Outside Eyes

Recommended Age 14+

Outside Eyes is the Tron’s bi-annual scratch night event that takes place in our Main Auditorium.

Each event presents a curated selection of brand-new ideas from artists of all disciplines to an audience made up of peers, industry professionals and anyone who wants to see the newest, most exciting work Glasgow has to offer.

For our Autumn edition of Outside Eyes, we are delighted to be working in partnership with Bijli Productions to showcase some of the most exciting new ideas being created by global majority artists.

Read below for details on the lead artists and the work they will be presenting at our Autumn Outside Eyes:

Tightrope by Raisah Ahmed

When Raha, an accomplished tightrope walker, struggles to make it from one end of the rope to the other, she tries to make sense of what is making her so unbalanced.

It’s been six months since Raha held her Gran’s hand through her final days, and she’s fine. It’s been six months since she had to touch her Gran’s cold body, that once gave her the warmest hugs, to confirm she’s gone.

But she’s fine.

Of course she’s fine. She’s ready to get back to living her life.

But how do you live when you’ve seen the person that kept you safe, all your life, die? How do you process the trauma of death, the depth of grief and the reality of living life when one of your sources of unconditional love is gone?

Through a non-linear narrative, Tightrope asks questions about the impact of loss, grief, trauma, and above all else, love.

Raisah Ahmed is a Screenwriter and Director and 2024 Screen International Rising Star Scotland. Currently developing feature ‘Half-Moon Camp’ with Producer Zorana Piggott and Film4, and ‘Hina & Kara vs. The Assassin’ with Reece Cargan. She was in the writers room for CH4 Series ‘We Are Lady Parts’ and has written and directed for a number of CBBC shows including ‘Balamory’, ‘Molly & Mack’ and ‘Princess Mirror-Belle’. She is currently adapting Martin Sixsmith’s ‘Ayesha’s Gift’ for television with Freedom Scripted, and developing ‘Nur’ a 6-part original romcom with Carolynne Sinclair Kidd. Raisah is on the BAFTA Scotland Committee, is a patron of the Scottish Youth Film Foundation and chairs the Glasgow Film Festival Industry Advisory Group.

Home Away, Home Again by Angus Bhattacharya & Neel Debdutt Paul

In 1958, Dhruv meets his old friend Abir at the latter’s home in London.

In 2026 Krishno meets his old friend Arnab at the latter’s home in Calcutta.

For Krishno and Arnab it has been 6 years since they last saw each other, after living together in Edinburgh. For Abir and Dhruv it has been 16 years since events in Calcutta in the 1940s led to a sudden separation.

The extract starts in the 1958 and then switches back and forth between 1958 and 2026. The sound of a kitchen timer and a lighting change will signify a switch between the decades.

Both pairs are cooking dinner together. While they do so, they discuss how their sense of home, friendship, politics and sense of self has changed and continues to change. With tensions having built between them, the piece explores what their shared history means for their future.

Angus Bhattacharya is an actor, poet and facilitator from Glasgow. They have performed in Shakespeare, Pantomime, character comedy and new writing in different cities, countries and across two languages (English and German). In poetry, Angus was shortlisted for the Janet Coats Memorial Prize. They are the organiser and host of Words Worth You, a performance and poetry event that runs out of Mesh in the Gorbals. Angus has a strong passion to build communicative and collaborative spaces for creatives in theatre and poetry. They love finding intersectional conversations within their work across race, gender and nationality.

Neel Debdutt Paul, based in Bangalore, India, is a creative strategist, editor, writer and storyteller with nearly two decades of experience. His work uses the written word, animation, comics and stagecraft to create worlds for both young and old. His work has been published by Hachette India, Harper Collins, Westland and Rupa.

Crossmatch by Valerie Andrews

When their father becomes critically ill in Guatemala, three estranged siblings are forced back into each other’s lives. Before the operation, all of them must donate blood so their Dad can have the units he needs. They must now tolerate one another as they must spend time together, either in a hospital waiting room or in a blood donation bank. As tensions rise, old resentments start to bubble up to the surface: and slowly but surely, the masks begin to disappear. They must all confront choices they’ve made in their lives: leaving, staying, or feigning ignorance. Crossmatch is a dark humoured play about broken health systems and broken families. It’s also a play about the journeys we go on with our families, whether it’s returning to them, finding ourselves or both.

Valerie is a Guatemalan actor and producer based in Glasgow. She holds a Master’s in Acting from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (2021) and has worked on theatre and film projects in both Guatemala and Scotland. She enjoys collaborative, creative work across stage and screen, and is especially interested in making bold, contemporary stories with people who like making things happen. She is passionate about new writing and improving Latinx representation in the arts. She has worked with projects like _andfriends scratch nights, Bijli Productions and is now part of Foldout Theatre Company.

Here Today… by Harshad Keval

Here Today… is a story about what happens when enough people have a strong enough belief in their own goodness and righteousness to allow the unthinkable to happen. The landscape of the UK has always been riddled with race, immigration and identity anxiety. More often than not, these anxieties – underwritten by economics and colonial histories that have never been processed with honesty- turn to violence, exclusion, and systematic hate. Here Today… asks through the central character the question that dare not be asked, but which continues to sit silently in every discussion: How far would an angry and uncertain populace go? Would European and colonial history’s lessons be learned? And how many steps would it take for us to arrive at a situation when Britain’s ‘foreign’ others, who have been an integral part of society for 400 years, would be ejected? What would the normal, everyday justification look like? And what would society look like without us?

Harshad Keval is an academic and writer in Glasgow, with a special interest in race, ethnicity, power, antiracism, and resistance. After 27 years in academia, realising that it was all an attempt to break free, create and play, Harshad now writes for stage and screen, fiction and non-fiction, that plays with who, what, and why we are, together. The world stage of right wing hate and oppression of people demands responses that provoke emotions and qualities of thinking through curiosity. Harshad poses those questions that often disappear in the noise; the ‘what ifs’, and ‘imagine if…’ so that audiences feel as well as think their way into new possibilities.