Muster Station: Leith

production photography Jess Shurte and Ryan Buchanan

Doppler

Photo Credit: Duncan McGlynn

Playthrough

Photo Credit: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Photo credit: Peter Dibdin

A Game of Death and Chance

Welcome

Ben is Co-Artistic Director of Scottish theatre company Grid Iron. He also works all over the world as a freelance director and playwright.

Recent work includes Muster Station: Leith for Grid Iron / Edinburgh International Festival, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar for Helen Milne Productions/ Perth Theatre / Roald Dahl Story Company and Undertow Overflow, his collaboration with Amy Duncan which toured Scotland in 2022 and was invited to Babelfast in Romania in 2023. The production marked Ben’s return to the stage as a performer for the first time in 27 years.

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Statement on Palestine

2023-2024

I completely condemn the ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip, the killing of over 29,000 Palestinians and the wounding of many many others. The situation did not begin on October 7th but rather with the beginning of the Nakbha in 1948 with the massacres of Palestinians and the destruction or occupation of their towns and villages. This continues to this day in the Occupied West Bank with daily and systematic humiliation of Palestinian civilians. Such collective punishment of civilians as we are now seeing conducted by the State of Israel in Gaza and the West Bank must stop now. The UK and US government are giving the IDF carte blanche to do exactly as it likes without any consequences. I support the Scottish government’s call for an immediate ceasefire. The Gaza Strip has been in a state of semi-siege for many years and this is now compounded by a near-complete lock-down, with very limited water and energy supplies getting through to the civilian population. It is not only the aerial bombardment and ground fighting that is causing huge numbers of deaths but also the power shut down to hospitals where patients have died and newborns in incubators have perished as a result, together with the much tighter than usual restriction of water and energy supplies to the inhabitants of Gaza which have caused and will cause more deaths. The continuing attacks on Gaza have no legal or moral justification and break several international treaties. Having worked in the West Bank and having had a close encounter with the IDF in 2023 I am also deeply concerned for the safety of my theatre colleagues in the West Bank since the Israeli Defence Force’s attack on the Freedom Theatre in Jenin in December. I call for an immediate ceasefire to allow the entry of urgently required humanitarian aid to Gaza and I stand in solidarity with my peers, colleagues and other arts organisations who are calling for this necessary action too.

The Tailor of Inverness to premiere in London in May 2024

February 2024

Ben is delighted to announce that The Tailor of Inverness, one of his most successful and multi-award winning  shows, will reach London after touring over 230 times after its Glasgow premiere in 2008. The production has visited New York City, Adelaide, Berlin, toured across Ukraine, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland and Scotland. Written and performed by Matthew Zajac, the show weaves the multiple stories of his father’s life in Poland and across Europe during the war and his settlement in Scotland where the ends do not neatly tie up.

London premiere at the Finborough Theatre on 14th May, running until 8th June.

Recent Productions

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