Plays
'THE LASSES, O' by Janet Paisley - EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE SELL OUT SHOW 2010
a delightfully subtle act of subversion… Sunday Herald
Midwife, relative, mother-in-law, smuggler, neighbour - five women who knew Robert Burns tell their stories in monologue and song, threading together the poet's life in a humorous, moving play.
Scotsman: a powerful formula for a new perspective on Burns.
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THE LASSES, O - for Homecoming and Robert Burns' 250th anniversary, the award-winning playwright tells the stories of five women who knew him, each dramatically illuminated by one of his songs, and reveals his untold life story.
Dick was gaunae go mental. Dick was gaunae rage fur ever.
The double lines wur set like yella concrete. Stupendously, screaminly permanent.
Double Yella is a one-act monologue play based on a short story which appears in Janet Paisley's Not for Glory collection
Jordan Conrad is thirty-something, footloose and fancy free, an engineer who travels a homeless world setting up house wherever he hangs his hat, usually with settled friends whose lives and relationships are never the same again.
straitjackets is a study of repeating patterns in love affairs, life and friendships.
To have unexamined emotional responses is as immature, as dangerous, as to have unexamined beliefs…Norman MacCaig
Three women unravel their lives and reveal the explosive chaos that lies beneath. In an attic full of boxes stuffed with life's leftovers, successful lawyer Joanne tells her mother and her aunt, who is seething about her husband's infidelity, that her uncle abused her.
Paisley's play Refuge won the 1996 £50,000 Peggy Ramsay Memorial Award.
You don't win this award for nothing. The characterisations are too rich to be written as types, the dialogue too salty and downright funny at times to be dismissed as formula - The Guardian
Set in 1745, and inspired by the intriguing true story of Colonel Anne Farquharson, Deep Rising explores sex, politics, power and loyalty with wit, humour and dramatic intensity. And Bonnie Prince Charlie is nowhere in sight!
Deep Rising is Janet Paisley's second play. Her first play, Refuge, also commissioned by Stellar Quines and seen at the Traverse and on tour last year, won the 1996 Peggy Ramsay Award. One of Scotland's most original writers, Janet Paisley has also won several awards for her poetry and fiction.
Refuge weaves together the lives of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Five women and a teenage boy thrown together by circumstance: a hotbed of tension that explodes in humour, conflict, laughter and rage.
Refuge is powerfully moving, disturbing and, at times, achingly funny. It's a story of immense courage - about what happens when refuge is not a place, but a way of life.
Winner of the prestigious 1996 Peggy Ramsay Award, Janet Paisley's play Refuge shatters preconceived notions about violence against women, balancing emotional directness with an earthy and anarchic humour.
Additional Plays
- Pair of Jacks – FVG&S 1989
- Curds & Cream – BBC radio 4 1997
- Silver Bullet – BBC radio 2003
- Diary of a Goth – BBC radio 2003
- Sooans Nicht – CPT 1996
- Four Funerals & a Wedding - And is Cut Doon – CPT 1995
- Bill & Koo – BBC radio 4 1995
Plays - Co-writer/Performer
- For Want of a Nail – Mayfest 1994
- Back to Basics – Mayfest 1993
- Stick – Mayfest 1992
- The Killing of Women – Mayfest 1991
- Bread & Circuses – Mayfest 1990
- Saturday Nights & Sunday Mourning - Edinburgh Festival Fringe 1989