The Oxford Handbook of Scottish Theatre

by Randall Stevenson (Editor), Greg Walker (Editor), Sarah Carpenter (Contributor)

The Oxford Handbook of Scottish Theatre tells the story of drama and performing in Scotland from the earliest traces of folk plays, performances, and royal ceremonies in the medieval period right up to the challenges of the present post-pandemic moment in the professional theatre. It brings together distinguished scholars, theatre professionals, critics and reviewers to share their experiences of studying and in some cases producing the most significant landmarks of Scottish stage history, discussing pivotal plays and productions (Lyndsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd, Home's Douglas, adaptations of Rob Roy and the 'National Drama', Lamont Stewart's Men Should Weep, Lochhead's Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Cut Off), writers (including Joanna Baillie, J.M. Barrie, James Bridie, John McGrath, and the writers of the radical post-Millenium generation), and companies (including The Scottish National Players, The Glasgow Citizens, 7:84, Wildcat, Communicado, and the National Theatre of Scotland) alongside incisive accounts of the cultural contexts (from the Reformation to the Thatcher government and beyond) that produced and challenged them.

Separate chapters explore Scots language and Gaelic drama; the popular theatrical forms of the travelling 'geggies', music hall, variety, and pantomime; theatre for young audiences; radio and television drama; the significant roles of the director and the theatre critic and reviewer in shaping Scottish theatre; and the Scottish stage's long history of dialogue with performance traditions in England, Ireland, and Continental Europe. Contributors describe the often-fierce struggles that led to the opening up of the Scottish stage to working-class voices and audiences, women writers and performers, writers of colour, LGBTQ+ voices, innovators in dramatic form, and the long process leading towards the foundation of the NTS, and its early work alongside other key developments in the twenty-first century.

896 pages, Hardcover

First published May 7, 2025

About the author

Randall Stevenson is Emeritus Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature in the University of Edinburgh. He was born in the north of Scotland, grew up in Glasgow, and studied at the University of Edinburgh (Astrophysics, then English Literature) and the University of Oxford. He covered Scottish drama for The Independent in the 1990s, and has reviewed for BBC Radio Scotland and The Times Literary Supplement. He has been a member of the Traverse Script Panel and of the Board of Directors and Artistic Policy Committee of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.

With Gavin Wallace, Stevenson edited Scottish Theatre since the Seventies (Edinburgh University Press, 1995), and with Cairns Craig, Twentieth Century Scottish Drama: An Anthology (Canongate, 2000).

Recent books include Literature and the Great War: 1914 - 1918 (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Reading the Times: Temporality and History in Twentieth-Century Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2018). He is General Editor of the Edinburgh History of Twentieth-Century Literature in Britain series (EUP).