Performance
Originally from Glasgow and currently based in North Fife, Rebecca Sharp is a writer whose work spans performance, poetry, prose and numerous collaborative and interdisciplinary projects.Having studied Theatre at Glasgow University, her early plays were produced at the Arches in Glasgow - ‘fascinatingly complex, audacious and at times brain-poppingly clever work’ (Neil Cooper, The Herald).Rebecca’s interest in testing boundaries and exploring interdisciplinary practice led her to work more in poetry and prose.In 2009-10 she was Artist-in-Residence at Metal Liverpool, where she made The Ballad of Juniper Davy and Sonny Lumiere (with visual artist Elizabeth Willow); a sequence of fifteen poems and original score, forming a site-specific performance and book.Other collaborative work includes The Tiger Act with artist printmaker Hugh Bryden (Roncadora Press, 2012) and Fathoming: setting poetry to silk with Eva Fulinova (2010), a triptych of poems and silk objects.In 2013 she made the text / sound / performance Rules of the Moon with sound-artist composer Philip Jeck, which they performed at the Bluecoat in Liverpool and have recorded.
Increasingly drawn to themes of Scottish culture, landscape and identity, Rebecca made Unmapped (2013) with artist Anna King - a sequence of poems and paintings that was exhibited at StAnza: Scotland’s International Poetry Festival and at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts Kelly Gallery in 2013, with accompanying book and website.Little Forks / Forcan Beaga (2012-14) was originally written as prose; published in English and Gaelic and toured in Scotland and England as a live literature event – leading Stellar Quines theatre company to commission a full-length stage adaptation, currently in development.
In 2013, Rebecca worked with Mr McFall’s Chamber / Remembered Imagined to produce a new text for performance, with composer Ailie Robertson, using source material from the archive of the Department of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University.The piece, For the Bees, continues to tour in Scotland, performed by Mr McFall’s Chamber, Maeve McIntosh and Angus Peter Campbell.In 2014, Rebecca was one of the writers commissioned by Stellar Quines theatre company to make a new work for site-specific performance at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, in response to a chosen artwork; Rebecca’s piece The Unmaking of Mary Somerville was performed by Sarah Barron.
Rebecca is currently working on another new play with Stellar Quines - The Air That Carries The Weight will explore the life and work of Scottish archaeologist and writer Marion Campbell.Directed by Muriel Romanes, it will feature an original score by Scottish composer and musician Catriona McKay.
Rebecca was included in the Saltire Society’s 2014 list of Outstanding Women of Scotland, for contributions to Scottish culture and society.
‘What Sharp has created is a grave, powerful and richly contemporary event, inspired by the special power of Scotland’s far western landscape, and brave enough to bring these two mighty languages alongside one another. It should be seen across Scotland, not least in those areas where Gaelic still lives, breathes, and has the power to change.’Joyce MacMillan in The Scotsman - on Little Forks/Forcan Beaga
‘Impossible not to be moved by these restless, shifting poems with their precise yet tender observation of decay and disrepair… This is a beautifully balanced work, a collection that is both unnervingly strange yet also life-affirmingly human.’ Anna Crowe, poet - on Unmapped
‘This is beautiful, lyrical work that raises philosophical and physical questions about the nature of reality, as the boundaries melt between land and sea, the present and the past, between people and animals, in a vision which is perhaps nearer the truth than we know.’Meg Bateman, poet - on Little Forks/Forcan Beaga
