02 Oct A Sense of Direction – Andy McGregor

Director, writer and composer Andy McGregor was born in 1980 and grew up in Largs in Ayrshire. He made his first forays into performance as a teenager, then studied Music and Theatre at the University of Glasgow. He spent his twenties playing in a band – Blind Pew – and running youth theatres he set up in Ayrshire. In the late 2000s, Blind Pew broke up, and McGregor returned to education, graduating with an MA in directing from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2010.

His subsequent career has seen McGregor work both as a freelance director, writer and composer, and through his company Sleeping Warrior. A mainstay of Scotland’s musical scene, he has worked at the National Theatre of Scotland, The Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, and the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, and with A Play, A Pie and A Pint, Glasgow’s long-running lunchtime theatre series. His latest Sleeping Warrior show, Battery Park, is touring around Scotland until the end of October.

How did you become a director?

I spent my twenties in a band and running a youth theatre. With the youth theatre, I was writing, composing and directing maybe five or six shows a year. When I was 27, the band fell apart and I wanted to do something else. I met Maggie Kinloch, who was vice-principal at RCS, and asked if it was worth me applying to do directing. I did. And I got in. That’s when my professional life started.

Who or what was the biggest help along the way?

My classmates on that directing course at RCS. There were four of us. One moved back to America, but the others – Debbie Hannan and Emily Reutlinger – stuck around. Whenever one of us had an opportunity, we would get the others involved, too. If Debbie was directing something, she would get me to do the sound. If I was directing something and needed a dramaturg, I’d get Emily involved. We helped each other out. And we still do, twelve years later. Peer support is so important to me.

What work are you most proud of?

That’s an impossible question. I’m very proud of this show, Battery Park. I can do comedy musicals standing on my head, but this is a bit deeper, and it is more of a play-with-songs than a musical. I am also really proud of Spuds, which we did at A Play, A Pie and A Pint [in 2017], then toured. It was a risk because it was a sung-through musical. It was critically well-received, but I was proud that we just pulled it off. I am proud of Crocodile Rock, too, which was a one-man musical [in 2019].

What work are you least proud of?

Last year, I toured Crocodile Rock alongside another show, A New Life. The actors in A New Life were amazing, but we didn’t have the time or resources to make it as good as it could have been. Things kind of fell apart on the production side. It was a pretty torrid time. The actors were great but I think I let them down. Touring two shows at once was a headache and put pressure on everything else.

Who or what is your biggest theatrical influence?

Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads concert film, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.

Is there a show that you really want to stage?

I’d love to do a Shakespeare with professional actors. I’ve done some with students, and that is great, but you end up with an 18-year-old playing King Lear. I’d love to do Twelfth Night, I think.

What is your financial situation?

I’m probably going to direct five shows this year and, off the top of my head, make about £16,000. I’ve got a wife and two boys, and it would be totally unfeasible for that to work financially with me purely working as a director. My writing and composing tops it up close to around £30,000. That is what I tend to earn through all my theatrical stuff. It is so precarious, though. If one job falls through, I’m down to £24,000. Existing purely as a freelance director in Scotland is impossible, I think.

I have a very small mortgage. We don’t go on foreign holidays. My wife works part-time. I’m lucky that she accepted that this is what it would be like from the off. I used to work at a private school. The day I sent off my application to RCS, the school offered to put me through teacher training with a cushy job at the other end. My wife said she was rather we were poor and I was happy, though.

What do you enjoy most about directing?

Working with creative people that are as into it as I am. Just this morning, an actor came in with a different idea about how he was going to perform this line. I love that. He is invested. I am invested. We are all invested. I hate working with people that are just there for the money and not the work.

What are your frustrations with directing?

I don’t enjoy saying no to people. Who would enjoy that? Seeing so many great actors and only being able to pick one is so difficult. I always try to explain my decisions to them if I can.

What fills you with dread about the future of theatre?

There is no career path to become a director in Scotland. It is a nonsense. There are not enough opportunities and not enough training. That means we are constantly having to look outside Scotland for the big jobs. The Scottish theatre industry is going to fizzle out as a result. How do people who are not invested in the communities here know what the people of Scotland want to see on stage? How do they know how to market shows to them? I feel quite strongly about this.

We don’t value the work that is made in Scotland enough, either. You can make five amazing shows in Scotland, and not one big company will take an interest. Some guy takes a dump on the stage in London and all of a sudden everyone up here is interested in them. That is a big frustration of mine.

What gives you hope for the future of theatre?

I find the enthusiasm and skills of young people in Scottish theatre inspiring.

What are you working on at the moment?

Battery Park is touring Scotland until the end of October. It is a play-with-songs about a Britpop band from Greenock who try to follow in the footsteps of Oasis, but for whom it all goes wrong. I was in a band in my twenties that failed miserably, so it is kind of based on that. I’ve got a sung-through dramatic musical called An Act Of Union at A Play, A Pie and A Pint soon, too, and I’m doing the Paisley pantomime, Beauty And The Beast. And I am working with the writer Isla Cowan on a musical about when Greenpeace took over the Brent Spar oil rig in the 1990s. It is called To Save The Sea.

ENDS

Fergus Morgan is SDUKs resident blogger.