Enquirer - radio broadcast

From Emma Lennox of Hopscotch Films

The radio broadcast of Enquirer – a co-production from the National Theatre of Scotland, the London Review of Books, and Hopscotch Films - premièred on Friday 16 November.

Blending fact, anecdote and passionate opinion, Enquirer is a rapid response to the unfolding events in the newspaper industry. It is based on interviews with over forty journalists and was first performed in June as a site-specific piece of theatre performed in an empty media office block in Glasgow. 

As its tour draws to a close, we would like to invite you to listen to a specially produced radio broadcast on Radio 4 (Friday 16 November at 9pm).

Edited and directed by Vicky Featherstone and John Tiffany, co-edited by Andrew O'Hagan. The Enquirer cast includes: Maureen Beattie, John Bett, Billy Boyd, James Anthony Pearson, Gabriel Quigley and Billy Riddoch.

In the meantime, you can visit the microsite at Enquirer

You can listen to the play here

Billy Boyd - 'Enquirer' on Storify

The National Theatre of Scotland have shared a link to their Storify page regarding reactions to Enquirer, starring Billy Boyd

See the Storify page here (includes photos, tweets and soundtrack)

Billy Boyd hits out as film version of Irvine Welsh novel is shot in Canada

His latest movie could have been a shot in the arm for our film industry – but Billy Boyd is frustrated that new “Scottish” flick Ecstasy is full of Canadians.

The Lord of The Rings star, from Cranhill, Glasgow, has spoken out about the “nightmare” scenario faced by Canadian film-maker Rob Heydon when he tried to secure funding from creative bodies in Scotland for the film adapted from an Irvine Welsh story.

Instead of a cast full of Scots, Ecstasy, released this week, has only two homegrown stars, including Billy.

And the actor says the reluctance of funding bodies to cough up over the last decade has deprived Scots in the film industry of work in the recession.

Billy, 43, said: “I first met Rob 10 years ago to talk about this project.

“He’s been trying to get it made in Scotland since then and couldn’t get the finance from Scottish Screen (the now defunct Scottish film body).

“In the end, he just gave up and made it in Canada instead.

“When he met with the funding bodies in Scotland, he was told that it ‘wasn’t Scottish enough’.

“I’m sure there must be all sorts of ins and outs business wise. But why the hell in this country would we not make a film that would give something like 20 actors work and 40 crew jobs? It beats me.

“The film’s set in Leith, after all. The guy’s been trying to get an Irvine Welsh film with a good script made for years in Scotland. I have no idea why that wouldn’t happen.”

Billy appears with Scots actor Adam Sinclair (currently appearing in BBC3’s Lip Service) and a slew of Canadian names, including Smallville star Kristin Kreuk.

He said: “Kristin plays it Canadian but there are a lot of Canadians doing Scottish accents.”

Only a handful of scenes in the adaptation of Edinburgh writer Welsh’s short story, The Undefeated, were filmed here.

It tells of two lonely souls who hook up on the Scottish club scene in the Nineties.

Kreuk plays the lead as a Canadian living in Scotland but most of the film was shot around Toronto.

Welsh has also been quoted as saying the film was “an absolute banker” to be shot in Scotland, pointing out a combination of nostalgia for the Nineties and healthy sales on release would suggest a ready-made audience here.

Billy – who also plays in a band called Beecake – concedes he has no idea if it will have the same success as Welsh’s most famous adaptation, 1996’s Trainspotting.

He said: “You can never second guess these things. Nobody knew what would happen with Trainspotting until it happened. Everything just hit in the right place. It’s like making a war movie and asking if it’s going to be an Apocalypse Now.

“Sometimes it takes off, sometimes it doesn’t. But I’ve done my bit.”

A critical mauling on the back of the Scottish première of Stone of Destiny, in which he starred in 2008, also proved a salutary experience for Billy.

He said: “They were thinking about opening Ecstasy in Scotland and I told them I didn’t think it was a good idea.

“I love Scotland but the weird thing is there tends to be a, ‘don’t touch our stories’ thing going on.

“Stone of Destiny had an American director who didn’t know Scotland as well as we do. But if I go and make a film in the US I’m not going to know it as well as Francis Ford Coppola.”

Billy plays DJ and e-prophet Woodsy in Ecstasy, which went on release last night, after a première at London’s Ministry of Sound this week.

As a 19-year-old during the so-called “second summer of love”, and in his 20s at the birth of the e-fuelled rave scene in the Nineties, Billy plays his cards close to his chest about how much of it he experienced first-hand.

He said: “We went to Ibiza when I was about 17 and we couldn’t believe all these happy faces. We didn’t know what was happening, we were more used to everyone fighting in Glasgow.”

Did he partake himself?

“That’s a question you know I’m not going to answer,” he said, politely.

If he’s adept at dodging a tricky question, it may be due to the research he’s done for his upcoming theatre role. Billy joins Maureen Beattie, John Bett and James Pearson in National Theatre of Scotland’s latest project Enquirer, an “investigation into newspapers”.

