Reality (2007)
"A brilliant high speed tour...distinctive and fascinating" **** (The Scotsman)
Reality is made up of three separate monologues – a deluded TV audition-hunting wannabe, a soldier stationed in Afghanistan whose indirect fame consumes his life and a teenage dad who struggles with the drudgery of everyday responsibility and the reality behind the hype.
Distinctly Glaswegian, the pieces are a reflection on 21st Century masculinity where pressure from the media, unemployment, absent fathers, war and video game violence play a huge part in shaping the lives and paths of young men.
Commissioned by Glasgay! the piece was peformed in the Studio at Saltmarket and later at the Tron Theatre Changing House in 2008.
The List Interview
Scotsman Review
Reality is made up of three separate monologues – a deluded TV audition-hunting wannabe, a soldier stationed in Afghanistan whose indirect fame consumes his life and a teenage dad who struggles with the drudgery of everyday responsibility and the reality behind the hype.
Distinctly Glaswegian, the pieces are a reflection on 21st Century masculinity where pressure from the media, unemployment, absent fathers, war and video game violence play a huge part in shaping the lives and paths of young men.
Commissioned by Glasgay! the piece was peformed in the Studio at Saltmarket and later at the Tron Theatre Changing House in 2008.
The List Interview
Scotsman Review
Zugzwang (2006)
Martin's second solo show was created for the Arches Theatre Festival in 2006.
zug·zwang n. (ts k tsväng )
A situation in a chess game in which a player is forced to make an undesirable or disadvantageous move [German Zugzwang : Zug, pull, move + Zwang, compulsion]
The piece is made up of a series of monologues from men in therapy. All characters are united in their collective position of being at the ultimate point of their male existence – whether that maleness is threatened, heightened, or suddenly realised - and all have reached their own zugzwang: their personal compulsion to move.
"A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male." (Simone de Beauvoir 1982)
Skinny Review
zug·zwang n. (ts k tsväng )
A situation in a chess game in which a player is forced to make an undesirable or disadvantageous move [German Zugzwang : Zug, pull, move + Zwang, compulsion]
The piece is made up of a series of monologues from men in therapy. All characters are united in their collective position of being at the ultimate point of their male existence – whether that maleness is threatened, heightened, or suddenly realised - and all have reached their own zugzwang: their personal compulsion to move.
"A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male." (Simone de Beauvoir 1982)
Skinny Review
Manifesto (2005)
Martin's first solo show. Created for The Arches Live Festival.
Hormones, Hydraulics and Hair Loss.
Manifesto was devised from an original monologue which was part of the critically acclaimed I Confess project at the Arches in May 2005. Martin took the themes he was “confessing” – such as perceived female dominance, male identity crises and sexual selection – and developed them into a full-blown one-man manifesto: a call to arms for men everywhere.
The show is presented as a mock-lecture where an academic shares his findings with a small audience in one of the intimate spaces in the basement of the Arches. As he tries to unravel the mystery of why men have lost their place and likens the gradual descent of man with social, chemical and genetic factors, the cracks begin to show. We see how these themes can affect one man in one room at one time, and witness the paranoia and insecurities that inevitably ensue.
Hormones, Hydraulics and Hair Loss.
Manifesto was devised from an original monologue which was part of the critically acclaimed I Confess project at the Arches in May 2005. Martin took the themes he was “confessing” – such as perceived female dominance, male identity crises and sexual selection – and developed them into a full-blown one-man manifesto: a call to arms for men everywhere.
The show is presented as a mock-lecture where an academic shares his findings with a small audience in one of the intimate spaces in the basement of the Arches. As he tries to unravel the mystery of why men have lost their place and likens the gradual descent of man with social, chemical and genetic factors, the cracks begin to show. We see how these themes can affect one man in one room at one time, and witness the paranoia and insecurities that inevitably ensue.