Spotlight on new NPOs: Trigger

My working life started with companies such as Apples & Snakes, Told by an Idiot and Fevered Sleep. Then, I joined the National Theatre of Scotland, the first ‘theatre without walls’, which was a great training ground to explore where the real world and theatre meet. 

But it was during a Clore fellowship when I met Genista McIntosh, who had previously run the National Theatre and Royal Opera House, that I decided to set up my own company. 

Trigger became a vehicle to use the brilliance of theatre to create social change. My first project – Visit – was a programme of performance in the homes of housebound people. The impact was immediate, and visceral. 

Crammed into a tiny living room in Leith with some elderly women, Josie Long introducing herself using the living room dimmer switch as her tech support, everyone was utterly enthralled, the room was alive, the atmosphere electric. That was 2011, and I started firing projects across Scotland. 

A powerful symbol of togetherness

In 2016, I moved to the Southwest and found a temporary home at Bristol’s Watershed – an excellent place for cross-disciplinary collaboration. I met Natalie Adams at that time who is Trigger’s Co-Director.

Inspired by three years in China and with the confidence from having won an Arts Foundation award, I embarked on a large-scale work – The Hatchling – a human-powered dragon puppet and flying artwork. By creating something strange and unexpected, I wanted it to stimulate conversations around ‘otherness’ and for it to take over the city. 

PoliNations, created and produced by Trigger. Photo: Katja Ogrin.

The dragon became a powerful symbol of togetherness. The Hatchling’s world premiere was in Plymouth in 2021, one year into the pandemic and just a fortnight after the city had experienced a mass shooting. Over 30,000 people came together over the course of that weekend to experience her arrival. 

There was an incredible sense of unity as she captured Plymouth’s collective imagination, roaming the city and eventually taking flight over sea, from Devon to Cornwall. She was seen again leading the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations outside Buckingham Palace. She’ll be out and about next year too for Chinese Year of the Dragon. 

Our plants are immigrants

In 2021 we created the PoliNations project, one of ten commissions from UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK. Developed in the wake of national lockdowns and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, it was an epic celebration of beauty, diversity and multiculturalism.

An ecologist had told me that over 80% of the plants in our gardens were non-native. As a keen gardener, I realised the plants that made up the landscape were all immigrants. It gave me hope and I wanted to share that biodiverse and multicultural message. 

The show we created was INCREDIBLE: a physical sculpture, a light installation, a music venue, costumes, yoga, workshops, meditation all under a shared physical canopy. It was exciting to deliver it with designers, architects, engineers and hundreds of artists, production managers and creatives. 

In just one week, it attracted 150,000 visitor and shifted the narrative around diversity, away from culture wars. 

Addressing social concerns

Whenever a major societal problem occurs, my brain starts whirring: What can I do? Two moments recently have triggered cultural problem-solving ideas. Covid, obviously, was one. 

Seeing the footage of people on ventilators with no family or friends present for support, I developed WithYou, a free digital platform designed to connect isolated healthcare patients with their loved ones. We sent hundreds of audio recordings, and in some cases final messages, to people receiving care.

Another issue was refugees. Local social feeds were full of panicked messages about 200 refugees moving into our rural area. I remember seeing one guy by the side of the road with nowhere to go. No shops, no community centre, just fields for miles around. 

We decided to bring these refugees together, mobilising support systems to provide clothes, bikes and personal items. And we’ve installed a creative and cultural workshop programme in the hotels they live in. The next thing to tackle is the quality of their food.

Shapeshifting

Trigger’s new show TEABREAK, commissioned by Without Walls, is currently touring the UK. It was created from interviews with hundreds of people about their relationship with tea. “The most English thing in the world… and actually not English at all,” as tea historian Tasha Marks said.

TEABREAK, created and produced by Trigger. Photo: Norfolk and Norwich Festival.

We’ve got an incredible programme of work coming up. We’re shapeshifters, meaning that we’ll make work in the best medium for the subject. I’m very research-led so I’m delving into all sorts of topics with academics, creators, elders. 

Being a National Portfolio Organisation means we can be adaptive and nimble, responding to things we encounter in our own community as well as issues unfolding on a global level. 

Whether creating ambitious works of scale or facilitating collections of phones and school uniforms for displaced people, we’re primarily interested in asking questions and listening. It is listening that creates work that is relevant, surprising and has real emotional and social impact. 

Angie Bual is Founder and Co-Director of Trigger.
www.triggerstuff.co.uk/
@TriggerStuff | @angiebual