The National Theatre of Scotland is a unique, non building-based, commissioning and producing cultural institution, established in the wake of the devolution of the Scottish Parliament. This thesis explores how the NTS responded to its ‘national’ remit within the context of both post devolution Scotland and an increasingly globalized world in which the significance and boundaries of the ‘nation’ are often ambiguous and contested. The public sphere in the United Kingdom has always held a tension between the interweaving national identities of its four constituent nations. However, the constitutional changes since 1999, have allowed the possibility for a more distinctive public sphere to be defined in Scotland. This thesis examines how the NTS, over a relatively short period of time, has played a role in helping to mark out and define the nature of this new national public sphere and argues that the company was particularly well placed to accommodate and reflect heterogeneous imagining’s of identity and respond to contemporary expressions of belonging. However, the thesis also charts changes to the company during these early years and, most significantly, notes the potential effect that the change from arms length to direct government funding might have on the company’s long-term development. The thesis argues that direct funding aligns the arts too closely to political agendas rather than supporting artistic freedom and expression. As such, rather than helping to mark out a democratically representative and critical public sphere in Scotland, the NTS is in danger of becoming entangled by competing conceptions and perceptions of nationhood in Scotland.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:559889 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Robinson, Rebecca Charlotte |
| Publisher | University of Glasgow |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2915/ |
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