[1] Founded in 1978 as a spin-off from the 7:84 Company, it formed a key part of the Scottish touring theatre network for the next 20 years, creating more than 80 shows and giving many thousands of performances across Scotland, the UK and internationally.
Wildcat launched the careers of a number of now familiar Scottish talent including Dave Anderson, Blythe Duff, Peter Mullan, and Elaine C. Smith.
[2] Despite an energetic campaign to reverse the decision, up to and including questions in Parliament,[4][5] the Company was not able to continue without regular funding and eventually closed its doors a year later.
[1] Operating at first out of a small office in Otago Street, Glasgow, the company's first production, in September 1978, was The Painted Bird which addressed the then far less fashionable subject of mental health.
"Wildcat's debut on Thursday, on a ramshackle stage before a capacity house in the McLellan Galleries, was one of the most hopeful omens for Scotland's theatrical future" was the verdict of the Glasgow Herald.
[11] Other large scale productions used the King's Theatre in Edinburgh (The Silver Darlings) and the newly converted Tramway venue (Border Warfare)[12] in Glasgow.
MacLennan went on to devise and then direct the hugely successful lunchtime theatre season, A Play, a Pie and a Pint at Glasgow's Òran Mór venue until his death in 2014.
It owed a lot to earlier forms of Scottish theatre, including the variety shows and seasonal pantomimes[19] with which both Anderson and Maclennan had grown up.
[21] Subjects ranged from the domestic, such as the 1983/4 miners strike (Dead Liberty) to the international, such as the role of the CIA in Nicaragua (Business in the Back Yard) via public health (Bedpan Alley) and education (Jotters).
But they were capable of scaling up to main stages, such as The Pavilion (The Celtic Story), the Tramway (Border Warfare), Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Theatre (Peachum's Poorhouse) and Edinburgh's International Conference Centre (A Satire of the Four Estates) For almost all Wildcat's history, from 1979 to 1997, the UK was under the control of a Conservative government, lead first by Margaret Thatcher and later by John Major.
[24] The political background offered rich pickings for a group of unashamedly left-wing entertainers and the company took great delight in tweaking the noses of the landed, monied and governing classes.
Local councillors, such as Jean Mcfadden, the leader of Glasgow City Council, senior trade union officials such as Campbell Christie and members of parliament such as Sam Galbraith and Donald Dewar all served on the company's board of directors at various times.
It was also instrumental in developing the annual Mayday rally organised by the Scottish TUC into Mayfest, a three week long arts and politics festival in Glasgow which ran from 1983 to 1997.
Juliet Cadzow, perhaps best known as Edie Mcredie in the BBC Scotland children's show Balamory, first appeared for Wildcat in Border Warfare where she met MacLennan.
She originally rose to fame as the star of BBC's adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song in which she played Chris Guthrie.
An accomplished director, actor and musician, and lifelong friend of Dave Anderson, he was best known as DCI Matt Burke in Taggart, STV's long running Glasgow police drama, but has enjoyed recent acclaim success in the comedy series Two Doors Down, in which he has bene reunited with Elaine C.Smith.
Tony Roper wrote Wildcat's biggest popular success, The Steamie, a piece of New Year's Eve nostalgia set in one of Glasgow's communal washhouses.
Roper had been a regular foil to Rikki Fulton in the long running comedy series Scotch and Wry and also appeared as Jamesie Cotter, best pal of Rab C. Nesbitt.