Joe McCann

Joe McCann is a black writer from Glasgow. He is compelled to tell stories about the black working-class experience. His works include DENTED LITTLE FACES (Art School), LACE UP (Traverse), THINGS MY WHITE FRIENDS SAY (The Tron) & THE CHARCOAL ROOMS (Traverse). His screenplay, IF THINGS COME ALIVE was long listed by The BBC’s Script Room. THE BOOKIES, a black comedy he co-wrote had a hugely successful run at Dundee Rep last May. He was attached to The Traverse Theatre as part of the prestigious Traverse 50. Joe lives in Dennistoun with his wife, Virág.

His latest piece, ALFOLD was staged in Glasgow & Edinburgh in October 2022.

"...his latest play Alföld, Glasgow writer Joe McCann pushes it into deep and unsettling territory, on a train travelling away from Budapest across the great plain whose Hungarian name gives the play its title.

It’s clear from the outset that McCann is not offering any likeable characters here. Jake and Virag are an unhappy-looking couple, he a black Scotsman far from home who drinks too much, and is dangerously jealous and controlling towards his beautiful Hungarian wife; she an exquisite woman with a tongue like a whip, contemptuous of Jake in ways that sting and fester. And the stranger Bela, when he joins them, is soon revealed as a seething mess of unresolved psychosexual issues, probably gay, desperate to procure a trophy girlfriend to show off to his parents, and both violent and vicious when Virag refuses to go along with his games.”
Joyce Macmillan, The Scotsman