HotTrod Theatre Company
John Nichol
For most of his adult life, John has been involved with the theatre, music and storytelling. He was a founder member of the Rowan Tree Company, for which he was an actor, writer and composer, with shows like The Travels of Mungo Park, Willie Wastle’s Account of His Wife, Fish Tales, Wandering Willie’s Tale, Tales of Whigs and Jacobites, The Love Adventures of George Cochrane.
Since 2005, he has been Artistic Director/writer/performer for the touring theatre company, IDEOMS in collaboration with Hilary Bell - which specialises in dramatised storytelling, and historical and biographical dramas, and the unique and authentic delivery of the works of Robert Burns. Notable productions are War & Glaur, Crossfire, Soddin’ Flodden, Honest Poverty, Fifty Shades o’ Hoddin Grey, Best Laid Schemes, Lovers, Fules & Cutty Stools; Bard on the Border, Lords of the Creation…and other beasts, Instant Burns….just add haggis; Burns Bites Back, Crambo Clink; Haughtie Hizzies and Haughmagandy.
John is the ‘go to’ Sir Walter Scott, regularly appearing at Abbotsford for TV productions and festivals, as well as writing and performing courtroom re-enactments with HotTrod Theatre Company.
A devotee of the Scots language, John writes and performs plays at the Edinburgh Fringe and other festivals, and in venues all over Scotland and abroad. A recent production was The Diaries of the Beloved Doctor Muir. He was also commissioned to write Homefires- a musical for primary school children, on the theme of the Great War. John also writes and performs living history dramas, ghost tours and murder mystery plays.
He has featured on several music recordings (The Complete Songs of Robert Burns; Border Sangsters), in film, and on TV and radio, as a singer, actor and narrator. His voice can be heard on audio guides in museums countrywide, and on touring apps. He has also played a variety of roles for whisky distillers, Dewars. More recently, he has also voiced audio stories including Wandering Willie’s Tale and Sir Patrick Spens, in collaboration with Matthew Fitt, who translates well-known tales into Scots.
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Iain Fraser
Iain performs and teaches tradition-based music on the fiddle. He has always been fascinated by the fiddle’s rhythmic and emotional capabilities and tries to draw upon the extensive repertoire of traditional music ranging from 18th Century Scottish tunes to new self- penned compositions, and from the multiple regional music styles of the British Isles to those of North America and Europe.
Between 1990-1995, Iain took on and developed the Glasgow Folk Workshop, and has been actively involved and supportive of the Feisean movement for almost 30 years – primarily with Fèis Rois.
He was principal fiddle teacher in the Scottish Music Department of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland between 1995-2005 before being appointed Head of Instrumental Music for the Scottish Borders Education Authority until 2011. He was a founding director of Merlin Music Ltd., a small private music school in the Scottish Borders. Iain gained an MLitt with Distinction in Folklore from the University of Aberdeen’s Elphinstone Institute.
He released the album 'Touchwood' in 2002 which features 18th and 19th Century Scottish fiddle music on fiddle and cello. He was asked to edit and compile ‘Scottish Fiddle Tunes – 60 Traditional Pieces for Violin” for the Schott World Music Series in 2006, and subsequently ‘Canadian Fiddle Tunes – 60 Traditional Pieces’ by the same publisher in 2015. In 2022, he was commissioned to write and release a new piece ‘Gneiss’, which was premiered in Ullapool to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Fèis Rois’s annual teaching festival and in 2023 he released ‘Kōterana’, a new suite of music celebrating the multiple migrations of Rev Norman McLeod and his followers - first from Assynt to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and then after a period of 30 years, to a new settlement named Waipu in New Zealand. Last year, he also provided music and character portrayal for HotTrod Theatre Company’s Wandering Willie’s Tale.
Alastair Pattullo
A founding member of Hot Trod, and a renowned character actor, Al Pattullo has appeared in many of HotTrod’s courtroom dramas. As a Stage Manager/Audio Visual Technician, he has worked with Rowan Tree, Gridiron, IDEOMS, Firebrand and Dogstar Theatre Companies, and he recently toured with HotTrod with The Diaries of the Beloved Doctor Muir and Wandering Willie’s Tale.
Alastair’s work has also included stints with Scottish Opera Touring Company, and he was theatre technician and projectionist at Heart of Hawick for some years. He has also supplied his skills to numerous amateur and community productions.