A 50-year-old charity that called itself “Scotland’s longest-running touring theatre company” will be removed from the register by the Scottish charity regulator in June after failing to file accounts on time.
Borderline Theatre Company, registered in Prestwick, Ayrshire, was set up in Irvine in 1974 and was so named as a result of its first artistic director’s “patchy” knowledge of Scottish geography.
“[The name] stuck though, as the work Borderline does has always been on the borderline between conventional and community theatre,” the charity’s website says.
In its early decades, the company enjoyed considerable success, selling out London’s Royal Court with a three-week run of Billy Connolly’s An Me Wae A Bad Leg Tae in the mid-70s.
Robbie Coltrane also toured with the company in the 1990s in a production of Mistero Buffo, by the renowned Italian playwright and director Dario Fo, which was also screened by the BBC.
Times grew harder in 2006, when the charity’s core funding from the Scottish Arts Council was removed, forcing it to drastically slim down its operations.
But as recently as 2016, Borderline was the recipient of a Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland award. That year, it took Best Production for Children & Young People for Uncanny Valley, a co-production with Ayr’s Gaiety Theatre where the company found a home during its final years.
‘Building on Borderline’s legacy’
Borderline’s chair since 2006, Jeremy Wyatt, told Civil Society Media that the organisation had effectively stopped functioning some time ago.
Wyatt said that after Borderline lost its core financial support, it had relied on individual project funding and had increasingly been absorbed into the work of the Gaiety Theatre, where he is also the chief executive.
“A couple of people from the board, including myself, set up the Ayr Gaiety Partnership and took over the Gaiety Theatre,” Wyatt explained.
The community partnership took over running the theatre on a 99-year lease after it closed in 2009 and reopened the venue in December 2012.
“The legacy of Borderline has got wrapped up into the Gaiety Theatre, which is still very much alive and going – and really building on that legacy,” he said.
