Welcome to Lucy Gaizely

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We are delighted to welcome our first Artistic Fellow to the Centre. Lucy Gaizely is an artist who creates theatre that challenges the accepted and expected. Her work is produced through the performance collective 21Common. She will be working on a project about addiction in her time with us. 

Lucy’s pervious work includes the international hit show Dancer, an Unlimited Commission 2014, which was developed during a residency at Sense Scotland. Since then Dancer has toured – and is still touring – the world, being programmed across the UK, was part of Made in Scotland at the Edinburgh Fringe 2016, toured to South America, Scandinavia and was part of the Made in Scotland Festival in Brussels in 2019.

In 2016, building on learning from Dancer, she began a similar process to make a new piece of work. The Ballad of the Apathetic Son and His Narcissistic Mother, which was developed over two years by Lucy and her 14 year old son. This was also part of Made in Scotland Showcase at the Edinburgh Fringe 2018 and went on to undertake a significant international tour to Germany, Poland, Sweden, London, Australia and New Zealand.

Her 2019 work was IN THE INTEREST OF HEALTH AND SAFETY CAN PATRONS PLEASE SUPERVISE THEIR CHILDREN AT ALL TIMES….featuring ten ten-year-old children, high scaffolding, French torch songs and some very scabby mattresses. A deranged disco of a show, it examined society’s reluctance to let children take risks. It was premiered as part of Tramway Presents and Take Me Somewhere Festival 2019 after being developed through Imaginate’s PuSH EU Lab residency since 2017. It was nominated as Outstanding Dance Performance at the Herald Culture Awards 2019 and was selected as part of the Made in Scotland Showcase 2020, now postponed to 2022.

In 2018 Lucy was commissioned by National Theatre of Scotland to co-curate a large-scale festival of work for young adults called Futureproof, which placed ten international artists working in social practice in ten locations across Scotland. During COVID lockdown she created a film with a group of children called Anyone, an immersive experience about loneliness, love, boredom and Tiktok, designed to be watched on a mobile phone.

Currently she is completing a further commission from the National Theatre of Scotland to undertake a period of Action Research on the theme of ‘Care in Scotland’ in collaboration with learning disabled artist Ian Johnston. This research will be realised in a film called Non-optimum: When it’s safe to do so, to be screened in June.

Lucy’s enduring interest lies in work that examines Motherhood and society's collective (or not) responsibility to children. She explored this with her own children using iconoclastic references, pop culture and preoccupation with risk and danger.

Lucy was also an associate teaching artist on the Contemporary Performance Practice programme at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland; Creative Learning Programmer at The Arches and she has produced the work of Adrian Howells, Mammalian Diving Reflex, Janice Parker and Solar Bear.