The play, which opens at Glasgow’s Hub next Thursday, is based on interviews done by three British journalists with people in the media in the days of circulation battles and debates on ethics.

Directed by Black Watch’s John Tiffany and NTS Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone, it has been edited by top Scots writer Andrew O’Hagan.

As someone whose affinity for newspapers stretches back to his days delivering them in Cranhill, Billy still prefers buying a paper to going online. “I like to get to know the writers and their work and still like the feel of a newspaper,” he said.

“I wouldn’t have been interested in doing a piece that was about bashing newspapers. There has been some horrible stuff going on, with the Leveson Inquiry, phone hacking and so on, but you can’t destroy a whole industry because of that.”

After Enquirer, Billy will provide The Voice of the Book in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy at Glasgow’s King’s Theatre in June, and also has a couple of films in the pipeline.

After co-producing inter-galactic comedy Space Milkshake – about “four people in a space station who collect rubbish in space” – he starred in Carmel opposite true Hollywood royalty.

He said: “It’s set in the art world in the town Clint Eastwood was mayor of. I’m in it with Lauren Bacall, Hayden Panettiere (Heroes) and Alfred Molina. It was quite something to be working with Lauren Bacall.

“She’s hardcore, real Hollywood. But she was great to me, and was really good with my son Jack when she came out for dinner with my wife Ali and I.

“I’d be sitting with my family and listening to her telling stories about Humphrey Bogart. It was incredible.”

Ecstasy is out now. Enquirer, The Hub, Glasgow, April 26 to May 13. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Glasgow, King’s Theatre, June 8-9. Beecake appear with Jon Fratelli and Tom Urie at the MacRobert Arts Centre, Stirling, on June 15.

Source: DailyRecord

The National Theatre of Scotland have shared a link to comments following the preview of  Enquirer

Interview with Billy Boyd re Enquirer

A natural Enquirer

Billy Boyd smiles at the argument that his latest stage role is likely to arouse and repel interest from journalists in equal measure.

Enquirer, a collaboration piece between National Theatre of Scotland directors John Tiffany and Vicky Featherstone, novelist Andrew O'Hagan and some of the UK's leading hacks, is an attempt at understanding the British newspaper world.

It's an overview of the crises in the industry written via the narrative of a day in a newspaper office, how the news agenda constantly changes and all that editorial meetings throw up.

Yes, journalists will want to know how this production (which involved more than 30 interviews being carried out with reporters and writers) shapes up, and what it has to say about the world of print. But at the same time, do we really want a busman's holiday to a place we visit every day, to be reminded of the difficulties facing the industry?

"I think journalists will like the play," says the actor who achieved international success with his Lord Of The Rings appearances. "It will be informative and hopefully interesting - and, of course, entertaining."

Enquirer hasn't been written just for media consumption, of course. And it does offer a novel approach to presenting a zeitgeist subject. It's set in a "new site-specific theatre" at Glasgow's Hub Building and during rehearsals it remained to be seen if the cast – Boyd, Maureen Beattie, John Bett, Gabriel Quigley and James Anthony Pearson – would play specific characters or present the material via different voices. No matter, Boyd maintains it will work and offer real insight.

"Vicky called and told me of the idea for it, and I thought it fascinating. We both agreed that the story of journalism wasn't about the tabloid sensations over the years. Nor was it about the Leveson Inquiry, although Leveson has to be mentioned of course, but it takes us to the place where tabloid journalism has arrived. We are looking at the notion of losing the printed word and the expansion of the internet."

Boyd's love affair with newspapers began when he started work as an apprentice bookbinder in Glasgow. "One of my great joys in life still is buying a newspaper and reading it over a coffee. I look forward to reading informed comment, to get into a writer's head, to see what they've come up with that day. But the worry for newspapers now is that people are getting information from the internet. They feel they've read a comment on Twitter and that informs them. Yet, the internet is very often people spewing out nonsense.

"The other concern is that news is covered immediately these days on the electronic media. Within seconds a story can go round the world. So what can newspapers do about that?"

Indeed. However, Boyd – who has recently filmed a new comedy movie, Space Milkshake, set in Canada – makes a strong case for print journalism. "Writers can give us their view; they have the voice that people will want to listen to. And newspapers can offer great colour. Sure, we can get the actual news in so many places, but newspapers can give us so much more analysis."

He adds: "That's not to say newspaper interviews and features shouldn't go on the internet. And perhaps all papers will one day appear exclusively in electronic form. But perhaps not."

Boyd admits it's been a mammoth task to present a theatre piece about the evolution of journalism; dissecting and assimilating the massive volume of words collected. "There are so many ideas to condense into an hour and 15 minutes. But the essential aim is to get across what could be lost to the world. Yet we also need to look at the economies of scale and changing financial position of papers. One story we tell, for example, talks of the days when editors would send a reporter to Aberdeen to go nightclubbing and simply see what stories they came back with. That doesn't really happen these days. There's a line in the play which sums up the constraints: 'Join a newspaper and phone the world.'

