Suspect Culture had its beginnings at Bristol University where David Greig met Graham Eatough whilst studying English and Drama. 

Also studying at Bristol was musician Nick Powell who collaborated on some of the earliest productions; A Savage Reminiscence, And The Opera House Remained Unbuilt and The Garden. These shows played at the Hen and Chicken pub theatre in Bristol (A Savage Reminiscence as part of a double bill with Sarah Kane’s first play Comic Monologue) before successful runs in David’s home town of Edinburgh during the festivals of 1991 and 1992.

The idea from the outset was to develop a style of theatre that combined the best of British and European traditions, working with high quality writing but giving equal weight to visual and musical elements. This remained a core approach within the company throughout its existence.

In the early 1990s, Graham and David based the company in Glasgow, where they produced the double bill Europe (Stations on the Border and Petra’s Explanation) at the Arches theatre in 1993.  One Way Street (1995) and Airport (1996) both toured internationally and established Suspect Culture as a significant new voice on the Scottish scene.

Ian Scott joined the company to work on the design and lighting of Airport completing the core creative team of David Greig, Graham Eatough, Nick Powell and Ian Scott that would collaborate on all the shows over the next 5 years. Timeless was co-produced with the Edinburgh International Festival in 1997 and was subsequently performed at the Donmar Warehouse in London. Mainstream was co-produced by the Bush Theatre in 1999 before touring to Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece and Bulgaria as well as the Dublin fringe.  Mainstream continues to be performed on a regular basis by other theatres and companies in Europe.

Suspect Culture's interest in drawing on the different theatre traditions and cultures of other countries led to developing relationships with a number of international artists, some of whom we’ve worked on a regular basis.  These include Mauricio Paroni de Castro (Brazil), Andres Lima (Spain), Sergio Romano and Renato Gabrielli (Italy) who all joined the company as associate artists and were involved in several productions including, Candide 2000, The Golden Ass (2000), Casanova (2001), A Different Language (2005).

Between 2005 and 2009 the company started extended its interests in other artforms with Killing Time , a collaboration between Graham Eatough and artist Graham Fagen that appeared at Dundee Contemporary Arts in 2006 and represented the company’s first presentation of work in a visual arts context. This was followed in 2009 by Stage Fright, a visual arts co-production with the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.  In 2007 the company made a short film, Missing which was written and directed by Graham Eatough and premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival that year.

Image: Gabriel Quigley, Louise Ludgate, Nathan Pope and Callum Cuthbertson in Mainstream | Photo © Kevin Low