The Third Eye Centre Presents...

Alongside the visual arts programme from the first days of the Third Eye Centre the centre developed and supported a significant schedule of live theatre performances, presenting  local and national theatre groups such as TraverseTheatre Group, The Royal Lyceum Theatre Company, Scottish Youth Theatre and MovingBeing .  The centre also regularly hosted performances by students from The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland), including this 1976 double bill of Brecht featuring a young Ruby Wax.

Image Credit: Third Eye Centre/CCA Archive

 

The archive material reveals that the Third Eye Centre was a site of experimentation for young theatrical talent, providing a stage for innovative theatre groups like Joint-Stock and its director Max-Stafford-Clark.  Crucial to the longevity of the lively theatre scene in Scotland, the centre also offered a forum for playwrights’ critical discursion through regular workshops and readings.  Supporting the theatre network as well as the live performance is a precedent maintained by the cultural tenants at the CCA, PlaywrightsStudio Scotland, Vanishing Point and Cryptic.

Leading the Way

Following the St John Ogilvie exhibition in 1979 the Third Eye Centre maintained its precedent for engaging communities beyond visual art when it teamed up with the Association in Scotland to Research into Astronautics to produce The High Frontier.

Image Credit: The Third Eye Centre Archive

‘One of the most ambitious spaceflight exhibitions ever held in the UK’, exhibits drew from photographic coverage of various national and international space programmes, along site models and actual space hardware.  A full supporting programme of events and seminars included Spaced Out season of Science Fiction Film at the GFT.

The exhibition catalogue discusses the imperative issues and questions surrounding space research with an enthusiasm and imagination that seems somewhat outmoded now after the public excitement and novelty of space exploration has faded.  This then innovative concept of collaboration between visual arts orgnaisations and divergent communities remains so and is still prevalent at the CCA today.  But public issues and interests change and innovations become commonplace, and as a consequence, the content of these pervious collaborations perhaps no longer retain their place at the front line of  our interest...