David Greig

Scottish playwright, theatre director and Artistic Director of Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Theatre who adapted Lanark for the Edinburgh International Festival in 2015.

What does Alasdair Gray mean to you?

Explain yourself?

Childlike: Alasdair pushed at things to see how they work: ‘what happens if you do it this way, wouldn’t it be fun if’. There’s a vulnerability to that, very different from the knowing ‘look how clever I am’ of a lot of post-modernism. I’m not implying that there isn’t enormous intelligence and learning and wit and breadth and erudition. All of that is there. But I do think underneath that there is something else as well: a floating free and away from the world of the literati and glitterati. And that was a great gift.

Excess: His work is vast. Immense. The scale of the vision. The different media. Everything about Lanark is like the opening of a door. You can write a book that knows it’s a book, you can write a book in the wrong order, that has drawings in it. You can write a book that has fantastical elements but also naturalistic elements… and the biggest of all things, you can be Scottish and do this. So it’s political, timeless, universal and also about the intimacy of human relationships.

Cosmic: Lanark is full of diving into worlds. Down into an underworld, through into a new world, through water, through imagination. It’s science fiction… and you don’t often see that on stage.

How does Alasdair continue to influence or inspire you?

When adapting other people’s work, it gave me the strength to go at it head on, to resist making changes, find the original intention. That has continued for me.

How adaptable is Alasdair Gray?

Find out how David Greig and other daring creatives did the impossible and adapted Alasdair’s work for stage, audio and screen.

Not all the drama happened on stage! Read more