at Knockvologan
at Theaterlab
This performance was made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the Support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Fiona Templeton
In the last few years I began Songs Between Worlds, thanks to the Asian Cultural Council,working with astonishing Japanese musician Yumiko Tanaka - being inspired by visiting the Itako women shamans, and by the old women poets of Scotland, coming full circle home.
In 2022 I presented a full draft of Neither Out Nor In, the Scottish part of Songs Between Worlds at Theaterlab New York, supported by a commission from New York State Council on the Arts.
Earlier in the year I traveled the Outer Hebrides of Scotland and the Isles of Skye and Mull, tracing the journeys and exiles of 16th century oral poet Mairi Nighean Alasdair Ruaidh. At the wild and beautiful Knockvologan Studies on Mull I wrote and researched, and at the Bogliasco Foundation by a different inspiring sea I translated her poems.
In 2017-19 I presented various versions of The Blue in New York, including at La Mama and a live radio show at Montez Press Radio. You can listen in to this in their archive soon! There will be a link on this page.
As you see, I’m enjoying the ear as a performance space these days.
I write poetry that is mostly for performance, or I write plays that are poetry. I think about time, about attention, about space, and about women, in practical ways. I stage work on citywide scales, and in intimate reach. I’m urgently concerned with the relations between humans.
On this site, you can find the past, present and future of what I’m doing. For my performance group, since the 21st century, you may also look at the Relationship site.
Bio:
Fiona has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (USA) in Poetry and Visual Arts, and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts in both performance and playwriting.
Born in Scotland, Fiona co-founded the Theatre of Mistakes in London in the 1970s and has lived and worked mostly in New York since 1980. Her award-winning YOU-The City, "an intimate Manhattan-wide play for an audience of one," has since been recreated in six countries and languages. The Medead, an epic retelling of the life of Medea ten years in the making was produced in 2012 at Roulette in Brooklyn and published by Roof Books. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of The Relationship, a New York based performance group.