MacBraveheart – an alternative vision of our land (and a Very Important Play)

-->In addition to the piece below I've now written a review for the Morning Star. You can find it under their headline - Confronting Scottish Demons - mine would have been Burying the Hatchback! - Anyway it's here.

In all the furore of political debate and discussion in the theatre world over the independence referendum, and the nature of Scottishness, one play on Edinburgh’s Fringe takes a very different look at our future.

Philip Differ

Writer and director Philip Differ’s, short play, MacBraveheart (a FairPley production at the Assembly Rooms, 31July - 24 August), is a wry look at what we might become in the future. It is a post-indy dystopia, if you will – and a very funny – take on what indy-Scotland could become

Unlike FairPley’s other major production - David Hayman's pro-Indy, The Pitiless Storm - also on at the Assembly Rooms, this play is a black comedy, set in a past post-Indy Scotland of bleakness and infighting. William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and Rabbie Burns wrestle with the issues of what happens next? Be careful what you wish for, because it's the early bird that takes the biscuit! It’s a very important play. It is also very funny!

Differ himself says,

"I have long wondered who we would fight with, if all other targets of our wrath were removed! So I tried to take iconic Scottish figures and set them in an extreme post-Indy landscape to answer that question!"

MacBraveheart stars Gerry McLaughlin, James McAnerney, and Scarlet Mack and is a sharp and witty unusual slant on the independence debate. It plays throughout the Fringe (until the 24 Aug - not the 11) at 13.15 in Studio 1 of the Assembly Rooms. Tickets £10 from http://www.arfringe.com/show/5/macbraveheart_the_other_scottish_play or tel:0844 693 3008.

Promo videos at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SNxYESxvUc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MBbTKGMe1E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HvrepzwafM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ms0PBDskXg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFmyId2427A

Hoping for a Cultural Feast in a year of challenges

Rows over Creative Scotland and accusations of political bias aren’t the whole story, says CHRIS BARTTER

This is my Voices of Scotland feature for Tuesday's Morning Star.

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AS WE begin to hit the busiest time of the cultural year in Scotland, it’s worthwhile to take a look around the scene in this year of referendum, war anniversary and Commonwealth Games.

After huge political furore over funding and direction at Creative Scotland resulted in a change of director, has that resulted in a change of direction?

A similar change at the top of the National Theatre of Scotland (NToS) seems at least in part to have been prompted by criticisms of the ethnic origins of the founding artistic director.

And how have the nascent cultural initiatives begun by the Scottish trade union and labour movement at May Day and elsewhere been holding up?

The — still relatively new — attempts by the STUC and local trade union councils to build up the celebration side of May Day seems to be increasing in its reach and support.

The programme produced by Glasgow Friends of May Day, the body set up to channel those

initiatives, shows an increase in its coverage, running cabarets in Dumfries and Blantyre with singer-songwriter Rab Noakes as well as a repeat of last year’s successful Oran Mor production, where Mark Thomas headlines a superb line-up.

While this carefully avoids being seen as a replacement for the much-lamented MayFest, started by former STUC arts officer Alex Clark, there is no doubt that the base threads of trade union and local community involvement in the programme have similarities to the aims of that festival.

There are no overt references to this year’s independence referendum in the May Day celebrations — possibly marking the decision of many unions and the STUC to concentrate on using the debate to argue for the kind of Scotland they want rather then engage in the constitutional bitterness.

But we might well expect some references in the Scottish Left Review’s comedy fundraiser. It stars one of the Yes campaign’s leading cheerleaders in Elaine C Smith.

Similarly, last year’s furore over Sir Jonathan Mills’s claimed exclusion of referendum material from August’s Edinburgh International Festival seems now to have been a tad misplaced.

Laurie Sansom. NToS

A major production of Scottish playwright Rona Munro’s James work, directed by new NToS artistic director Laurie Sansom, will put Scottish identity and the governance of the nation front and centre-stage.

Both Edinburgh’s Book Festival and a major fringe venue, the Assembly Rooms, have promised more referendum material this year, although whether this proves overkill remains to be seen. Certainly, the Yes campaign has largely captured Scotland’s artists, with only a small handful declaring for No.

Sansom himself has been easing himself into the hot seat at NToS. As the second English artistic director he has already been the subject of warning shots from bloggers on the pro-independence Bella Caledonia site.

However, he has managed to commission pro- and anti- theatre practitioners David Greig and Dave

Dave MacLennan

MacLennan to curate The Yes, No, Don’t Know 5 Minute Theatre Show, and promises a revival of Joe Corrie’s In Time of Strife, a seminal Scottish play last revived by 7:84 Theatre Company in 1982.

Creative Scotland’s new chief executive faced an even more difficult baptism. Janet Archer followed the much-harassed Andrew Dixon after funding withdrawal from a large number of companies prompted a furious response in 2012.

Like him — and Laurie Sansom — she too was from south of the border. While ethnic origin shouldn’t matter, in the current febrile atmosphere it does (thank you Alasdair Gray).

Janet Archer

Rightly divining that funding was at the root of the crisis, Archer spent some time “crowd-sourcing” views on a(nother) new funding structure. This was finally revealed recently,and seems to be a bit of a return to the past. The reintroduction of a regular three-year funding for companies will be welcomed, at least by those that get it.

A successful first step perhaps, yet there is still much to do to rebuild fences. For example, previous funding and artistic decisions led to a virtual demise of Scottish touring theatre — especially those companies with a social message.

