Lessons on revolution: the road from St Andrews to the Edinburgh Fringe
Gabriele Uboldi (MA 2020) has recently completed a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with his highly acclaimed show Lessons On Revolution. Here, he reflects on his journey from his home in northern Italy to St Andrews, and from there to a career on the stage.
Growing up in a small town in northern Italy, I was eager to move away from home and experience something completely new. No one in my family spoke English or had any idea how to go about choosing an international university, so I did a lot of independent research and came across the University of St Andrews. I visited the town and immediately fell in love with the place – I sensed that St Andrews was the perfect university for me to meet likeminded, ambitious students and discover a new perspective on the world.
A change of direction
I initially enrolled in Philosophy, but during my first year I almost accidentally took a module in Social Anthropology as one of my additional courses. I didn’t quite know what to expect but I ended up adoring the discipline. It was like Philosophy, but broader and more concrete at the same time – a flexible critical tool which continues to inform my practice in theatre even today.
Anthropology allowed me a lot of freedom to pursue my interests. In my second year, for example, I conducted a project in the field of the anthropology of religion, while my dissertation was at the intersection of visual and medical anthropology. The highlight of my time at St Andrews was becoming a Laidlaw Scholar. This allowed me to undertake an additional research project in the summer of 2019 through the Laidlaw Leadership and Research Programme, which celebrates 10 years at St Andrews this year. My research project was about Kabuki theatre, and it brought me all the way to Japan, where I researched the artform for three unforgettable weeks.
Mermaids and multiple shows
Theatre quickly became my passion alongside Anthropology. Through Mermaids – the University’s Performing Arts fund – I wrote and directed multiple shows including two at the Byre Theatre and one at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2018. At the same time, I joined On The Rocks (the largest student-run arts festival in the UK) where we planned a creative takeover of the whole town every April. It was wonderful. My time at St Andrews was about experimenting with different artforms and discovering what I really wanted to pursue after graduation.
Gabriele celebrating graduation
Then the theatres closed
Then, the pandemic happened. I graduated in 2020, while all theatres were shut, and I made the decision to move to London. I started to plan what my next steps in live performance would be once restrictions were lifted.
Working with a friend from St Andrews, I founded my own theatre company Undone Theatre and began to stage shows professionally. Thanks to a small grant from the Careers Centre, we were able to raise further funds and stage our first show in London in 2021.
Since then, through Undone Theatre I have created three new shows, produced a festival on queerness and migration in Greenwich, and curated an exhibition on opera and race in North London.
Gabriele pictured at the LONDON / LONDRA festival at Queercircle (Credit: Jack Sain)
Lessons On Revolution
A return to Scotland was inevitable, so this August I went back to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival with my show Lessons On Revolution, a documentary theatre piece exploring the legacy of the 1968 student protests across the globe.
Despite being a tiny company with limited funds, the run was a huge success – we sold out for the whole month including extra performances added due to popular demand; we received one of only a dozen of 5-star reviews from The Scotsman out of almost 4000 shows; multi-Olivier Award winning playwright James Graham described it as ‘compelling and galvanising’; altogether we received 17 five and four star reviews celebrating the show as ‘completely exceptional’ (The Theatre Times), and ‘one of the most talked about shows of this year’s Edinburgh festivals’ (The Conversation).
Gabriele in Lessons on Revolution (Credit: Jack Sain)
Next steps and St Andrews connections
I’m now in the process of planning the next steps for Lessons On Revolution – a further London run, maybe a tour, possibly international – and meeting programmers and producers to discuss future projects.
The experience of taking a show to the Fringe was incredible but, at the same time, things have never been tougher for emerging artists. It was during the Fringe, for example, that Creative Scotland (the main funding body in the country) announced a major cut to arts funding, making the costs involved increasingly prohibitive. I was only able to go thanks to the support of many private donors, as well as the University of St Andrews.
I would love to connect with fellow alumni who work in the Arts, or who think that my work and my company’s mission may resonate with theirs. If that’s you, I would love to hear from you and continue to build on the invaluable network that being an alumnus of St Andrews makes me a part of.
Find out more about Gabriele’s theatre company, Undone Theatre, here. Any fellow alumni who would like to get in touch can contact Gabriele here.