"But is someone sitting in front of a computer and reading Twitter what reporting should be about?" he ponders. "This play is about the very nature of journalism; the challenge for journalists, the ideals they had on entering the job and how these have altered when confronted with the reality. It's also about the variety of the work, writing a piece of fluff one minute, talking about a celebrity's new handbag or covering a major international story about Iraq."

Boyd, a former RSAMD student who has worked across the theatre medium from drama to panto, maintains Enquirer is must-see theatre. But would the actor, who also fronts rock band Beecake and has a new album out this summer, have liked to have been a journalist? Has his experience with journalists informed – or coloured – his thinking? His Lord Of The Rings stint did generate thousands of column inches - and some personal family intrusion.

"I've met some great journalists and some real horrors," he says, grinning. "There's a comment in this play which runs: 'For a journalist to comment on the human condition and all human beings, all human beings have to be in journalism.' You have to look at the individual rather than the occupation."

But should the individual journalist not assume Enquirer is a 75-minute declaration of "We're all doomed!"?

"I think we have to be optimistic about the future of journalism," he says. "The feeling is that nobody really knows where it's going, but it could go somewhere brilliant. Journalists, I guess, have to think like actors in the sense that you have to keep that positive headspace and assume all will turn out fine."

Enquirer, The Hub, Pacific Quay, Glasgow, April 26-May 12, 8pm.

Source: Herald Scotland

Billy Boyd: two new theatre projects

Scottish National Theatre to tackle 'crisis in newspaper journalism'

The National Theatre of Scotland is to stage an investigation into "the crisis in newspaper journalism", using real testimony, which will be performed on the top floor of a media office block in Glasgow. Around 60 hours of interviews are being gathered and will be distilled for a production called Enquirer, looking at the "past, present and future" of newspapers. It will examine ethical questions and the Leveson inquiry, as well as issues around declining print revenues and the rise of digital media.

The NTS's artistic director, Vicky Featherstone, said the project, which was announced on Thursday, emerged from a discussion she had with director John Tiffany in December.
"A lot of our peers, people we grew up with, are journalists, and we'd had discussions with them about this 'crisis' – as they called it – in journalism. It is the hardest thing for journalists to be able to talk about their own situation."
Which is where theatre comes in, she said. "Theatre is an amazing place to be able to ask the big questions, not necessarily to know what the answers are but just put the questions out there and begin a debate.
"We are not doing a piece where a single writer with a single voice will come up with a state-of-the-nation piece with a conclusion and a thesis. This will not be a complete analysis of where we are at now."

The production is a collaboration with the London Review of Books, and involves three journalists – Paul Flynn, Ruth Wishart and the Guardian's Deborah Orr – interviewing other journalists, as well as printers, retailers and readers. That testimony will be edited down by Featherstone, Tiffany and the writer, and London Review of Books contributing editor Andrew O'Hagan. It is all being prepared "deliberately quickly", said Featherstone, with the production set to open at the end of April.
It will be staged on the top floor of a building called The Hub, in the media quarter of Glasgow, with a promenade performance for audiences of around 70.
"Because of what newspapers are, we wanted to respond immediately to what we were feeling and what people were telling us," said Featherstone. "We want it to be in the moment."
For that reason, producers will update the project through rehearsals and performances to reflect whatever developments might occur. The show will be in Glasgow from 26 April until 12 May, and travel to an east London venue in October, in association with the Barbican. It will be directed by Featherstone and Tiffany, whose biggest success was the international hit Black Watch, a play based on interviews with soldiers which began life at the Edinburgh festival in 2006 before travelling across the UK, the US, Canada and Australia.
Source: Guardian

Twitter had this to say about The Enquirer:  

• Billy Boyd is appearing in the exciting new @NTSonline announced today! 

• In the cast of @ntsonline's Enquirer are Maureen Beattie, John Bett, Billy Boyd, James Anthony Pearson and Gabriel Quigley 

• #Enquirer a site-specific piece constructed from interviews from those in the newspaper industry. 

• New production announcement! "Scottish National Theatre to tackle 'crisis in newspaper journalism' http://gu.com/p/368bq/tw via @guardian" 

Andrew Scott & Billy Boyd will be reading Martin Amis & Irvine Welsh at the Criterion Theatre on March 30th  

Stories Before Bedtime is a series of late-night readings designed to champion the love of reading and stories and to transport the audience back to when being read aloud to before bedtime was a fundamental part of one's daily life. Come and listen to classic short stories come to life in the mouths of some of this country's leading actors and actresses.
Hot on the heels of February's Twisted Love starring Tom Hiddleston and Russell Tovey comes this raucous evening of comic twists and star turns featuring extracts from Jerome's classic book Three Men in a Boat.
Fresh from the movie set of Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy, Billy Boyd (Lord of the Rings) will be reading Irvine Welsh's darkly hilarious short story The Granton Star Cause.
Andrew Scott (Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes) will be reading an extract from Martin Amis' debut coming-of-age novel The Rachel Papers.
Friday 30th March 2012.
Details and ticket information at Criterion Theatre