Lisa Nicoll is a producer, playwright & actress who trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Between 2013 and September 2017 she was a producer at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow. In this position she developed new writing, created The Progressive Playwright Award for writers, programmed work, secured funding, set up and ran The Tron 100 Club-an artistic membership for creatives and created and produced the Tron 100 Festival- a festival of 30 short plays.
Lisa established and is now Creative Director & Producer of new writing theatre company In Motion Theatre where the aim of the company is to support, develop and tour the work of the company, and that of other writers across Scotland and beyond and also to support and nurture professional talent in the areas of acting, play writing, directing and set up and runs Creative Inspiration Motivation Scotland to develop and support professional creatives. Lisa is also currently working at Perth Theatre as a project producer developing audiences with the local community and touring work.
Since lock down she has also ventured into the worlds of podcasting and audio drama and has worked as a Producer on fictional podcast Search The Series by Chris Patrick funded by Creative Scotland and a new audio fantasy podcast A Toon Built Apo Shenanigans again funded by Creative Scotland. During lock down she also produced in association with the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh the podcast series The Cultural Coven which focused on conversations with key people in music, theatre and film in Scotland. She has just been commissioned to release another podcast series inspired by stories of army veterans. Her commissioned play Lovely Peas was commissioned by Outspoken Arts and will tour in 2023. This play was also filmed in 2021 and released online.
Having been part of the Paisley 2021 bid for the city of culture Lisa has been commissioned to write a new play Other Side Of The River and to tour it across Scotland with her company In Motion Theatre in 2023. Between 2008 and 2013, Lisa wrote, produced and toured theatre work all across Scotland under her own name including her touring self-penned one woman plays Acceptance, Touched & Home Run. Acceptance toured for six years to venues across the length and breadth of Scotland funded by various public & private sources. Off of the back of this play she was also commissioned to write the main characters’ diaries in The Metro Newspaper for ten weeks.
In 2010 Lisa was commissioned to write short novel Leathered for teenagers for Alcohol Focus Scotland which was put on the curriculum in some schools in Scotland she also secured funding from various sources to write & produce eight short films which combined community casts with professional actors. Lisa’s writing has been instrumental in two motions being passed in the Scottish Parliament for her writing work with communities for short films Shattered Walls and Wasted. She has received a Care Accolade for one of her short films The Protector and was also part of the Scottish Charity of The Year Finalists 2019 for her play ‘Shattered’ with The Scottish Cot Death Trust.
In 2019 Lisa was asked by Oxfam to research and write a paper for the Scottish Government on Food Poverty which is now being looked at for the basis of a new play. 2018/19 also saw Lisa work with Sky Arts as a script developer for Martha Keith Barnett’s play And The Band Marches On which was presented at The Bush and Barbican Theatre as rehearsed readings. During this time, she also worked on the script development and produced rehearsed readings of Jennifer Adam’s new play The House That Melts with The Rain which was performed at Assembly Roxy in Edinburgh and the development of Jo Lennie’s play Lily–A Play with Songs which was then presented as a reading at The Traverse Theatre. Lisa has also been recently appointed associate producer at Knights Theatre and is also on the Board for Dundee and Angus BA Acting Courses.
Lisa also has a strong passion for film with the most recent film she produced in 2017 Natalie(Blazing Griffin), by Mikey Murray and featuring Kate Dickie, having great success at The Edinburgh International Film Festival, Berlin Short Film Festival, Aesthica Film Festival and The British Urban Film Festival. She has also worked extensively within communities & young people over the last 10 years, building relationships with charities, organisations and community groups. This work has taken place with all three of her one-woman shows–Acceptance, Touched and Home Run–where she toured these to communities all over Scotland and built audience relationships with schools, community groups and colleges to ensure audiences attended the shows.(Acceptance toured for 7 years)
Lisa adopts a holistic approach in building audiences and community engagement–offering talks, workshops and discussions thematically linked to shows–and has delivered community engagement with partner organisations including Children First, Nil by Mouth, Waverley Care, the Princes Trust, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, SAMH, NHS Lothian, Scottish Drugs Recovery Consortium, NHS Health Improvement teams in Orkney, Borders, North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire, Perth, Angus, Sense over Sectarianism, the Scottish Government, Healthy Working Lives, Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research, the Social Dimensions of Health Institute (Dundee University) and Queen Margaret College.
Lisa was also a writer in residence at Castle Huntly and Noranside Open Prisons in 2008/2009. Lisa has built audiences with schools in Perthshire, Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Angus, Borders, Highland and Islands with her work. She is a firm believer in making things happen for the artistic community and supporting and developing creatives in new and positive ways.
