Jack MacGregor
IASH/Traverse Creative Fellow, January - October 2026
Jack MacGregor is a writer, director, and dramaturg from Inverness, now based in Edinburgh. A graduate of the University of the Highlands & Islands, Jack is the award-winning writer-director of political dramas Nightlands (Dogstar Theatre) and Everything Under the Sun (O’Neill Ross), the latter winning both a Fringe First and Scottish Arts Club Leading Light Award. Jack’s writing explores fringes of Scotland and the wider world, seeking to bring the edges into the centre by finding drama in unlikely places; from the forestry estates of the Black Isle and the long winding darkness of the A9, to the deserts of northern Mali and the abandoned the arctic colonies of Svalbard.
Jack has been a resident artist with the National Theatre of Scotland, an associate artist with Dogstar Theatre Company, and was a fellowship writer for the Scottish Society of Playwrights (SSP@50). Jack has also been supported by Playwright Studio Scotland and the Michael Gradage Company (MGCfutures). Jack has been a part of BBC Writers Voices Scotland (2025), facilitated work with Scottish Youth Theatre, and is proud to have been part of the Cromarty-based artist collective "We Have Questions". Other credits include The Dark Up Close (Strangetown, 2025) and Our Brother (A Play, a Pie, and a Pint, 2025).
Project Title: Foil
Hannah stands on the mat at the Tokyo Olympics. It is the final second of the final round. She holds a slender sword with an electronic tip. Her opponent is world champion fencer Lauren Olsson. Something terrible is about to happen. Foil is an anti-biographical play about British Olympic fencer Hannah Mayfield and the infamous life-changing event that occurred in the final round of foils the Tokyo Olympics. This is a true story. It is also a lie. Foil is a violent clash between art and science, between the mind and body, truth and fiction. Coinciding with Edinburgh Medical School 300, this play bridges the disciplines of sport, drama, and the medical humanities, an invitation into the high-powered world of olympic fencing, an arena of speed and violence where the winner takes it all.