just up there a bit on the right, and send me an electronic letter.

On New Things

Isabella McLaren begat Maria Harley begat Irene Russell begat Ishbel McFarlane. And lo, every one of them was a hoarder. Though to be fairth to thee, Isabella McLaren, you wereth raising a family on your husband’s father’s farm because you’d been called backth to farm it by legislation about productivity as a result of the war and so you didn’t have much to hoard. Verily.

The above list combined with the numerous hoarder husbands (being both farmers and engineers made it a practical necessity for them) almost doom me to a stuff-based death. On my father’s side, however, it’s minimalism and order all the way. So much so that my great-grandmother chucked out my grandmother’s WRNS uniform within months of the end of the war without consulting her daughter because it was ‘cluttering the place up’.

These dual heritages do battle in my small bedroom on a daily basis. Books in alphabetical order, carpet hoovered regularly, a desk which struggles to breathe under a combination of knick-knacks and the ‘pile o scheiss’ (aka my ‘inbox’, or, more accurately, my in’box’). As for the bit between my wardrobe and the wall, NARNIA! Narnia for plastic bags and potentially-reusable packaging! Put simply, my room is full. It deserves a multi-story-car-park-style light-up sign on the M8: Ishbel’s Room – SPACE FULL.

This has two major outcomes: first, getting three new books can make my room feel unmanageably overstuffed, prompting a downward cycle ending with me having to type on my lap and give up my desk to a three-foot pile of election manifestos and show programmes, geologically layered through with seams of tutting TO DO lists that have yet to be TO DONE. In the spirit of harnessing the power of procrastination, when I’m supposed to be doing something reallyreallyimportantthathastobedonelikerightnowtoday I tend to take a leisurely hour or three to cull, reorder, tidy and sort. Like the car park, I operate a ‘one in, one out’ system. Except, of course, that I don’t. But with no living room for overspill and a flatmate who has lived and worked from the flat for eight years, founding a business of making things from old things, I have to keep a tight grip on my expansion of bumph.

One technique for the reduction of McScheiss is abstinence from buying new things during the period of Lent. I can buy food, health and safety items (no second-hand plasters for me) and things which are second-hand, but everything else is banned. This year I planned to keep this up to a lesser degree after Easter, maybe buying one new thing a month. So far, no go. Even for someone who abhors the phrase ‘born to shop‘ and all its demonic attendants, I have been caught out many times. Included here are a selection of things which I ‘needed’ during Lent but had banned myself from buying first-hand:

• magazines
• candles
• notebooks
• watches
• bras
• tights
• lightbulbs (when it was for a ‘mood lighting’ style light rather than one which will light the room enough to stop me falling out of the window)
• Mother’s day cards
• Easter cards
• Birthday cards (to myself)

The trickiest thing on this list was actually tights. Pants are a health and safety item (don’t ask impertinent questions – go and play in the garden), but tights are a decadent luxury that I choose to wear. The real problem is that you can’t get them second-hand. I trawled eBay and paid over the odds for a second-hand watch (it has a minute hand as well) the exact same model as the one my mum bought for half as much for new. But at least I could get one. You can only get second-hand tights from very SPECIFIC websites which I was loathe to frequent. Thus 40 days of holey and holy and wholly resolute old tichts, including a resurrected pair from schooldays. They had my name in, which might yet prove useful.

One solution suggested by friends was to treat tights as consumables and therefore not included in my list of banned items. This sort of automatic thinking was how, on the first day of my Lent promise, I accidentally bought three new things without even noticing. I went into the Oxfam bookshop on Byres Road in search of some Wodehouse and while I was there I picked up two fairtrade candles and some notepaper. The combination of being ethical and being things which I will use (all three things are almost used up already) meant that they didn’t ring Lenten alarms the way an obviously-made-by-slave-babies Primark top would.

But I am firm and such things will not enter kosherdom. It’s not just because of my multi-storey-book-store of a room that I need to cut down on new things, but also the absolutely direct contribution to the rubbishification of the world that can be laid at the feet of Western consumption, ie. my feet. While I am excited about the reinvigoration of political thought as people become angry at bankers’ bonuses and the tax dodging fairground of big business, campaigns like We are the 99 percent always make me feel a bit uneasy. Absolutely without doubt I, and most of my pals, are in the global top 1%. Our budget flights to Barcelona to see a Truly Excellent Gig are no less damaging in themselves than an oil baron’s flight within the Middle East. We must try to judge each action independent from stereotypes – I can’t be as bad for the environment or child labour as all those nasty rich people are, because I’m nice and have friends and buy The Big Issue. On occasion.

