Tricky Hat Productions is a company that makes multi-art form theatre with and about people who live on the margins of our society. They work with people to find a creative and credible voice through participation in high quality, collaborative, cross-arts events alongside high calibre artists. They work in collaboration with agencies, artists and areas in Scotland and internationally.
The Flames is Tricky Hat’s performance company for creative people aged 50 plus. Tricky Hat first established The Flames in Autumn 2016 as part of the Luminate Festival with participants working with professional practitioners to explore ideas, before devising pieces for live performance. The company uses performance, film and specially composed music to explore stories about life after fifty, challenging our perceptions of ageing.
Tricky Hat Productions brings The Flames to Cove Park at the beginning of every year for invaluable time and space to explore and experiment with the theatre, dance, music and audio-visual art forms they use. They challenge themselves, and The Flames, to create new ideas and approaches through art form collaborations.
‘At this year’s residency the Tricky Hat artists and 18 Flames (performers aged 50+) will be exploring the Japanese concept of Ikigai, which roughly translated means your purpose for living. We will investigate what it means for us all and create an artistic response that will feed into our international collaboration in Glasgow later in 2025 with Flames in Scotland and Japan, and Los Hocos, a group of “older men who dance” from Kyoto. Tricky Hat artists will focus on their own art form, with the time and space to explore new technology for our sound walks and create new music for live and digital performances. Another highlight will be the opportunity for the Tricky Hat team to spend time together, sharing ideas without the pressure of production. We always look forward to the stories round the stove on the last night!’
Fiona Miller
Fiona Miller is the Artistic Director of Tricky Hat Productions and the Director of The
Flames. Fiona has worked extensively as a freelance director and theatre maker, immersing
herself in large scale productions in Scotland such as “Witches Blood” in Dundee, and “City ” in Glasgow (European City of Culture 1990), to 1 to 1 performances for National Theatre of Scotland’s “99…100”.
She pioneered Youth Theatre in Scotland – helping establishing the importance of theatre in younger people’s lives. A big focus of her work at the moment is to help recognise the importance of theatre created by older people in Scotland and
internationally.
As well as producing new work, Fiona teaches and is a consultant for arts organisations and has been part of many pilot research projects in Scotland.
The key to Fiona’s success is always working collaboratively across art forms, devising productions with the full participation of all involved. She continues to engage with, deliver and understand the breadth of work constituting her field.
Eoin McKenzie
Eoin is the Associate Director & Outreach Officer of Tricky Hat Productions. Eoin is an artist from Glasgow who works across performance, choreography and research. At the core of his practice is a deep engagement with methodologies of participation and collaboration with his artistic works – and their processes – emerging in response to the people, places, and contexts he is working with.
Alongside being an Associate Director with Tricky Hat, Eoin leads his own performance company GuestHouse Projects who create contemporary performance projects with non-professionals and communities. In 2024, he created and presented The Show For Young Men as part of the Made In Scotland showcase which has gone on to tour internationally. He is currently an associate artist with Platform (who he has been creatively involved with since he was 9-years-old) and has worked as a lead artist for organisations such as National Theatre of Scotland, Imaginate, and Lyra Artspace.
Kim Beveridge
Kim is a freelance digital artist, documentary film maker and Audio Visual Designer for The Flames.
Alongside Tricky Hat, Kim has worked with companies such as the National Theatre of Scotland, Tramway and the Arches.
Her portfolio includes creating audio and visual work such as The Missing Audio Journey for the National Theatre of Scotland, and Roadkill by Stef Smith, directed by Cora Bissett.
Alongside her freelance artistic work, Kim is also a Film & Television Lecturer in New College Lanarkshire in Scotland.
Mick Slaven
Mick Slaven is a musician and composer whose experience includes numerous theatre composing credits, writing and performing music with a wide range of outsider client groups, and writing, production and session credits for a variety of main stream recording artists and independent labels.
Mick’s theatre credits include Tricky Hat productions directed by Fiona Miller such as ‘The Blair Ghost Project’, ‘Posie’ and ‘The Dust Never Settles’, along with composer credits for Stephen Greenhorns play ‘Passing Places’ and Gregory Burkes first major success ‘Gagarin Way’, both directed by John Tiffany for the Traverse Theatre.
In the community, a large part of his work has been the creation and performance of music by groups ranging from elderly people to primary school children, mental health groups to prisoners in jails, and also in drug rehab units. He has always seen the creation and performance of music as an empowering and often healing process.
Aya Kobayashi
Aya is a Glasgow-based performer, choreographer and teacher, originally from Japan. Aya trained at Rambert School and has performed for various artists/companies such as Yael Flexer & Nic Sandiland, Rosemary Lee, Charlie Morrissey, Gecko Theatre and Scottish Dance Theatre . She is a member of Collective Endeavours and practices improvisation performance.
At the heart of her work is inclusion. She was an associate artist for Barrowland Ballet and led the intergenerational company Wolf Pack (aged between 7-70s). She works extensively with inclusive companies and communities such as Anjali, StopGap, Indepen-Dance and Paragon. Aya enjoys working on various projects with Tricky Hat, supporting brilliant life stories shine on stage.
She is a lecturer at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and teaches weekly professional classes hosted by The Work Room. She is dedicated to activate the dance community in Glasgow.
She often works with galleries such as Tate, V&A museum of Childhood and Tramway, to lead the education workshops and participatory performances. Her work has been presented in the UK and abroad at locations including The Place, Royal Festival Hall, Northern Ballet, Paralympics 2012 torch relay ceremony, Cairo, Madrid, Tokyo, Ofunato and Queretaro in Mexico.
Laura Bradshaw
Laura Bradshaw is an artist working within performance, movement and dance, and directs movement with the Flames.
Working with the autobiography of the body, intuitive movement and practices of embodiment Laura makes performance works for theatre and dance spaces, galleries, healthcare contexts and outdoor spaces. She develops creative movement processes which invite a connection to the living, present body in relationship with other and environment. Laura graduated from BA (hons) Contemporary Theatre Practice at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and MA Dance and Somatic Wellbeing at University of Central Lancashire.
Elle Crockart
Elle Crockart is Tricky Hat Production’s General Manager and Producer of The Flames. With a background in theatre and live performance, Elle has worked in a number of roles as an Arts Manager, Producer, Stage Manager and Performer. She has worked across festivals, national tours, venues, outdoor performance, community engagement and digital projects.
She has worked for a number of Scottish-based organisations including Tramway, Take Me Somewhere, Festival 2018 and Rapture Theatre.
