CHARLES NOWOSIELSKI  (Artistic Director)

Charles was born in Edinburgh to a Polish father and Scottish mother and was educated at George Heriot's school. He trained for the theatre at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and gained his membership to the profession with the New Shakespeare Company at Regent's Park with whom he toured the UK, India and Sri Lanka.

As an actor Charlie worked all over the UK perhaps most notably at the Roundhouse with Zoe Wanemaker and Jeremy Irons and at the Royal Court with Paul Nicholas and Warren Clarke under Richard O Brien and Nicholas Wright. 

Returning to his native Scotland he worked in all the major theatres and it was in one of them, Dundee Rep, that he was invited to direct a series of short Scottish works, most importantly, SOMETHING IN IT FOR CORDELIA by Joan Ure. This work ,and others of a similar ilk, led Charlie to form the Netherbow Players. This led to the eventual formation of Theatre Alba, a company dedicated to new work in the Scots tongue with intrinsic use of live original music and interpretative movement; concerned with mysticism, oral tradition and an exploration of the essence of Scottishness. 

Charlie found a partnership with Richard Cherns as Musical Director and the company won many plaudits and indeed awards with productions such as TAMLANE, THE CARLIN MOTH, THE LASS WI THE MUCKLE MOU, THE CAULDRON, THE SHEPHERD BEGUILED, THE PUDDOCK AND THE PRINCESS. 

The lack of core funding led Charlie to apply for the post of Artistic Director of the Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh which he successfully ran alongside Theatre Alba from 1986 to 1991. 

After a brief spell as Artistic Director at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast he returned to continue his work in the nation of  Scotland. He initiated the formation of MPR Theatre Studio based in Musselburgh and continues this long term project. 

He has directed some 100 professional productions and while people will vary in their opinions, he considers his best to be THE PUDDOCK AND THE PRINCESS and THE LASS WI THE MUCKLE MOU for Theatre Alba, ST. JOAN  and THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK for the Brunton Theatre, ARMS AND THE MAN and HAMLET for the Lyric Theatre, Belfast . The zenith of his career to date was a highly controversial production of THE BRUCE for Frank Dunlop at the Edinburgh International Festival.

DONALD MACKENZIE (d. 1999)
In 1983, Donald won First Prize in the Ind Coupe playwrighting competition organised by Assembly Productions with a play called THE WARLD'S TRAIVELER, which was presented three years later  by the Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, when Charles Nowosielski  was Artistic Director.

This led to two more productions in Musselburgh and East Lothian - A ROYAL MATCH (Parts I and II), in which the principal character is Mary Queen of Scots, was premiered in the stately house of Lennoxlove and was described as a "magical triumph", resulting in a highly successful tour of East Lothian using many varied venues and culminating in an outdoor production of the play as a pageant at the ruins of Dunbar Castle.

Mackenzie operated in two main areas: modern plays with a significant social bias and plays with historical content. RABBIE BURNS SLEPT HERE is a play about an American tycoon who comes to Scotland to build a factory over the house of Robert Burns, and THE BAILLIE was a play which was presented at the Edinburgh International Festival and told the story of 19th Century Scots actor, Charles Mackay. Winged Horse, a touring theatre company presented Mackenzie's play SHIFT WORK about a female welder, and the Traverse Theatre presented FIGHTING MAC, a play based on a great Scottish Battle hero.

In quite another vein, Mackenzie's play about the life of a French schoolteacher who was part of the commune of Paris in 1871 was presented by the Tron Theatre in Glasgow. His play BY WHOSE HAND was broadcast on radio and subsequently bought by television. 
Donald Mackenzie was a prolific writer and has many scripts as yet unperformed. 
Sadly, he died in October 1999.
 

From 1986-9l he played keyboards for the Gaelic rock band RUNRIG and co-founded THEATRE ALBA with Charles Nowosielski. He was composer/MD for many productions at the BRUNTON THEATRE and his music was integral to their Edinburgh Festival productions of HOLY ISLE and THE BRUCE for Frank Dunlop.

EDWIN STIVEN

Edwin Stiven has adapted themes of Celtic mythology and traditional Scots tales into many of his works. His acclaimed play TAMLANE is based on the traditional Scots ballad of the same name, but incorporates many other ballads in theme, character and plot. It is set in the time and place of its origins, the Scottish Borders of the 12th century.

His play, CAULDRON , is based on the few extant versions of the pre-Christian Quest along with later versions, such as "Parsifal", from the tradition of Medieval Romance.The play is set in North Britain at the end of the 5th century AD, and utilises contemporaneous historical references and characters. It is derived from Scottish, Irish, Welsh and French sources, but, like all of Edwin Stiven's work, it is written in Scots.

His most recent play, Under the Passing Stars is based on the ancient Irish tale of "Deirdre of the Sorrows", adapted many times before for the stage, most notably by Yeats and Synge. His most recent, THE BULL RAIDERS (1998) is a dramatization of the whole of the Ulster Cycle, "An Tain Bo Cooling". TAMLANE was his first play.

LIST OF PLAYS: 
*THE CAULDRON (Brunton Theatre Co., 1988, and Scottish tour by Theatre Alba). 
*TAMLANE (Theatre Alba, 1981) 
*UNDER THE PASSING STARS (Brunton Theatre Company, 1989)

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EDWIN STIVEN ON THE FIRST PRODUCTION OF TAMLANE:

"TAMLANE was first performed at the Beldam Theatre in June 1981. The first night was not particularly auspicious, not least because the leading actress was stuck on a train somewhere in Fife, and the part of Janet had to be read by the girl who was doing our wardrobe. Despite this and some other technical hitches, the revues were good, and by the fourth and last night of our short run, the audiences were good too. Our little company was heartened by the enthusiasm and we resolved to put it on again in the forthcoming Fringe.

We couldn't afford a proper venue. We couldn't even afford to be in the Fringe Programme, but we were given the use of an excellent outdoor space in Regent Gardens at the back of Calton Hill. We opened on August the 16th at midnight, and Theatre Alba was born.

After eighteen years the memories of that production are all a little hazy. But all of us remember a truly magical experience among trees and flaming torches, with a horned moon hanging in the sky, and an enthralling theatrical experience where a play woven from the Supernatural Ballads created spells and wonders of its own.

The heroine of our play, Janet, is a girl reaching womanhood. She is drawn to the dark wood of Carterhaugh nearby her home. There she meets a mysterious character who calls himself Tamlane. He claims that , like her, he is of noble parentage but has been put in thrall by the Queen of Fairies. Janet is seduced by him and resolves to rescue him from the Fairy Host on Halloween. Meanwhile Janet's sister Margaret is similarly drawn to the even darker figure of Harpoon, the Elfin Knight. As Halloween approaches the tensions mount and the powerful Fairy Queen senses a threat to her sinister domain.

The play is set in the Scottish Borders of the 13th century but it really inhabits the world of the Ballads. This is a world rich in metaphor where good and evil, Christianity and paganism, sex and death...all exist on different planes of a reality suffused by allegory. It is a world entirely different from that found in the historical record of the medieval period, particularly in regard to its description of women and women's sexuality. One theory as to why this should be so is that, unlike the other records of the time, the Ballads were written by women."

Eddie Stiven