Accumulating things I don’t need is something of which I am, and should be, just as ashamed of as someone forking out for another Mercedes. As someone forking out for another Mercedes should be. The three ‘R’s I was drilled in at school were Reduce, Reuse and Recycle and those are in order of preference. Do recycle. Do reuse. But most of all, do reduce.

So, back to my inability to follow my own advice. This blog constitutes a re-commitment. I hereby swear to reduce my new thing buying to one thing a week – which I acknowledge still seems outrageously much until I actually try it. I also swear to review this policy as I progress and will not feel strangled by a life giving promise like this. I have great inspirations in the form of my pals Jay and Ailsa, and I will continue drinking at the fountains of lively minimalist experience that are their blogs to keep me going. The pain of not buying a new pair of sunglasses because my old ones make my nose look funny somewhat pales into insignificance when compared with two people who gave up their possessions and moved their family to China.

And finally, if you are going to try this out yourself, be aware that some things are health and safety items in certain numbers. For example, running without a bra can rip the breast from the chest internally. But your fourth servicable bra in circulation, which has tassels, even if it’s from M&S, is never going to be asked to save you from that fate.

GOOD LUCK!

On Teaching

There is a famous story in my family (since said family is me and my parents, the notoriety afforded to me by this story has never interrupted my day-to-day life) about a visit to the Isle of Man when I was five years old. At the castle we were visiting, there was a mock medieval fair in full swing. In my mind we had simply walked into a magical world, something not much more remarkable to me than an event organised by the Isle of Man tourist board. I trooped between actors playing knights and serfs, swains and wenches. My mum and dad were amused by the seriousness with which I listened to these drama school graduates and asked me why I paid attention so closely. I replied that it was important to to know these things as I was going to have to teach them to my children.

Eyes on the lecturing prize before I’d even started school.

Anyone who knows me will recognise why I like this story and why my family like it too. I once lived with a pal (then a very good artist in training, now a very good artist) who used to terrorise the gullible with idiotic questions along the lines of, ‘Are the Rolling Stones a band?’ or, given that he and I were both studying art history, ‘Does the National Gallery show paintings?’ Time and time again I was caught by these little gems because – and here’s the quiz competitor truth (that’s me, top row, second from the left) – if I have any knowledge on the subject I cannot leave an asked question unanswered. Five years of academia did not train this propensity out of me. At all. Art history is almost always an educated guess, and with twenty years of education, I sometimes feel I have the right to take a guess about anything.

This hunger for question answering made me a keen pupil, a slighly-over-contributive-in-seminar-situations student and, more recently, a teacher. I hesitate to choose an adjective to describe what kind of teacher I am. I’m not even sure which words would make my cop-out compound adjective. But, since someone (me) has asked the question, ‘What kind of teacher are you, Ishbel?’, someone (me) has to answer it. And since I have been breaking things down into memorable lists for pupils, let’s continue the trend with a selection of answers:

1. An overly-talkative teacher

This particular problem is twofold (subject heading, sub-section heading):

a) I like chatting and am in danger of being lead by a class or pupil down a merry path of chit-chat.

b) If I feel out of my depth, my go-to teaching solution is to explain, even when the best learning solution is to do.

The first of these is something which I have to keep an eye on in other areas of my life as well. As a director I want to keep things friendly and relaxed but still moving along. As an actor I can find myself turning into a chattery child waiting to be told off, and then hating it when I am. Even when the chat is about the play and entirely relevant, this is a bad habit which just needs stamped out.

The second problem is slightly more integral to my teaching practice and comes directly from my wish to answer all questions. Every class is a massive question, be that ‘how do you play high status?’ or ‘how effective is parliament in controlling government?’ And while I would never, and I stress this, never pretend to know stuff I don’t, I have a tendency to start with words.

I learn by talking and being able to discuss things is very important to my mental process. However, as shocking as this might be after so long in education, I am not the primary learner now. Also, often I am teaching acting, which must be done by doing, trying, failing, doing, trying, failing etc. As I work more as an educator I feel less afraid of letting kids try things and fail them. Now, you do have to watch, as there is always the potential to scar a teenager for life (oh, teaching). When this doesn’t happen, though, trying something again and again will help students understand better than just listening, no matter how eloquent you are. Or, Ishbel, no matter how many inarticulate noises accompanied by hand gestures you use. Grnshli?

