Objektiv History

Theatre Objektiv was formed in 2002/03 by Raymond Raszkowski Ross with Ed Robson (Ed, late of this parish, is presently artistic director at Cumbernauld).

The company grew out of the three successive and successful productions of Out of Europe: Children of the Holocaust staged for the Edinburgh Fringe and then as part of the National Holocaust Day commemorations hosted by the City of Edinburgh.

Objektiv then brought Fryderyk Francisek Chopin from Zelzowa Wola via Paris to Scotland with Chopin in Midcalder at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2003.

The company soon moved into a Soviet psychiatric hospital to meet two old Bolsheviks, Boris and Karloff, in Karl Marx's Beard (2004), which intrigued some former Red Clydesiders in Glasgow (while noising up the unreconstructed) before playing to packed houses at the Traverse.

The Secret Agent, a radical adaptation of the novel by Polish writer Joseph Conrad, led to a theatre installation event housed throughout the Roxy Art House in Auld Reekie to which many of the installation survivors returned some six months later for a dramatised reading of the fuller script (2004/05).

In 2005/06 we learned How to Kill Your Lover in a devised manner, the final performance developed through workshopping some challenging theatrical ideas; a process in which , thankfully, no one was actually killed.

Summer 2006 brought the Little Quarter of Prague over to the Old Town of Edinburgh to draw in many visitors from around the world and from around the corner to see The Old Quarter, based around the stories of the Czech Dickens Jan Neruda.

At the Festival Fringe 2007, Theatre Objektiv joined forces with Go4It Youth Theatre to produce Miracles, an ensemble piece starring David Hume, St Augustine, Darwin, Freud and Jung. Miracles was re-staged for Inter-faith week in autumn 2007.

In 2009, the Scottish Storytellling Centre/Netherbow Theatre premiered A Promised Land, a thought-provoking play about a quiet but dedicated woman, who unintentionally became one of the 20th century’s greatest Scots - Jane Haining, sometimes referred to as ‘the Scottish Schindler’ because of her achievement in saving dozens of Hungarian Jewish children from the gas chambers.

In September and October 2010 the company took A Promised Land on a tour of Scotland together with Can You Dig the Temple Mount, Man? a short reflective piece which explores the mysteries, histories, significances and dangers of The Temple Mount in Jerusalem today.

In May 2011 the Scottish Storytelling Centre in partnership with Theatre Objektiv explored the process of theatre making and how performance, direction, verbal craft and visual metaphor combine to create drama in Theatre of Story: Theatre of Dreams workshops.

The pilot production of Wojtek the Bear graced the stage of the Scottish Storytelling Centre in June 2012. Telling the extraordinary story of Wojtek, the loveable Polish soldier bear, who fought at Monte Cassino. An emotive journey from the Soviet Gulag and Persia to the Middle East, Italy and Scotland, this is the story of how a man came to mother a bear, of how they went to war together and how they were to survive in post-war Britain. A story of love and loyalty, war and peace, heroism and hope, written by Raymond Raszkowski Ross and directed by Corinne Harris – total theatre with live music developed as an ensemble production from Theatre Objektiv.