Viewing Theatre Through My Scottish Lens

At the age of 13 I found myself attending Half Life, a newly created arts project that was being staged in the Kilmartin Glen, a forest in my home county of Argyllshire. During the autumn of 2007 this glen, a 30 minute drive away from my village in the rural West Coast of Scotland, was being used as a host for a 100 square mile ranging multi-faceted site-specific artistic collaboration between public arts company, NVA, and the newly established National Theatre of Scotland (NTS). Having never heard of either of these collectives and after having the project touted as ‘educational’ by my school, I was not particularly jazzed by the prospect of this day out. However as the day of workshops, explorations and performance unfolded I found myself beginning to grow curious about this project, and how it transported me from my previously held memories and feelings about the site, towards a space which was unfamiliar and heavy with different stories and significances. Although perhaps not the most momentous production of their career, Half Life ignited a curiosity within me for the NTS and the wider Scottish arts scene, how it explores Scottish cultural identity and history, and the ways in which it engages with space and place both nationally and internationally.

As I grew up and continued to learn more about by native arts scene, I found that a popular aspect of Scottish theatrical tradition, throughout both centuries past and modern times, has been the performance of its own history and mythologies. It’s thought that Scotland, a country that has experienced immense amounts of political, theological and military turmoil, has often turned to theatre and performance as a way of exploring and affirming its cultural identity. Author Trish Reid discusses this idea in her book ‘Theatre & Scotland’, considering the argument that this habit finds its origins in Jacobite times. She describes the suggestion that ever since the 1707 Treaty of Union between the kingdoms of England and Scotland, ‘Scotland has lacked real political agency and has turned instead to over-inscribed historical narratives for a sense of cultural identity’. Although over the past few decades, there has been a significant increase in the use of contemporary narratives and characters to explore Scotland’s cultural identity, from my own experience, I would argue that Scotland and its theatre makers still possess a certain preoccupation with their own history.

Half Life, the show my 13 self found herself at, took the form of an all-day experience, including many different components, such as curated walks, community workshops, art installations and soundscapes, culminating in an outdoor evening performance that took place within the forests of the glen. The project’s content revolved around the area’s Neolithic history, focusing specifically on local landmarks, such as burial sites, standing stones and early rock carvings. The performance took place within the forestry on a striking, purpose-built wooden amphitheater. The performance revolved around scripted dialogue and action set against abseiling based choreography performed on the trees surrounding the playing area. The plot of the piece told the story of a girl who had slipped through the ethereal threshold of a Neolithic landmark to become trapped in the mythological spirit realm. This production and how it animated the local history, taking the mundane and scientific and marrying it with the mythological and fantastical, has stayed with me throughout my life. Since then I have always appreciated and engaged with the abundance of Scottish performance that follows these themes of connecting Scotland’s national heritage and history of storytelling, with contemporary spaces and new performance methods. There are certainly times where this penchant for romanticism and myth telling is detrimental in its perpetuation of stereotypical ideas of ‘Scottishness’. However, I feel there remains a richness in this performance work that ties Scotland’s layered cultural history with its ongoing quest to establish a sense of national identity for those who live in Scotland, regardless of their origins and ethnicities.

What has interested me as I have been living and working in England, and more specifically within London, is that England does not appear to hold this same connection with its folklore and mythology that its smaller neighbours do. Perhaps this is as Trish Reid suggests, something to do with the idea that England has been the historical ‘conqueror’ who does not need to prove its cultural identity by restaging and reinforcing its oral histories. Having spoken with various English theatre practitioners and academics who agree with this idea has made me consider whether there may be a fruitful opening for more explorations of English folklore in contemporary performance. Perhaps offering this chance to reconnect with traditional forms of storytelling and folklore, can open up an interesting space for exploring ‘Englishness’ in a way that does not evoke the negative and nationalist connotations that can often come alongside it. Furthermore, I think it could be incredibly valuable to take a leaf out of the National Theatre of Scotland’s book, and cast a diverse range of actors with varying ethnicities, nationalities and backgrounds (from the huge variety of what it means to be ‘English’) to perform and take ownership of these traditional stories.

Another thing myself and the Out of the Blue team have been pondering is the idea of taking traditional English folklore and placing it onto the urban landscape of modern day London, reinvigorating cold corporate outdoor spaces with the stories that permeated those spaces a thousand years ago. Could this offer a vibrant opportunity to reanimate English heritage through a contemporary spatial lens? Or will we be standing in the rain, wishing we had opted to perform Shakespeare on a black box stage? We will have to see! But for the time being, something exciting is brewing in our creative minds..