Making and Touring Work

Image: Tiu Makkonen

We make multi-artform theatre for the curious, the bored, the experience seekers, the justice hunters, and those who take on the hard things in life with a pinch of salt, grime and glitter.

We care about the people in our audiences, and embed this into the foundations of the work we make and tour through Collaboration, Research and Dramaturgy, and Sector Wellbeing and Care.

Collaboration

Siren brings together groups of artists with practices that interact in electric ways, who all have something to say about the work we make, how we make it, and the stories that we tell.

Operating on a project-by-project basis, we generate work from an ideas stage – these ideas can be brought to the company by the Artistic Director, our Associate Artists, or anyone who has a story they need to tell which chimes with our values and process.

Research and Dramaturgy

Image: Tiu Makkonen

Our hunger for knowledge fuels our creativity – if knowledge is power, we want the stories we tell to be as powerful as possible. As our work speaks to experiences we rarely see explored on stages, it is important not to reinforce harmful stereotypes, and provide useful perspectives that actively contribute to the conversations that need to happen in the world.

Our work so far has creatively interpreted research on psychology, lived experience, physics theory, neuroscience, statics, verbatim interviews and CCTV footage, archival documents, social media comments, and even TripAdvisor reviews. Creatively exploring the world around us can sometimes look like gathering text messages about feeling unsafe and making them into a poem, connecting time travel to cabaret, or simply finding the interesting gaps in what is known about the subject we’re making a show about, and imagining what could be there.

Dramaturgy is important to our collaborative processes, with our stories thoroughly interrogated at every stage of development, ensuring that our work – while created by many people – has a strong voice of its own. Our previous partners include Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis, the Star Centre Ayr, and the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival. 

Sector Wellbeing and Care

Siren’s inception was rooted in lived experience of mistreatment in the arts sector, and the firmly held belief that excellent theatre should not be exploitative. We are an intersectional company committed to continual learning and employing best practice in an industry where wellbeing can easily get left behind. 

Through our work platforming under-told stories, we know that people telling these stories are often marginalised or require specific support; we build in access early in to our processes, including wellbeing structures to manage the often-unrecognised toll that emotional labour can take. We tailor our projects with wellbeing in mind.

We do not tolerate transphobia, ableism, racism, sexism, or prejudice against other marginalised groups.