The Silent Weaver

Within the past hour I've finished reading the proof copy of The Silent Weaver that the author Roger Hutchinson very kindly allowed me to read before its forthcoming publication in September. This is a detailed story of Angus McPhee's life - in fact its full title is 'The Silent Weaver: The Extraordinary Life and Work of Angus MacPhee'. 

The information for my own play about Angus has so far been derived almost entirely from the short book Weaver of Grass, by Joyce Laing, and it was through Joyce that I heard about Roger's book. I've read Calum's Road - Roger Hutchinson's previous and very successful book about a crofter from Raasay, and it occurred to me, as I began reading The Silent Weaver, that his new book had the potential to upset all the notions and ideas that came together to form the raw material for my production with Horse + Bamboo Theatre (as yet untitled, but we currently refer to it as, simply, 'Angus'). 

Trial collar for our production of
'Angus' by Joanne B Kaar

Roger Hutchinson's book is beautifully written and clearly very well researched - not only the particular details of Angus McPhee's life, but also with regard to those things that helped shape it - grass weaving in the crofting community; the soldiering of the Lovat Scouts; the Art Brut movement; the treatment of mental illness in the Highlands during the Twentieth Century, for example. 

Despite this I've put the book down feeling pleased and perhaps a little surprised that the only real modification I'll need to make to our piece is an acknowledgement that Angus was actually born near Glasgow, rather than in South Uist as I had assumed. What is more, in The Silent Weaver, Roger Hutchinson continually places Angus's work in the context of Celtic art and traditions, which is something I decided to make a part of our own 'Angus' from its inception. 

  
Within a few yards of where I'm staying there are two rocks on the shore with mysterious cup marks (above); slightly higher up the hill is Cladh Maolruibhe, an ancient burial ground and later a 6th century chapel; within a 100m is A'Clach Mor, a standing Stone and from there walking back to the house is Leac an Righ (The Flat Stone of the King), believed to be the inauguration stone of the Lord of the Isles. None of this is signposted or marked in any way; they just exist in the landscape, just as they always have.

Angus's weavings, it has been noted, have an ancient, archaeological, look - a feeling that they could have been made at any time during the period that human beings have lived on the earth. The Silent Weaver notes this too, and celebrates the fact that Angus McPhee, trapped in the institution of Craig Dunain, was able to reach deep down into the ancient well of his culture and somehow manage to twist the strands together in a way that protected his individuality with work of great inventiveness, distinction and even wit. 

Angus's gift

The week in the Uists has been very, very good. I always felt that it would be a useful venture for us, but what I didn't realise was just how important it would be. Important in a number of ways – firstly, a key stage in developing a theatre show about Angus McPhee; but also important for doing something altogether more fundamental – reminding us, when it comes to the crunch, of what actually matters.

To work in the (publicly subsidised) arts right now can be frustrating. Matters of funding, of management, of income generation, of negotiations with the Arts Council, of service and contract agreements, sit so visibly on the surface of our day to day work life that it often feels as if the real substance of our work – the creative vision and all the work that springs from it – is totally squashed by the these considerations, and that the sheer weight of emails, budgets, meetings, audience analyses and suchlike dominate and take precedence over the relatively straightforward matter of creating work which communicates and explores ideas with grace, in the process entertains, and then brings people together meaningfully.

Loz Kaye described this well in his guest blog on Monday – and reminded us that we are dealing with a man who needed his art for his survival. We were told that Angus felt that the system had crucified him, and we saw how his grass weaving grew from his deep need to reconnect himself with the culture and place from which he came, and from which his life was so abruptly severed.

The meetings we've had with people here who are working to sustain the rich Gaelic and Celtic culture of the islands have been extremely stimulating. Honesty and integrity has shone through. South Uist, where Angus was brought up and where he died, has a population of about 1800 people spread over a large area. In this context an art centre, or a centre of learning, can be seen clearly for what it is – as an essential and necessary part of the community, maintaining and sustaining and developing the history and heritage of the people. On these islands the creativity of the community shines out – most particularly in the musical heritage, but also in the wealth of fine artists and craftspeople and their studios that dot the landscape.

Back in Lancashire the landscape is very different of course, and the view is more complex – shops, traffic on the roads, business of all sorts - all this and much more obscures the picture. But at heart the same human needs remain – places where we can meet together with meaning; opportunities to create and express our anxieties and uncertainties, as well as celebrate who we are individually and collectively. Having got considerably closer to Angus this week, I'm humbled that this humblest of men can still manage to give me something very important to take back home to our own community and place in Rossendale, reminding us of the real urgency and importance of what we're trying to do as artists.

The faces of Angus McPhee

Alison is assembling the young Angus puppet (the parts for this were photographed in the last blog); and I've just taken the fourth of the papier-mache heads off the clay mould:

Above, Angus ages from right to left. We have still to make a baby Angus puppet, and a 14 year old Angus mask.

