FringeReview Scotland 2025
Glasgow Green
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Emergence Festival

Genre: Fringe Theatre, Multimedia
Venue: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.
Festival: FringeReview Scotland
Low Down
At its core there is a central idea in Glasgow Green, which has got a great deal of merit however some of the transference from that of an idea into the reality on stage didn’t quite hit the mark. The video work became more impressive than the live performance work. The set appeared to have some function as the backdrop – a hint at the Green which gave the piece its title – but at times appeared to be a little lost in an experiment of itself.
Review
The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Emergence Festival is a place for experimentation and here credit should be given to director and protagonist, Lizzie Birrenbach, for doing this because they managed to provide quite a provocative set of ideas captured in a combination of video and live performance which eventually ended up with the audience being invited to come on stage.
Given that the audience were mainly drama students that seemed to be quite an easy task to be completed on the night however the build up to it was something with which there were a variety of challenges.
Beginning the performance by telling us that she was from Berlin and a director rather than a performer was more of a clue and indication to what happened next.
The video work was well imagined and its connection to the story understandable with a degree of fluidity.
The problem was that in the majority of this, the performances on stage seemed to be as much a surprise to those on stage as they were supposed to be to the audience.
It felt under rehearsed.
It meant people wandering about without a locus where they had the ability to make connections with the audience and much of the feeling that we had watching this was sympathy rather than empathy.
As announcing yourself as a director, it was clear that you were making a statement that needed to be backed up. the nature of theatre and how the barriers and the boundaries have been created was a nice topic and one which intrigued me – I just thought some of the boundaries could have been put back in as they were not really getting a depth of critique that would have merited some of the performance ideals. having said that, I did enjoy the thinking behind it and it did challenge me to consider a lot of theatrical convention.
In terms of the film work and the video work and the videography, that appeared to be the medium where the majority of effort would appear to have gone. Given the decision to mix it with live performance, that needed to be matched. There’s a gap that could have done with being filled in.
As a narrative, there were dips in and out of how the connection between life in Berlin and life in Glasgow was to be imagined and there were some interesting things within it.
However, again, it was then spoilt by people not quite knowing where they were moving to next. I also found the nudity to be gratuitous and not necessarily integral to the plot or narrative.
The videography that was used live was interesting, though, and I would have loved to have seen more of that developed and integrated into the performance, as that was something that I thought made a stronger connection between the visuals and the live.
This gave hints at some creative mindsets which promised a little more than they delivered but there were shoots, in concept and the way it ended with the video – loved the cartwheel outside the Kelvingrove too – suggesting there was so much more discussed than said. I do commend Birrenbach for doing this, because I think that there is something in the core of it that’s really interesting to look at, particularly in the light of where we are with regards to immigration and people coming to live in a new city and in a new environment. Giving us that wake-up call or feedback those of us who have lived in that environment for all of our lives, a degree of critical friendship, opening up our eyes to how we see ourselves as opposed to the way in which others see us.
I think that that was an opportunity that perhaps could be explored more. The Emergence Festival is about taking risk and I do think the risk was taken. Unfortunately, on this occasion, I think it fell a little short of the intention, but there was sufficient to feel confident that these were things missed rather than unconsidered.