Tron Theatre Young Company
Martin is the current director of the Tron Theatre's resident young adult company, who have been making work together since 2012. In 2013 the Company staged Subject to Change which was invited to be restaged at Youth Theatre Arts Scotland launch of Chrysalis (a festival of theatre made for and by young people). In 2015 the company was relaunched with all new participants, and created a brand new performance, SHEEP, in February 2016, which was also restaged for the Chrysalis Festival later in the year. In 2019, the company staged their latest show, All the Time in the World. In 2020, sessions moved online, and the company created a new sound performance, Retro-Future, created specifically for COP26. More information on each production below.
Retro/Future (2021)
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TRON THEATRE (DIGITAL)
Created for COP26 Available to download from 12th November - 4th February 2022 ‘I AM NOT JUST WATER. BUT LIFE ITSELF. I HAVE SEEN THE SHIPS COME AND GO. AND NOW? WHO WILL HARNESS MY POWER FOR GOOD?’ Over the course of six months, Tron Young Company, Letters to the Earth and ÚNA Festival supported six young Glaswegians to exchange with young activists in Colombia, exploring ideas around climate change and indigenous cultures. The research fed directly into the creation of a new audio theatre piece, Retro/Future. Looking to the future from the past, and looking at the past from the future. Clutha, the Goddess of the Clyde, takes us on a journey along the River Clyde to tell her story of what she has seen and where we are going. Exploring what we hope for, what we have inherited from our ancestors, and what we wanted our world to look like when our future was still ahead of us. Tron Young Company launched Retro/Future at COP26 with a short documentary film, and through ÚNA Festival, an Indigenous Elder offered a blessing of the waters from their traditions. Letters to the Earth facilitated a dialogue between the Young Company, Indigenous Elders and the audience, encouraging them to consider their hopes, dreams and fears for the future and to write their own Letters to the Earth. |
All the Time in the World (2019)
Photography by John Johnston / Design by Jamhot
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TRON THEATRE 24th - 26th October 2019 Life moves on. For other people. But it kind of feels like time has stopped. Like the batteries in your clock have died. You think you’re moving but you’re still in the same place as yesterday. You scroll down the screen of your phone for the hundredth time, not really paying attention. Your thumb getting used to the ache. You hear but you’re not listening. You live but you’re not living. You feel like you’re going to wait forever. But only time will tell. A brand new production from the Tron’s resident young company of 18-25 year old’s. All the Time in the World takes a closer look at how we perceive time moving, how we wait for something to happen and the gulf between presence and absence. Director's Note: Tron Young Company aims to bridge the gap between youth theatre and professional theatre industry for 18-25 year olds. The current company have been meeting weekly since April 2018 and we have been exploring aspects of real time. We experimented with props and technology to see how time affects our movements and our routines. From there we created a bigger narrative of a missing person to introduce how time moves in different ways for different people. The piece has been devised by the company from their own experiences and from creative writing activities, before being written into a script. We hope you enjoy the show. |
SHEEP (2016)
Images by John Johnston http://www.johnjohnstonphotography.co.uk
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TRON THEATRE THU 4TH - SAT 6TH FEBRUARY 2016 TRAVERSE THEATRE (AS PART OF YOUTH THEATRE ARTS SCOTLAND'S CHRYSALIS FESTIVAL) FRI 18TH -SAT 19TH NOVEMBER 29016 Come on. Are we all pretending this isn’t happening? He was the last guy we know to die. That soldier that turned up is probably going to someone else’s funeral and someone else’s after that. He’ll be deployed to turn up and pay his respects: make the widow feel good and then they won’t blame the state or the military or whatever. Inspired by attitudes to war and militarization, from historical perspectives to current media representation, Tron Young Company have created a blistering new original work that asks questions of accepted roles for women and men in conflict, modern society’s use of propaganda, and what happens when war arrives on your doorstep. 'For then this town will have more dignity, and once again we’ll see that age return when there were women who were strong, true Amazons, whose deeds amazed the world.' Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna Director's Note: Through recorded debates, discussions and improvisations, we started to look at conflict in relation to our own lives – not something that happens elsewhere. We attempted to find a way to re-stage these recorded moments through verbatim performance. Members were given a research task and created their own material. We debated the wearing of poppies; the role of women as victim or simply wives/mothers of soldiers. We watched television adverts that commercialised fighting and death. We explored the idea of domestic and international. And we struggled with our own personal views and understanding of this complex and contentious topic. |
Subject to Change (2013)
Press
Herald Feature
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TRON THEATRE YOUNG COMPANY THU 24 - SAT 26 OCTOBER 2013 YOUTH THEATRE ARTS SCOTLAND INTERCHANGE THU 6TH MARCH 2014 "If the next generation of acting talent were to be found anywhere in Tron Participation, it was in this complex, and funny look at inter-personal relationships that featured a set of fantastic performances." (The Herald) You know when you know that this wouldn’t really be happening in real life but it’s fine in the dream? Like that. It all made sense. It should have been weird and awkward but it was totally normal. Nobody reacted. A therapist reveals confidential stories. A fortune teller is duped by a liar. A ghost story grows arms and legs. Jokes are told, dreams are recounted and anecdotes passed on as identities swap and the line between truth and fiction blurs. Subject to Change explores what is lost and what is gained when a story is told and re-told. Director's Note: Martin O’Connor has been working with the Young Company for a year. In that time they have experimented with different forms of storytelling, played with recorded sound and staged a small work in progress looking at gender politics. Subject to Change is the result of contextualizing the stories we told one another each week. We created a framework for each of the anecdotes and we have tried to keep the essence of our own characters and the stories we have told. |