2. I’m a teachum

Listen, I know that teachers who try to be too pally are NOT COOL. I am not unaware of this. But I think (I think) my circumstances mean that the balance is slightly different with me. Saying that, I did once recognise the song ‘That’s What Makes You Beautiful’ that a group of girls were sodcasting in a school corridor and I said, ‘Oh, a bit of One Direction for lunch.’ I then dived into the library for cover before my not-coolness-for-trying-to-be-cool hit home. In a school corridor an adult is always a teacher, but, despite the title of this blog, I’m not normally a straight teacher. Normally, I am working one-to-one, or with a small group, or as a ‘facilitator.’ I am always ‘Ishbel’ and never ‘Miss McFarlane’, and not because I am ‘the groovy young teacher’ (I’m not, see accompanying image for details) but because of the structures in place at the organisations I work for. In the work I do, things go better when it feels like the students and I are working together towards a shared goal. It’s better for them as their opinions are valued and I absolutely have to listen to what they say, and it’s better for me as I don’t have all the answers (see above). I also learn blimmin loads from teaching. I can now get all up in your Secondary Market Research Data grill having tutored an AS in Business Studies.

Another reason for being a teachum is undoubtedly my mother’s teaching style. My mum has been a teacher for nearly forty years and, as a pupil at her school, I have seen her approach first hand. Unlike me, she works as a full-time classroom teacher, as well as doing learning support and speech and drama on a more individual basis. I never find myself more like my mum than when I am with pupils. Her classes are scattered with nicknames, affection and running jokes. She considers her pupils to be her friends, a belief borne out by the number who keep in touch with her. She can, however, be freaking terrifying and there is always a gentle line between teacher and pupil. This gentle line helps things get done and stops riot from running all over the Shakespeare posters.

In summary: I like people. Children and teenagers are people. I find it difficult to treat them as little task-fulfilling machines.

3. I am a reflective pedagogue

As this post will testify, I tend to think a lot about what teaching is. In the year and a half since I started doing this as a means by which to put houmous on the table, I have never left a lesson/session without wondering what my job actually is. Am I there to pass on my knowledge? To get them ‘out of their shell’? To get them a good mark in this paper? To let them enjoy learning and foster in them a love of education? To reassure the parents? To make them good citizens? To squeeze them into university regardless of their preference?

I am aware that these aren’t particularly original questions, and the fact that I am very new to this game is a big factor in the prominence. But I also know that my mum still asks them decades in. Despite my numero uno point as a teacher, questions are clearly as important as answers. But they shouldn’t, and don’t, grind my work to a halt. I don’t think any of my questions will have the answer ‘teaching is malicious – stop doing it’ and so, as part of my brain works on those existential quandries, the rest of my head gets down to the serious business of finding engaging ways to unpack the gender politics of A Doll’s House.

4. I am a teacher who loves teaching

I am not in a classroom teaching for six hours a day and marking and planning for eight hours a night. I have only worked with kids who have, in some way, chosen to be with me in the classroom, rehearsal room or kitchen where we work. I have never had to manage thirty kids ‘interacting’ with equipment/acid/bunsen burners. I know people who have done all of these things – most of them working for Teach First. I currently tutor for six different organisations; from widening university participation in schools in Glasgow’s low income areas, through one-to-one tutoring in pupils’ homes, to international summer schools of bright and motivated kids from all over the world. The variety is absolutely wonderful. I have taught in English, drama, history, politics, social studies, business studies, creative writing, life sciences, film studies, and, miraculously, maths. By far the worst things about the breadth of my work are the travelling and the uncertainty of employment. A six-week contract is the definition of financial security and I have to stop myself from running into a bank and getting a mortgage, just because I can (except, of course, that I can’t). But I love teaching in church halls, classrooms, living rooms, lecture theatres. I also know much more about what it’s like being a taxi driver. My advice, based on stories heard from the c. 40 who’ve shuttled me in the last year: don’t be a taxi driver. End of message.

5. I’m a teacher who isn’t just a teacher

When it was census time last year I, like most of my pals, had a dilemma. I was a few months out of an acting degree. Having abandoned academia (for now) I had decided to do theatrical creativity full-time. While I was doing a lot of theatring, as one would expect I was not making a fortune from it. As one might not expect, I was not making a single penny from it at all. I was making money from teaching and working with folk with dementia (an occupation for another blog).

