Message from the skies 2019 - Chapter 5 - Stef Smith - Love Letter to Europe
Channel: Szilárd Zsolt Sztupák
Date: 2020-01-30

Message from the skies 2019

Stef Smith's Love Letter to Europe
The Bongo Club, Cowgate

About the creative team

Writer:

Stef Smith is an multi award-winning writer working for both stage and screen.

Work includes: GIRL IN THE MACHINE and SWALLOW (Traverse Theatre); HUMAN ANIMALS (Royal Court); REMOTE (National Theatre Connections Festival); TEA AND SYMMETRY (BBC Radio).

Stef's critically acclaimed show, ROADKILL, won numerous awards, including an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. Stef’s Traverse Theatre Commission SWALLOW won a Scotsman’s Fringe First Award and the Scottish Arts Club Theatre Award.

Recently Stef took part in the BBC Drama Writers Room and her current commissions include the Traverse Theatre, the Citizens Theatre, Leeds Playhouse, the National Theatre of Scotland and the National Theatre. She is an Associate Artist at the Traverse Theatre and Leeds Playhouse.

Designer:

Eleanor Meredith studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, followed by a MA in Communication Design at Central Saint Martins. Since then she worked multidisciplinary artist, working in the fields of illustration, printmaking and animation.

Her illustration clients include Thames and Hudson, The Southbank Centre, BBC Education, Hotel Bloom, and the Scottish Government.

Her time-based work combining animation and live drawing has resulted in an artist in residency position at Central Saint Martins. She collaborates with her sister, composer Anna Meredith; creating large installation work Anno, creating a 360 degrees installation which was played at the Tramway in Glasgow, and in the ICE in Edinburgh as part of the international festival in 2018.

As well as her own practice she now teaches delivering workshops at, Victoria and Albert Museum, British Film Institute, UCL and Norwich University of Arts.

Composer:

Michael John McCarthy is a Cork-born, Glasgow-based composer, musician & sound designer.

Theatre companies he has worked with include Abbey Theatre, Lyceum Edinburgh, National Theatre of Scotland, Lung Ha and Youth Music Theatre UK.

To date he has collaborated on the making of seven Scotsman Fringe First award winners & has been thrice-nominated for the Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland in the category Best Use of Music & Sound.

Michael John's primary instruments are guitar and piano accordion. He has toured Europe & Japan with Zoey Van Goey, Lord Cut-Glass and Aidan Moffat. He appears as an accordionist on albums by Alasdair Roberts, RM Hubbert, Niall Connolly, Emma Pollock, Trembling Bells & Bonnie Prince Billy amongst others.

Work for film includes co-composing/performing the score for Where You're Meant To Be (Paul Fegan) and music for Pitching Up (Guardian Documentaries).

He is lead artist on Turntable, a participatory arts music project in association with Red Bridge.

About this location

In the cellars below Edinburgh's Central Library and George IV Bridge is a former grain store, which became a bank vault, and latterly book storage for the library itself. The Bongo Club now makes its home here. Pushing the boundaries of the Edinburgh scene since 1996, The Bongo Club is a nightclub, live venue and all-round artistic hub with a street-level-headed attitude and an international reputation.

Truly independent, they’re owned by local arts charity Out Of The Blue, which has an established track record as a catalyst for creativity in Edinburgh.