Fingers crossed then!

The remains of the tigh dubh, the small house by the shore at Iochdar,
South Uist, where Angus McPhee was born and lived as a young man

As work on creating a touring theatre show about Angus McPhee continues at homes and workshops in Lancashire, Caithness and on Berneray, it's worth taking a short pause to say that on Wednesday, between 7.30 and 9.30 in the morning, Horse + Bamboo Theatre will receive an email from the Arts Council of England telling us if our funding will continue – or if it will be cut.

All regularly funded arts organisations in England will be receiving similar emails, and we're told that the decision in each case will be an either/or one – i.e. no half-way houses; you're either successful or not. If unsuccessful there's still 12 months funding at current levels guaranteed, but after that Arts Council funding will finish.

How will this affect our work on the Angus McPhee show?

Well, the current work on the show is being paid for by a research and development grant from the Foyle Foundation, to whom – many, many thanks. The fees to Alison and myself are met from the current grant to Horse + Bamboo. This work will take us through to May, when we visit Berneray and Uist and the various artist partners on the project will meet and come together at Berneray Community Hall for a week. After that our making work on the show will slow right down, but Helen will continue to fund-raise for the next stages of Angus, and Esther will start selling a tour of the show. If the news next week is good, then our plans will continue precisely along these lines. If we receive bad news then no doubt our Board will want to meet and decide on an alternative plan. In theory though, there's no reason why Angus should not be available to go into rehearsal and then tour during the summer of 2012. This will be subject to raising the money (and getting bookings for the show) but that will be the case no matter what scenario unfolds on and after Wednesday, as our core funding nowadays doesn't cover the costs of creating or touring our work.

Fingers crossed then.

The ghosts of young Angus

Working back in time from the mask of the old Angus McPhee isn't easy. The only photographs I have seen of the young Angus are these:

(copyright: Calum Angus MacKay)

Angus at the age of 14 looking rather like, every one seems to think, the young Bob Dylan; and then this ghostly photograph of Angus in the Lovat Scouts, dated 1939 - so at the age of 23. 

A photograph full of mystery this, but a long way from being ideal for modelling a mask from. So in effect I'm inventing what the younger Angus looked like. The two older masks, still in their green undercoated glory, were relatively easy to model as there are several decent photographs of Angus in his 70s:

But going back in time from these two, looking to represent Angus in, say, his thirties, is a more difficult job. I've arrived at this, with the kind of hair I though he might have after his military service:

By the way, there's some very interesting photographs on Joanne B. Kaar's blog of her experiments with creating grass ropes in the manner of Angus for our theatre show. 

Decision time

On Friday we had a long meeting, in part to close an eventful year at the theatre (and in our venue - the Boo), but also to decide how we would proceed with the Angus McPhee project. The grant from the Foyle Foundation gives us a firm foundation, and we agreed to use the money for precisely the work it was awarded for - to further research and prepare for a show about Angus, his life and his work, and that a large part will be created in the Uists. Over the next few weeks we'll be in touch with our partners in the project and discuss how we will move things forward in 2011.

Being far from the land that I know

Is what has stirred me in my sadness

Because nostalgia wounds me 

Since there are none around me of the folk I know

I will touch the harp-strings of my voice

To see if I can fashion a little song for me

About green, grassy Uist of the glens

And something of the way of the people who live there

The last glimpse of the sun

After it has circled the whole day

May be seen from my land

Just before it rises again on it.

I must cut short my account for today

Since my time has gone

And even if I lived twelve times as long as a stag

I could not recount all the beauties of Uist.

The translated first and last verses of Moladh Uibhist, "In Praise of Uist", written (in the Gaelic) by the late Roderick MacKay of North Uist. A version by Julie Fowlis closes her second album "Mar a tha mo Chridhe" and hearing it again it can't but remind me of Angus and his, perhaps necessary, long exile from home. 

What now?

This has been a busy period at Horse + Bamboo Theatre as we've been preparing for and rehearsing a new show for Christmas. This is now showing at our venue, the Boo, and the building has been packed each day with excited school groups and, in the evenings and at weekends, family audiences. It has meant that thinking about the implications of the news about funding for Angus has been put to one side. 

But next week we'll meet to look at where we are with all of this. We have an offer of £15,000 from the Foyle Foundation to start developing the project. On the other hand Creative Scotland have told us that they cannot contribute towards developing the show when our base is in England. Where that leaves us isn't entirely obvious. For one thing, we would be developing large sections of 'Angus' in Scotland, specifically on the Uists, and some of this will involve several Scottish artists making important creative contributions to the production. For another, the whole project is tied into various strands of work with Scottish partners - working with Theatre Hebrides, for example. 