So what should I describe myself as in my one wee box? I chose the horribly 2000s term ‘theatre maker.’ though I know I have friends who wrote ‘waitress’ or equivalent not-for-my-whole-life job in the hope that researchers of the future would be amazed to see the famous actor was once a lowly barmaid. But I am not ashamed of my teaching. I once heard an artist quoted as measuring his success by the fact that he had never had to teach to make money. But I like teaching, and I think it is highly important work. I was brought up by a woman who used to say to her save-the-world daughter, if you want to make a difference, teach. I just about make a living from it (for some of the year), but it is simply not the only thing I do. Because of all this, answering the standard dinner party question, ‘and what do you do?’ is a crunching haul of self-justification, defiance and embarrassment. Am I an actor who also teaches and directs? A teacher who also makes theatre? Does ‘tutor’ make me sound more like Septimus from Arcadia and less like Edna Krabappel from The Simpsons?

So here’s the definitive answer (as of 4.15pm, Thursday 19th April 2012):

I do a whole bunch of things. By trade I am a theatre maker – I do acting, writing and directing – but I also love teaching and tutoring and so I do quite a lot of that. Oh, and I work with people with dementia. Oh yeah, and I often work on my family farm too.

Ok, wait. Give me a second and I’ll get you a better answer.

i(shbel)Player

This post is time-sensitive.

A couple of weeks ago I returned to Greyfriars Kirk, the church I attended when I lived in Edinburgh (though in an top notch typo I just wrote that as ‘when I loved in Edinburgh’). For seven months during my MSc, I worked as their arts coordinator. Since then my successor has led them through loads of exciting things, including making a gorgeous new entrance, a new museum and getting work going on the new building for the Grassmarket Community Project. Richard Frazer is the excellent minister at the kirk and an equally excellent pal to me. In March he asked me if I wanted to do some bible readings and poems for his contributions to the BBC Scotland show, New Every Morning. At the time I felt like I managed to give an impression of cool unconcern as I agreed to do this as a favour to him. In retrospect the air-punching and the tears in my eyes might have given the rampant-enthusiasm game away to some small degree.

As returning blog readers will recognise, reading poetry on the radio is one of my major life ambitions and so it was with a happy heart that I practiced the theologically-tricky readings that Richard gave me (youch there, Romans), and tried to become familiar with the prose and poetry readings he’d chosen too. The results of episode one of four of ‘Ishbel’s First Foray Into Performing Poetry On The Radio’ can be heard here. As you listen to the thoughtful and calm words of Richard and the challenging words of the bible, imagine me dancing with joy like this.

Now, the reason that this is a time sensitive post is down to iPlayer time restrictions. Today is 5th April and the link to the specific episode above will only be available until 7th April . However, my voice is included in the next three shows (8th, 15th and 22nd April) so you can hear me saying something at least 28th April 2012 if you go to the show website. Sadly, though, if you are reading this post after that date (of if you’re in the foreign country and so can’t get iPlayer) you’re just going to have to imagine an Edinburgh/Kinross accent speaking some lovely words at a slightly higher pitch than she thinks she is. Got it?

Train Train Train

I thought it was probably better to be straightforward about what this poem concerns. It’s something which features a great deal on this here website, and which has made up a lot of my recent creative output: TRAINS (trains trains).

After I found out that I wasn’t successful with CBeebies this time, I wrote another poem, for one Mr Nash, who is easily the biggest fan of Squeaks, My Cat. Thomas likes Tank Engines. And voila, a poem regarding such delightful things.

NB. There is some ‘atmospheric camera wobbling’ in this presentation. This is part due to my enthusiasm for trains, part due to my lack of skill in filming.

Additional NB. Crazed face in thumbnail cannot be helped, so everyone should just calm down about it. Sometimes faces are like that. Well. Sometimes my face is like that.

Life Ambition Things

I think it’s a fairly accepted fact that most people have a ‘thing’ that after knowing them for a while you realise is their ‘thing’. You feel honoured to have had their ‘thing’ shared with you (careful). Well, I have a few ‘things’ (as befitting someone who is a self-confessed jack of a small number of non-financially-viable trades, master of none).

1) I have holes in the top of my ears that look like piercings but I’ve had since I was born that also look a bit like they go right through my brain that freak everyone out.

2) I like trains.

3) I’m really into learning poems by heart. And I’m into reading poems. Poems for grown-ups. Poems for kids. Sad poems. Happy poems. Romantic poems. Obscure concrete poems. Poems-that-people-who-are-academics-think-are-’populist’-'rubbish’ poems. I’m basically really into poems.

