New canvas; Having worked in Kosovo, Scottish theatre holds no fear

'When we talk about there being no money in Scottish theatre, that's nothing in comparison to Kosovo," says Stephen Wrentmore, the new artistic director of the Byre Theatre in St Andrews. At the time of his appointment at the Fife playhouse, he was directing a pointedly pertinent staging of Martin McDonagh's brilliant and politically ambiguous play The Lieutenant Of Inishmore at the National Theatre of Kosovo. Prior to that he had also worked at the National Theatre of Yugoslavia in Belgrade.

As he surveys the Byre's "amazingly beautiful, compact little theatre" - which opened, to great approval, just three years ago - he can't help but remember his experience of theatre in Kosovo. He was astonished, he says, by "the absurdity of a corridor with only one working light bulb, and they can't afford to replace the other light bulbs".

The poverty of the Kosovan theatre was, he explains, general, and would, were it not for the dedication of the people working within it, have been soul-destroying. "My production of The Lieutenant Of Inishmore had people being paid (euros)1000 for a year's work," he remembers. "You look at the theatre's budget and you have zero. Whatever you're going to make [in terms of set and costumes] is going to be made from whatever they've got in store." In such a situation, Wrentmore believes, "the politics is actually in the fact that they create theatre at all." That, no doubt, is a sentiment which will be echoed by Philip Howard, artistic director of the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, who has been working recently with Palestinian theatre practitioners. Indeed, Wrentmore has a story from Kosovan theatre under Slobodan Milosevic's rule which has echoes of apartheid South Africa or the Palestinian situation.

"Part of the structure of Serbian rule in Kosovo was the banning of Albanian, which is, basically, the national language of Kosovo," he says. "So theatre could only be performed in Serbo-Croat, which was a way of stopping people doing their natural plays. What used to happen was that, when the Serbian guards locked the theatre for the night, all the actors would have been in the bar drinking, waiting for them to lock the door. Then they'd go into the theatre and start rehearsals of Albanian plays. That, for me, is true political theatre. It's about finding a way of letting theatre breed, regardless."

Which is not to say that the politics of McDonagh's play, in which an Irish Republican - who joined the INLA because the IRA wouldn't have him - is engaged in torturing a cannabis dealer, didn't resound in Kosovo. No-one could deny that, like the Republican movement in Ireland, the Kosovo Liberation Army splintered in post-war Kosovo. "The young audience absolutely adored it, and got it for the political statement it was," says Wrentmore.

All of which gives the director - who made his name working for companies such as the National Theatre in London, the Arizona Theatre Company and Howard Barker's company The Wrestling School - a very particular take on the much-vaunted travails of Scottish theatre. He is, he exclaims, "absolutely delighted" by his appointment at the Byre; a theatre which enjoys not only a wonderful new building, but also a "really happy team".

"I feel very lucky to have been invited in," he continues. "I'm excited to be part of Scottish theatre, which seems to be one of the nation's treasures." The director has worked extensively in England, and he finds Scottish theatre "very different from the theatre that happens in London, which is so insular." He wants the Byre to have a constructive dialogue with its neighbours at Dundee Rep and has high hopes in this regard for the new Scottish National Theatre. "That seems to be absolutely the nature of this forthcoming event, the National Theatre. It's about increasing the dialogue in Scotland, rather than creating enclaves."

Wrentmore is certainly getting his tenure off to an exciting start with the British repertory premiere of Nicholas Wright's award- winning 2002 play Vincent In Brixton. First presented by the National Theatre in London, it toured very briefly to Scotland, and will be known only by repute to most Scottish theatre-goers.

Bringing the play to the Byre is something of a coup for the Fife theatre, as the director readily acknowledges. "There's clearly an element of serendipity," he observes. "As I approached for the rights, they were just becoming available. It's a play I think a lot of people would like to have had the rep premiere of."

Set in 1873, during the young adulthood of Vincent Van Gogh (played by young Dutch actor Mark Van Eeuwen, in his first professional role), it finds the artist working as an art dealer in London, where he falls passionately in love with his landlady's daughter. In dramatising this episode, rather than the more famous events - the self-mutilation of his ear, his relationship with the painter Paul Gauguin - Wright has created a subtle and powerful drama.

"By setting it in his formative years, allowing him - although not on stage - to lose his virginity and, in a sense, become a man, it's a fantastic journey," he says. "It's a really exciting time for the man, and nothing's gone wrong yet. That seems to me to be what makes the play absolutely hypnotic; it's a speculation on how a man becomes an artist." When the production opens at the Byre on Thursday, it will end the speculation about what sort of artist Wrentmore will be in Scottish theatre.

Vincent In Brixton is at the Byre Theatre, St Andrews from June 24 until July 17 www.byretheatre.com

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