On Thursday 12 June 2025, local artists showed their work is up to scratch at our Open Floor event in The Studio Theatre. The showing included extracts of five new musical theatre shows, each with a different story to tell.
The evening included work from Alexander Tait, Matchstick Productions, Prickly Pear Productions, Charades Theatre Company and Max Welton. The performers were keen to share what they had been working on and bring their work to life on the live stage.
With good audience attendance, we welcomed many folk who were passionate and eager to see exciting new work. Scratch Nights like this are a space for theatremakers to experiment with new work and test what works in front of live audiences. We aim to make our scratch nights as participatory as possible and gather feedback from audience members to involve them within the creative process. This is given to the artists and aids them in shaping their work for the next stage of its development.
Feedback from our artists:
The artists who took part were eager to share their thoughts on how the night went. Max Welton expressed how “I love that there is something like this for musical theatre writers in Scotland” with Alexander Tait elaborating how it allowed “the chance to test a new piece I was working on in front of a supportive audience and get direct and live feedback to the future of the show I’m creating”. Becky Hope-Palmer echoed this sentiment insisting that “the valuable feedback gained will undoubtedly improve the piece as it grows”.
Samuel Macdonald’s piece, The Perfect Match, used the scratch night to try out a new idea and approach to theatre as the performance “takes place in the dark so we were able to explore the way this can be presented on stage, as well as how the audience responds to that experience”.
Zoë Alba Farrugia summarised the overall benefit to the scratch night as she explained “on the whole, writing is a lonely process, so having the chance to share our work with a warm and engaged audience was invaluable”. Echoed in all of the artist’s feedback was this sense of artistic community which we are pride to support and garner through events like this.
Take a look below at some of the production shots from the Scratch Night to get a glimpse of the work that was shown off.
Beth Mac
Immigration Crisis: The Musical
The Perfect Match
Hammered
Pothos
Scratch Nights are just one of the ways we help to cultivate new work in Scotland. We also host ‘open conversations’ helping to promote dialogue in the artistic community, help establish new writing through the Musical Commissioning Hub project and co-produce full productions like Nessie.
