Encounters
Touring new performance work to reconnect with young creatives in the North and North East of Scotland
14+ years
6-19 March 2023
Encounters is a new touring project, bringing together young artists and audiences to create space for performance, theatre making and conversation. In March 2023, a collection of solo works by early-career artists, created through Scottish Youth Theatre programmes, will tour venues, schools and colleges in the North and North East of Scotland. As part of this event, we will offer a free participatory workshop and host a creative dialogue, to listen and learn from young people about their artistic needs and how Scottish Youth Theatre may best support them.
In a post-COVID environment, in-person artistic opportunities have been limited for young people. Through this tour, we are seeking to reconnect young audiences with the possibilities of contemporary performance, identify what they need to make new work happen and share ways to get involved in Scottish Youth Theatre's upcoming artistic programme.
Encounters will be touring to Aberdeen, Caithness, Moray and Orkney in March 2023. The programme is supported by Scottish Government's Recovery Fund for Cultural Organisations.
Meet the artists that will be touring their work:
Bethan Murray (she/her) is a Glasgow-based theatre artist. Bethan’s practice takes focus in crafting performance art which utilises movement, sound, light and artefact work to explore the relationship between the deterioration of physical and mental well-being. She is drawn to cultivating environments for audience members to interact with and experience the complexities of living with mental illness. Bethan has performed across Scotland in a variety of venues and events, enjoying expanding the environments and spaces in which she works. Bethan graduated in 2021 with a first-class degree in Musical Theatre from Edge Hill University, and now finds herself drawn to the writing and prodution of theatrical work.
Iman Akhtar (she/her) is a Scottish actor with experience in musical theatre as well as screen and content creation. She is most notably known for co-writing and starring in popular YouTube sketches and most recently appeared in Jinnistan in A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s last season. The Trajectories project in 2022 with Scottish Youth Theatre was her first venture into stand-up performance.
Jo Hunter (they/them) is an emerging theatre-maker, spoken word artist and musician based in Scotland. Their work utilises musicality and rhythm to create engaging and stimulating pieces of thought-provoking work. Hunter incorporates their experience as a young trans person in their work and explores the various facets of society’s relationship with the queer community, and aims to make as much noise as possible, while encouraging audiences to do the same.
Lily Carmen Smith (she/her) is a writer, performer and installation maker, mostly creating for contexts outwith designated arts spaces such as urban public spaces and nightclubs. In her work, she is interested in mixing seemingly opposing elements, whether it be theories, personal memories, stories of places such as history and landscape, and the supposed high and low brow. With curiosity she explores and frames the connections and dissonances between such things, with the belief that all things are interconnected.
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