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But when Scottish singer-songwriter Finn Anderson’s ambitious show, which started life as a student production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, finally gets its first major professional theatre run next year it will be opening hundreds of miles away from Scotland.
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Ballad Lines – which Glasgow-based Anderson has developed with Portuguese theatre director Tania Azevedo, a long-time collaborator, since 2017 – has been snapped up by a London theatre for an extended run after a planned tour of Scottish theatres had to be shelved due to a lack of funding support.
The Scottish Government’s arts agency twice turned down applications to its touring fund, despite funding an initial four-day run of the show at the Macrobert Arts Centre, in Stirling, in 2023.
Actress Kirsty Findlay has been involved with the Scottish stage musical Ballad Lines, which was previously known as A Mother’s Song. Creative Scotland has also supported the recording of an album of songs from the musical which will be launched at a one-off concert at Cottiers in Glasgow on September 15.
The album features a host of stars of Scotland’s trad music and theatre scenes, including singers Kim Carnie and Beth Malcolm, musicians Anna Massie and Laura Wilkie, actress Kirsty Findlay and actor Dylan Wood.
Singer-songwriter Beth Malcolm has worked on the new album for the Scottish stage musical Ballad Lines.
However the full eight-week run of Ballad Lines will be staged at the Southwark Playhouse between January and March next year after its Scottish producer, Kate Taylor, was unable to get enough support for the show in Scotland.
Azevedo has suggested the show was too “ambitious” to be supported to tour around Scottish theatres.
New Scottish stage musical Ballad Lines will be running for eight weeks in London next year.
Although there are no further dates of the show planned, although Anderson and Azevedo are hopeful that their ambitions of seeing the show tour around Scotland can still be realised.
Ballad Lines, which was originally known as A Mother’s Song, emerged from a 2017 commission for Anderson and Azevedo to write a new transatlantic musical for the Fringe for a Scottish-American cast of students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow and the American Music Theatre Project at the Northwestern University in Chicago.
The show, which transports audience between 17th century Scotland, 18th century Ulster and 21st century New York, explores the stories of three women “bound together by blood, song and choice” to explore the ties between storytelling, heritage, and identity.
Anderson told The Herald: “Before we started figuring out what we would write about we thought that we would just be making something to give the students a really nice showcase.
“As soon as we started writing and rehearsing it, it felt like something we would not just be getting to the end of and saying goodbye to. We were really invested in it and felt very early on that it was something we wanted to continue.
“We stumbled upon themes that we were really excited to explore further. It was a great experience for everyone, but we felt that we really wanted to develop it beyond that context, expand the stories in it and make it longer.
“We’ve both been working on a lot of other things since then. One of the amazing things about how long it has taken to get to this point with the show is how much we have individually grown as artists since then.”
Plans to develop the musical into a professional stage production were initially supported by the Lowry theatre, in Salford, in 2021, but the show did not get a world premiere until a four-night run in Stirling in February 2023.
Co-produced by the Macrobert and Taylor’s company, the show was supported with nearly £90,000 of Creative Scotland funding, but has not appeared on stage in Scotland since that initial run.
Anderson said: “Musicals are more expensive to make than other forms of theatre. They take longer to rehearse. There are more writers and collaborators. The production costs with musicals are generally higher.
“We were determined to make a Scottish tour happen. Our first route was to get Creative Scotland funding. We progressed down that route for a good year before we were like: ‘This isn’t going to happen.’
“Creative Scotland had been really supportive of the Macrobert production and they are funding the album that is coming out this month.
“We had a lot of interest in the show from Scottish theatres and had a really good tour pencilled in in. They were really keen to invest in it and do it.
“But the reality of taking a show like this out on tour in Scotland is that it needs subsidy. When it became clear that that wasn’t going happen it was clear that we would need to look outside of Scotland for it to have a different kind of future.
“The commercial theatre sector operates outside of Scotland in a way that doesn’t really exist in Scotland. It’s one of the reasons that a lot of musicals get made elsewhere.”
Azevedo said: “I think we have discovered that the piece was maybe too overly-ambitious for what it would be possible to do in Scotland.
“We had so much interest from so many venues that really wanted it and loved it, and yet it was not enough to be able to life it off the ground. It still felt too big.
“That wasn’t something that we had anticipated given we had a cast of six, which wasn’t huge. We had vision and ambition for it, but it wasn’t mega.
“Hopefully it will come back to Scotland, but maybe we need to go and try it down south first.
“We were planning the album before we knew if the London run was going to happen or not.
“We wanted there to be an oral archive of Finn’s amazing work as well as a calling card for the show.”
Anderson acknowledged there had been a significant increase in the number of musical theatre productions being developed in Scotland since he and Azevedo started working on Ballad Lines.
This month alone will see the launch of new stage productions in Glasgow involving Deacon Blue singer Ricky Ross and rapper Dave Hook, while the Glasgow-set musical Wild Rose premiered earlier this year.
He added: “When we first started making this show were no new musicals being made in Scotland.
“There is so much musical theatre happening when you look around now. It’s really exciting to see that shift.
“Kate and I are very passionate about getting work made in Scotland for Scottish audiences. That was always going to be our first attempt.
“I’m very used to doors always opening and closing simultaneously. You always have to be aware that not every opportunity will come through and to keep your options open.”
A Creative Scotland spokesperson said: “Applications to the touring fund are assessed against the published criteria.
“Demand for funding regularly exceeds the budget available, making decisions highly competitive, and we are not able to support every application.”
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