In Profile: Cora Bisset

Cora Bisset - award-winning theatre director, star of stage and screen and talented musician - has a line in self-deprecating anecdotes. "Four years ago I was living in London trying to earn a crust as an actor and busking on the underground to make ends meet. To get your busking license you have to play for the council first. I remember calling my mum and telling her, 'I've got an audition!'"

The story is as characteristic of Bisset as it is unusual in the shamelessly self-promoting world of show biz. Where other less talented contemporaries are now household names, Bisset has quietly garnered critical acclaim with less in the way of public recognition. You get the feeling, however, that all that could be about to change.

Her acting career is burgeoning with recent high profile roles in BAFTA-winning STV series High Times and the National Theatre of Scotland's The Wolves in the Walls. The silver screen too is no stranger to her charms with an appearance in recent Scottish film hit Red Road among others. Following collaborations with Scottish indie heroes such as Mogwai and Arab Strap, she has resurrected her musical career. Gigging since last November, she credits her busking adventures with having strengthened her guitar playing sufficiently to perform as a solo artist. And in March, she scooped the coveted Arches Theatre Award for her adaptation of Isabel Allende's tale, Amada.

Her latest directorial outing, Detainee A, again at the Arches from 26 to 28 June, can only serve to crystallise this sense of an artist whose time has come. Set against the dismal backdrop of a Glasgow of dawn raids, terror suspects and detention without trial, Detainee A depicts an increasingly polarised post 7/7 society that threatens to engulf our dearly won civil liberties in a tidal wave of totalitarian paranoia.

But not for Bisset and writer Sarmed Mirza the big picture, socio-political musings of other recent protest plays such as last year's Fringe hit What I Heard About Iraq. Rather Bisset's response is defiantly personal. Detainee A examines the human cost of the war on terror through the lens of close knit family relationships shattered by a Kafkaesque atmosphere of sinister innuendo and nameless accusation.

"Detainee A is about a Muslim of Pakistani descent in Glasgow who is arrested as a suspected terrorist. [In the play] We are unsure of his guilt. Turmoil ensues and his family is torn apart as things come to light during the interrogation," explains Bisset. There's an assumption of guilt amid all this mounting paranoia. I wanted to get away from that, make the drama more personalised."

As with Amada, Bisset's musical background is much in evidence. But there the resemblance ends. "It's stylistically very different from Amada," she insists. "I like drawing on different cultures, different style and flavours." The play draws on traditional Punjabi forms in particular, weaving singers and musicians from the twenty-strong cast in a powerful fusion of styles.

This affinity with difference is a constant theme in Bisset's bewilderingly polymathic CV. Whether it's the sympathetic portrayal of a prostitute in the award-winning Amada, musical collaborations with perennial square pegs such as Mogwai and Arab Strap or Detainee A's cultural scapegoat, Bisset is a whirling dynamo of underdog creative energy.

When most teenagers are plotting nothing more creative than a Friday night rumble or Saturday night fumble, a seventeen year-old Bisset was cutting her teeth in the record business. Signed to a major record label, she was unceremoniously dropped when the anticipated hits failed to materialise.

Perhaps it was this early experience on the factory floor of creative industries inc. that directed her talents to paths less well trod. Resurfacing as the lead singer for resolutely underground acts such as Swelling Meg and Darlingheart, her brand of Celtic-tinged world music was unlikely to top the pops but certainly remained doggedly true to type.

Bisset's recent appointment as Drama Outreach Officer at Ankur must have been a shoo-in. Alongside directing innovative new drama such as Detainee A, she will be leading drama workshops designed to encourage young people from minority backgrounds to get involved in the theatre. You couldn't find a candidate more suited as a champion for the outsider. Or more talented.