Stellar Quines traded Edinburgh for Kirkcaldy in 2024, and already the Fife town has made quite the mark on the esteemed theatre company.
“Fifers are super-welcoming and Kirkcaldy is brilliant,” says Caitlin Skinner, the company’s artistic director.
“There’s a huge community of people here who want to make something happen – a real energy, a real buzz.”
Stellar Quines has a long and esteemed history within Scottish theatre.
Founded in 1993, it’s raked in awards and co-produced shows with Dundee Rep, the National Theatre of Scotland, the Citizens in Glasgow and the Lyceum in Edinburgh, where it was based until last year.
The game-changing move north came about through Steller Quines’ youth company Young Quines, which started in Fife in 2021.
“We met a really brilliant theatre practitioner called R-J Morrison, who’s based in Levenmouth, who had been doing work with young people in Fife and the Central Belt,” says Caitlin.
“She noticed a real difference in terms of how young people in Fife presented in drama workshops compared to the Central Belt.
“They were a lot less confident, their voices weren’t getting heard, and there was a lack of opportunity to be creative.
“That was why we went, because R-J said there’s a need for this.
“A lot of youth work in Fife is focused around sports, largely aimed at young men, and there’s very little that might appeal to people who are more creative or young women.”
Tackling lack of creative jobs for Fifers
Now Stellar Quines’ full-time base is in the Kings’ Theatre on Kirkcaldy’s Esplanade.
“Fifers have such a strong sense of identity and community and pride in who they are, but also a lack of sustained professional opportunities to be creative,” adds Caitlin.
“If you want to be creative you need to leave, and people didn’t want to leave because they love it, they’re proud of being here!”
Stellar Quines’ mission now, she says, is to make work in Fife and then take it out on tour.
But Frankie Stein – this week’s new production at Lochgelly Centre, an AI-era update of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – is likely to be having its only performances in Fife, simply because the youth and community casts involved alongside professional actors Yana Harris, Shona White and Antony Strachan are so large.
“It’s science fiction meets gothic horror meets feminist satire meets musical theatre,” says Skinner.
“It’s a bold claim, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.
“We felt working on a classic story was a great way to get people involved who might not know much about theatre or about us. Then AI came into it because watching it right now in 2025, you’ll read that into the story of Frankenstein.
“AI is such a big question for us. We’re giving quite a lot of power over to this technology that literally imitates human intelligence.”
How Kirkcaldy shop made it into play
“This play is about an artificial intelligence, a humanoid robot called Frankie Stein, who was created with too much human emotion,” explains Caitlin.
“So she finds herself in the rejects department – inspired by the well-known Kirkcaldy homewares store Rejects.
“She doesn’t want to be there, she wants to be a proper robot, mass-produced and sent out into the world. So she sets out on a journey to become the robot she wants to be.”
Pointedly, the company which created Frankie is called Techbro and it’s run by mysterious, wealthy male overlords.
“The play is satirical, it’s funny, it’s tongue-in-cheek in the way it takes on these topics,” says Skinner.
“It’s about our shared humanity, and it explores the way in which women are underrepresented in the creation of AI. We know AI is learning from a very unequal world.
“It takes a lot of data from online, where we’re seeing a huge rise in online misogyny. So what impact is that likely to have?”
Does backlash give feminist artists pause?
In such arenas, feminism has experienced a lot of flak recently. Does that make it more important that Stellar Quines thrives?
“In the last ten years I think we’ve seen some great progress,” says Skinner.
“What we’re seeing is a backlash, and if you look back in history, that’s quite normal. When you have social progress, you also get a backlash.
“So we must persevere, because there’s a brighter future on the other side. The only future is a feminist future. Because as a species we’re facing some big questions and threats to our future.
“Feminism is the only way we get to make things better for everybody. That’s why we have to continue – it’s the only option.”
Frankie Stein by Stellar Quines is at the Lochgelly Centre near Kirkcaldy on Friday April 18 and Saturday April 19.
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