talk
Talking Tartan with Alan Cumming and Simon Sladen
Thursday, 11 May 2023
Iconic. Eclectic. Scottish. Global.
Both known as playful and provocative, world-renowned Scottish actor Alan Cumming and tartan have a lot in common.
Beyond eclectic, Alan Cumming entertains both on and off screen, spanning cult and mainstream performances. Perhaps not surprisingly, Time Magazine called him one of the three most fun people in show business (the others were Cher and Stanley Tucci!).
Join Alan in conversation with Simon Sladen, V&A South Kensington's Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Theatre and Performance, to delve into tartan on screen, in performance, as costume and more - expanding on thoughts from our new exhibition Tartan; which offers a radical new look at one of the world’s best-known textiles.
About the speakers:
From film to theatre, Alan Cumming’s work ranges from art house to blockbusters. You’ve seen him as Mr Floop in Spy Kids, Eli in The Good Wife, Nightcrawler in X2: X Men United, Sandy Frink in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (a positively iconic performance if you ask us), ‘O’ in Sex and the City, Boris in Goldeneye, King James in Doctor Who, the list goes on....! Author of six books including a New York Times #1 bestselling memoir, Alan also co-owns his eponymous cabaret bar Club Cumming, a home for ‘all ages, all genders, all colours, all sexualities, where kindness is all, and anything could happen!’. Growing up in Scotland, Alan studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland).
Simon Sladen is Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Theatre and Performance at V&A South Kensington and is also Senior Tutor (Performance) on the V&A and Royal College of Art’s History of Design Master’s programme. Recent exhibitions and displays for V&A South Kensington include Re:Imagining Musicals, Laughing Matters: The State of a Nation, Censored! Stage, Screen, Society and Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser. Simon's research often explores the relationship between nation and identity in popular performance forms, with his entry on Scottish pantomime design featuring in V&A publication The Story of Scottish Design and his work on Scottish pantomime Dames ‘In a Queer Tradition’ featuring in Somewhere for Us’s 2021 festive issue. Simon is Chair of the UK Pantomime Association, on the editorial board of the British Theatre Guide and chairs the Academic Advisory Board of Blackpool’s new museum Showtown. Simon is part of the curatorial team behind The David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts, set to open at V&A East in 2025.
