Talk #146
Stephen Scott-Bottoms x Andy Smith
Tuesday 4 February 2025, 5.30pm
Salutation Pub (upstairs)
Higher Chatham Street
Manchester
M15 6ED
Please register on Eventbrite if you wish to attend.
A video recording of this talk will be available from 4 March.
Image (Andy Smith): Ross Finnie.
Stephen Scott-Bottoms
Stephen Scott-Bottoms is a writer, researcher and theatre-maker. He is currently Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at the University of Manchester, having previously taught in Leeds and Glasgow. Steve is the author of several books, most recently Incarceration Games: A History of Role-Play in Psychology, Prisons and Performance (University of Michigan Press , 2024), which reinvestigates some notorious social psychology experiments as forms of improvised theatre. His recent work as a practitioner has focused on humanising complex questions of flood and climate resilience through storytelling methods. Steve is a Creative Associate of the Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission, and co-founder of the social enterprise Vesper Hill.
Andy Smith
Andy Smith is a theatre-maker based in the North-West of England and part-time lecturer in theatre practice at the University of Manchester. His most recent works include the plays The Preston Bill (2015) SUMMIT(2017), as well as the 2018 performance work COMMONISM, a collaboration with the Norwegian artist Amund Sjølie Sveen. Andy has also collaborated with the theatre maker Tim Crouch since 2004, co-directing (along with Karl James) a number of plays including An Oak Tree, The Author and most recently Truth's A Dog Must To Kennel.
For the last six years he has been developing a longer form project called PLAYS FOR THE PEOPLE. Rather than be performed by actors for an audience, these short works are for audiences and groups of people to meet and read together. Each play aims to present ideas, questions and dilemmas around their themes, encourage discussion between participants. The latest and most ambitious of these works is A CITIZENS' ASSEMBLY, which tells a story about a group of people meeting to discuss the climate emergency. It has been created in collaboration with applied arts practitioner Lynsey O'Sullivan.
