'A Mackintosh Experience' - John Cairney & Alannah O'Sullivan
This theatre presentation presents Mackintosh in 1930, looking back on his life and work from a garden in Hampstead shortly before his death from cancer of the tongue. We see a neglected Glasgow architect and designer as an artist, who had a clear vision of what art can offer.
Deeming utility to be the primary function of art, he created the distinctive sense of line and tone that defines his unique, figurative style.
Though in danger today of being swallowed up in his own posthumous mythology, and the contemporary craze for 'Mackintoshery', Toshie is still his own man. His best work has had the vigour to survive despite its fashionable admirers. He had much to say about art and was not afraid to say it.
The Quest for Charles Rennie Mackintosh - ISBN 1 84282 058 3
An in-depth study of the man behind the artist and architect. Amazon.co.uk
Charles Rennie Mackintosh - John Cairney's Bio
John Cairney was introduced to Charles Rennie Mackintosh as a performing subject in 1974 when he was invited by R.W.Adams, OBE, Managing Director of the A.H.McIntosh Furniture Company in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, to prepare a Mackintosh programme under their auspices. They had decided to promote a line of furniture based on Mackintosh designs and thought that a theatrical presentation of his life and work might prove a valuable marketing assist to this project. As a result, in 1975, Cairney was able to provide a programme entitled, Mackintosh the Man, at a seminar for architects held at Kirkcaldy in December 1975 as part of the International Year of Architecture. From this original script, written as a 90-minute dramatised reading for two actors and an actress, with special audio-visual illustrations by Murray Grigor and Graham Metcalfe. This presentation was further developed by Dr Cairney over the following decade, with further performances at all the known Mackintosh sites in Scotland, at the Edinburgh Festival in 1978, at the Lyceum Studio Theatre in 1979 and culminating in a full-cast version for Scottish Television in 1980.
Subsequently, a two-hander adaptation for actor and actress as Mr and Mrs Mackintosh (Margaret Macdonald) was devised as a touring vehicle and this is the form in which it is now more often presented today with Cairney and his wife, Alannah O’Sullivan, as the readers. They first performed it as a duo at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow for the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland in 1989 and in Glasgow at the McLellan Galleries for the International Year of Culture in 1990. It is now part of their repertoire of theatrical duologues with which they have toured internationally from their home in Auckland, New Zealand.
This latest script has been prepared by Cairney and O’Sullivan with additions from the biography, 'The Quest for Charles Rennie Mackintosh' written by John Cairney, and published by Luath Press of Edinburgh.
In his theatre presentation, ‘A Mackintosh Experience’ John Cairney presents Mackintosh in 1930, looking back on his life and work from a garden in Hampstead shortly before his death from cancer of the tongue. We see a neglected Glasgow architect and designer as an artist, who had a clear vision of what art can offer. Deeming utility to be the primary function of art, he created the distinctive sense of line and tone that defines his unique, figurative style. Though in danger today of being swallowed up in his own posthumous mythology, and the contemporary craze for 'Mackintoshery', Toshie is still his own man. His best work has had the vigour to survive despite its fashionable admirers. He had much to say about art and was not afraid to say it.