We have had to rely on NToS commissions and the occasional project-funded tour by venue-based companies. Is it too much to hope that along with longer-term funding we could see a return to regular Scottish touring companies bringing theatre to the village halls and pubs of Scotland?

Ironically the companies least caught up in the furore over funding are those companies that used to form the nexus of the debate.

The removal of the five “national” Scottish companies — NToS, Scottish Opera, Scottish Ballet, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra — from then Scottish Arts Council funding in 2007 to direct Scottish government funding seems to have given the lie to the truism that politicians shouldn’t get directly involved in the issuing of grants.

Cultural decisions are still a source of huge interest in Scotland. And where people get it wrong they are told so. Most recently the bizarre decision to use the demolition of people’s homes as a centrepiece of the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony was overturned following an outcry from local people and commentators.

The jury is still out on Creative Scotland’s future direction and whether a plethora of pro-independence shows would be a blessing or a curse.

Chris Bartter chairs Glasgow Friends of May Day. He blogs on political and cultural issues at www.captaingrumping.blogspot.co.uk.

(Don’t Talk of) Dust and Roses

While the temperature of the indyref debate is on the rise (unsurprisingly), and the bitterness of the accusations and attacks on and by politicians is probably understandable if regrettable, it still rankles to see otherwise temperate journalists accuse others of attitudes that are patently inaccurate, especially when those commented on are in no position to defend themselves.

In particular the piece by Herald Literary editor, Rosemary Goring in Saturday 8th’s Herald Arts supplement  - It’s good that writers speak up for Scotland - claims that ‘Few [writers] loathed Scotland more than George Orwell’! A puzzling claim about a writer who obviously loathed

Barnhill, Isle of Jura. Orwell's home for 3 years

Scotland so much he chose to live here! Whether he did so as a ‘settler’ or a ‘colonist’, I leave for others to judge.

Having looked a little further into the claim, mainly via Orwell’s Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, I remain baffled by Ms Goring’s assertion. Certainly Orwell made no secret of his hatred of nationalism in general – hardly surprisingly for someone who went through the 30’s, the Spanish Civil War and the 2^nd World War – and indeed has nothing very complimentary to say about the Scottish or Irish nationalism of the time, mainly because of what he saw as a basis in national enmity, rather than economic discrimination.

Orwell - did he loath Scotland?

I think that Orwell’s political perspective is often flawed – mainly because he looks at things from primarily an individual rather than collective viewpoint – but there appears to be no evidence for such a sweeping condemnation of his views of Scotland. Indeed from an early age he rejected the ‘Upper-class playground’ attitude to Scotland he found at his school, (Such, such were the joys) and was on record in arguing for ‘full autonomy’ for Scotland, and for Gaelic education in an As I Please column of 1947.

It is of course, helpful to have the view from outside on any activity. Whether that is from Will Self or Tony Benn, David Bowie or Billy Bragg, Sean Connery or Eddie Izzard, they have their perspectives, and we can accept or reject them. What isn’t acceptable is to apportion prejudice to people with flimsy evidence.

Many of us hoped that the “radical blurring of national lines” would continue, rather than have a new line drawn. Maybe the “fear and loathing writers used to nurse about their neighbours.” does still exist – just in a different neighbourhood?

Serving us and boosting our economy - Public Ownership

In the wake of the Ed Miliband/Daily Mail saga, a blog from James Maxwell of the New Statesman has an interesting series of points to make on the difference between Milliband’s pledges on the UK stage and Salmond’s in Scotland.

His point is essentially that while Miliband is (possibly against his will) being forced to challenge the UK consensus that the the Tories, their coalition partners and New Labour have espoused for a number of decades now - that an unregulated private sector is the saviour of the UK economy and that there is no role for the state to intervene; here in Scotland - despite the opportunities offered for challenging this consensus by the independence referendum - Alex Salmond shows no sign of doing so. Indeed he points to many policies where the SNP have actually moved towards the UK consensus.

To be fair, he also points to a range of policies where the SNP and Scottish Government are still to the left of the Labour Party, but the difference in challenging ‘business and its vested interests’ is marked. 

  The Scottish government was almost alone in retaining close relationships with News International, when even their close political pals were abandoning them. They have consistently courted tax-dodging corporations like Amazon, and argued against state intervention to take our share of windfall profits by North Sea energy companies, or to freeze energy prices to the consumer.

And where is the evidence that these policies work? Ofgen warns of power black-outs by 2015 as a result of lack of investment in the privatised energy sector. Privatised rail has the highest subsidies in Europe – except where the publicly owned East Coast line has delivered almost £1billion in profit. A socially disastrous housing crisis has resulted from the inability of the private sector to provide affordable houses. Yet elsewhere in the world there is economic growth – and it is generally in those countries where there is a significant measure of public ownership and active public support for industry.

In this context Sunday’s conference taking place in Glasgow on the need for greater public input

into our economic life is remarkably appropriate. While few at the conference would put much faith in Miliband, the lack of arguments for increased public ownership that have come out of the ‘indyref’ debate despite the spectacular failure of privatised companies, will hopefully be rectified by an impressive range of speakers. Economists and researchers like the STUC’s Stephen Boyd, and UNISONScotland policy chief, Dave Watson will be joined by politicians from both Labour (Neil Findlay MSP) and the SNP (Chris Stephens of the SNP TU Group). The conference will examine the evidence for successful public sector intervention, from the past and from the present, from the UK and from elsewhere in the world.

The conference is organised by the Morning Star’s Scottish Campaign Committee and takes place from 11 am at the STUC offices in Woodlands Road, Glasgow. Further details here.