´óÏó´«Ã½

Five years ago, I stood by a tower block on the outskirts of Glasgow, watching aerial artists descend from the building, while acted encounters inside the flats were broadcast on giant video screens to the audience outside.

Home: Glasgow, one of 10 productions around the country, set out the National Theatre of Scotland's stall.

This was an organisation who intended to take work around the country and perform it in any space, regardless of whether it was a theatre.

The 10 shows were rich and varied, involved a wide range of people from the existing theatre community and had mixed reviews from audiences - a fair summary in fact of the five years which followed.

Their building-less model clearly works and has inspired others to follow suit (Last spring, Wales launched its own national theatre company based on Scotland's roaming model).

But what of the work? 137 shows over the past five years - everything from children's theatre (Wolves in the Walls) to dark cabaret (Something Wicked This Way Comes), reworked classics (Peer Gynt) to Greek tragedy, with a musical twist (The Bacchae).

It isn't a science and this isn't an extension of the arts council so there were inevitably less successful works.

Tutti Frutti, for example, while a crowdpleaser on paper, didn't set the heather alight.

Neither did David Greig's adaptation of Peter Pan.

And then there was Caledonia - the ill-fated festival show about the ill fated Darien project.

Then again, a show seen by 100,000 people, which made 60% more at the box office than anticipated and was the most talked about show at the Edinburgh Festival can't really be deemed a failure.

Big name celebrities - with the notable exception of Alan Cumming, who performed a star turn in The Bacchae - have been thin on the ground but that's been no bad thing in the company's early years, when inviting Hollywood worthies to return to the Scottish stage might seem like something of a snub for those toiling here all year round.

But NTS insist negotiations continue - and given the complicated schedules of Hollywood - may come good in the next few years.

But the real long shadow is cast by the company's biggest hit - Black Watch - which continues to dominate discussion.

But the flipside is that it also raises the profile of the company, here and abroad, opening doors for other shows to tour. (quite literally for Beautiful Burnout, which will be staged in New York shortly - its inspiration directly traceable to a city gym during a previous Black watch tour).

The big challenge for the company in the next five years will be to continue producing work in reduced circumstances.

All the national companies face a 4% budget cut and although NTS has increased sponsorship which will plug the gap this year, it'll have to find new funds or scale back in future years.

And five years on, they'll have to re-evaluate what Scottish theatre is.

Their track record on contemporary work has been exemplary but historic work has been a bit patchier.

The National Theatre in London beat them to a version of Ena Lamont Stewart's tenement drama Men Should Weep (although they'll stage their own take later this season) and others lobby for other forgotten treasures.

NTS plan to address the issue head-on with a series of sessions where writers pick their favourite Scottish plays and a series of public events where theatre goers can discuss them.

But it's a distinction of the Scottish theatre tradition that most published plays are post-18th century, and the bulk post-1945 so the emphasis is always going to be on modern work.

The biggest issue, though, remains wooing audiences.

According to a recent survey, 17% of Scots consider themselves theatre-goers.

The challenge for the National Theatre of Scotland is to persuade the other 83%.