This list of three ‘things’ should also be combined with my current list of life ambitions.

1) To play Isabella in Measure for Measure.

2) To create a play/work of theatre about Wonderful Kinross-shire.

3) To recite poetry on the radio. Ideally on Poetry Please. Mmm, slaverslaver.

Recently I have been taking steps towards fulfilling number three. One of the steps I am employing is applying to work on live shows surrounding up-coming CBeebies show, ‘Rhyme Rocket‘. As part of the application process, you had to write and submit a one minute poem for four- to six-year-olds. And thus arrived this one about my cat Squeaks, aka. ‘Mr Squeaks, The Fantastic FLYING Cat‘.

Making Routes

Making Routes is a new, Glasgow-based network of artists and researchers who are interested in theatre and performance on journeys. They launched last week as part of the Arches Live festival and are heading off into their future in an intrepid manner. I am muchos excited about where they will go and what they will do. I expect I should technically say where we will go and what we will do, as it seems at present to be a loose enough configuration to include me and my work. I am responsible for route making too.

David Overend, who is at the heart of the initiative, and also a very nice man, asked me to write a wee bit about doing the Fringe show for their blog. I did and didn’t do this. I did write something, but it wasn’t that wee. You can read it here and let me know what you think.

Performance on journeys is something which I am aware came very naturally to me as soon as I started making theatre of my own. Even my University production of Romeo and Juliet that I directed aged 19 made the audience into a funeral procession and sent them through the beautiful Greyfriars Kirk to the altar. Wandering, leading, travelling and walking in performance interest me more and more as my never ending slew of new-ideas-that-I-have-that-end-up-going-nowhere are invariably shows that literally go somewhere. Going places and being places could be the tagline for my creative endeavours, if it wasn’t for the fact that ‘going places’ makes me sound like a business man in 1984 with his ‘mobile’ phone receiver strapped to his back.

Who am I kidding – I’ve got a Filofax. I’m as yuppie as the next red-braces-wearing, wine-bar-attending schmo. GOING PLACES AND BEING PLACES IT SHALL BE.

Post-Fringe Ponderings

It is long enough (three weeks) since the Fringe to warrant a retro-style photographic record. Nostalgia comes faster every year. I put these through a filter on a website called ‘Make Retro’, the true meaning of which I am still delving into, even after a pre-existing blog on that sort of nonsense. Have a look at more photos I ‘made’ ‘retro’ here.

So, the Fringe went very well. Not only did I get a five star review from my one intrepid reviewer, but The Translator’s Dilemma was also a nice little success.  I was incredibly proud of both shows, for very different reasons.

E/G was very much a solo affair, content-wise. I could not have done it without the help of my various standard supporters (parents and gentleman friend among the most notable). I could quadruply not have done it without the support of John Yellowlees of ScotRail, an unending champion of trains and poems and planters at stations. Despite this, most of the work fell to me and the poetry books, or me and the press release, or me and the 7000 words to write then learn.

Translator’s Dilemma, on the other hand, was a hugely team (hugely team?) effort. First among equals, though, was Jesse Phillippi. Hers was the first idea, hers the driving force, hers the loneliest hours in front of the flashing cursor. But the team of producers, marketing, publicity, fundraising, translation-checkers, rehearsal-space providers and I-don’t-know-whaters were a truly central part of the process. Even the writing process came down to nearly 20 drafts and their interim discussions between Jesse and various people (including Nicola McCartney and Davey Anderson) and then Jesse and I. At the end all we were left with was her incredible humility, patience and hard-work and my insistence on everything happening in the room. IN THE ROOM.

The rehearsal process was very long and terrifyingly short. We found our ‘Sam’ – the student in the play – in Amy Conway, fairly late on in the process. In her we found a indomitable smiling and skillful force who added greatly to the process and moved Sam from quiet, two-dimensional cipher to a complex and rebellious victim and important partner for the audience in what was sometimes a slightly unnerving experience.

The Fringe can often be so grueling an experience that the fun and joy of the game of making and seeing plays gets buried under press-releases and the half-price hut, and with the added adventure of traipsing through from Glasgow every day I’m well aware I was guilty of letting that happen this year. But at no point, not even in the depths of a poverty stricken, persecution-complex-ridden, flyering-in-the-rain steely second did I think that I would not do it again.

Fringe, oh Fringe, come to me again – take my hand, slap my face, kiss my forehead and whisper in my ear. Make your words ideas, I want another shot.