So all of this needs to be teased out. Clearly the Foyle money is a major plus as it enables subsequent bids for funds to be put in the context of us already having a major part of the necessary support in place. We'll need to discuss going back to Creative Scotland on a different basis, and we'll also need to consider exactly what parts of the work can go ahead using the Foyle Foundation money. One obvious possibility will be that the timetable for the production will, once again, be changed in order to give us more time to put the changes into practice, and also to allow more time to go through the various funding processes. 

In the meantime, above is another photograph of Angus from Joyce Laings 'Weaver of Grass'. This, again by Jim Waugh, taken in 1978, of Angus weaving in the grounds of Craig Dunain Hospital.

Feel the draft

Esther phoned me on Friday. She wanted to confirm that I was happy for her to take the draft script along to Inverness today in order to show anyone who might want to look at it. Presumably so they could get a sense of the general drift of the production. Sure, I said - meanwhile pointing out that my own version has already been modified. 

At this time the script is simply a draft. It's there so other people who may get involved with the production, whether artistically or organisationally, can get a feel of how it might be. So what we have now is no more than a general approach to telling a story. It combines a narrative about Angus McPhee with stage directions, such as whether a scene is accompanied by film, or whether the scene is played using masks or puppets, and where I see songs being placed amongst the action. 

The script tells a broadly sequential story of Angus's life. It's held together by narratives told as if by 'Joyce' - Joyce Laing, that is, and using her book 'Weaver of Grass' as a guide. Film is used to suggest some of the textures of the islands, and there are puppetry interludes that broaden the context to include Scottish and Celtic stories and histories. As I've mentioned there is also a thread of song. Probably largely Gaelic song.

In a way I've tried to write a script as a kind of analogy to a piece of work by Angus himself. To weave together threads of material that make connection with one another. To, in the end, create a complete artifact that says something about the man himself and his life, the place he came from (and goes back to), the historical and social circumstances of the time, and finally the cultural context of the whole. 

Things get moving

I'm building the set for a Christmas production - Red Riding Hood - but on the organisational front things are moving fast for Angus. We don't have a title for this production yet, so it's just known as 'Angus' or 'Angus McPhee' and I'm getting to like just that.

The photographs are from inside the house at Iochdar where Angus and his family lived. It's now a ruin.

Esther and Helen are travelling to Inverness on the 11th October to discuss our plans with the Highland and Island Touring Network, Creative Scotland and possibly other touring agencies. They will also talk to Zenwing Puppets, who are based in the Highlands, about the possibility of them undertaking some work in schools related to the Angus McPhee theme. We've also had helpful expressions of interest from An Llantair on Lewis and from Taigh Chearsabhagh on Uist. The sense of something developing momentum is palpable. 

I've also discussed the idea with Chris Spears of him working on at least part of the set in Berneray - I like the idea of part of the show being physically created on the Islands, and finally I stumbled upon another blog - Mary-Ann's Cottage - and the work of Joanne B Kaar, an inspiring fibre artists who has herself been inspired by the example of Angus McPhee. 

A pair of trousers

I phoned Chris Spears on Berneray this morning; it was Chris who first introduced me to the story of Angus. Alison and I stayed with him on our recent visit, and I inadvertently left our only copy of Nick Higgins film about Angus in his DVD player and now I need it back. Nick told me that the DVD had sold out (deservedly) and he was waiting for a new bunch of copies. In the meantime I had a French language subtitled version and I took it with me to the islands in order to remind Chris of the story.

Chris has built his own house in Borve where he lives with his family (above). On our visit he showed me the stone, just a few yards down on the beach where he has discovered ring and cup marks. The geneology of 113 Scots kings starts with Fergus Mac Erc around the year 500, the first king of Dalriada. It's a complex story but it's an important one; the first independent sea kingdom of the western seaboard. The Kings of Dalriada travelled their sea-kingdom to cement their authority, submitting to coronations at key points. One is at Leac an Righ, the 'flat stone of the king', or the Coronation Stone on Berneray. It is a stone ledge in the form of a footprint cut out of the rock. It has inscriptions similar to the stone at Dunadd where kings were known to have been crowned. Chris wonders if his stone is connected in some way to the Coronation Stone nearby.

How this relates to Angus isn't perhaps immediately apparent unless you've visited the Outer Hebrides. Once there perceptions change – perceptions of the land, of the weather, of both time and space. A single rock on a shore or in a field has significance. For a start it will have its own name. In the same way distant events print themselves in song and in story in a way that can be difficult to appreciate. Angus grew up in this world. He would have known the names of the rocks, their stories and associations; he would have used seaweeds and grasses to make rope is just the way the Kings and Lords of the Isles would have. This sense somehow has to feed into the story we tell.

On another very different note I visited Liverpool's Museum of the World last week, which has a wonderful ethnographic collection, possibly the best in England outside of London and Oxford. In one cabinet I saw a costume that was strangely familiar and then realised how these Japanese grass trousers (above top) are so very like those woven by Angus McPhee (above bottom).