Chris arrives - and the question of accuracy.

The Horse + Bamboo workshop continues to be full of people helping us with the final stages of making for Angus - in the main working to help Alison finish her mountain of carved hand, glove and string puppets. Alison is doing most of the carving herself, but pieces are being sanded, strung, assembled and then, finally, dressed by a small army of helpers. 

Yesterday Chris Spears joined us from Berneray, having travelled down from the Outer Isles on Monday. He helped me yesterday, improving on a small painted set of peat-moss or bla'r moine, and puppet racing horses for the Odaidh. Today he joined the group helping Alison. Lizzie Lempen of Lempen Puppet Theatre is also helping us for a couple of days.

The question of accuracy occurs frequently. For example in the Oidhche Challaig (New Year) section we need a caisein-uchd, a smouldering sheep-skin torch, but no-one, including Chris, has ever seen one. So some guess work has to take place. How far to go in the search is often an issue - especially when the scene is light-hearted, as with the above examples. But wherever  possible we use contemporary sources for information - so above (top) we see Christina making a horse-drawn cart, using period photographs by Margaret Fay Shaw as a source, while (lower image) Chris Spears is using a 1934 photograph by Werner Kissling as a model for panniers, or cliabh.

Finally Debby Waldron of BBC Alba emailed to discuss coming down during the rehearsal period to film us in advance of the tour, so they have some footage available for An Là, the Gaelic news broadcast. We are very happy to oblige.

Big Dog and Gloomy Dog

Unfortunately I don't speak Gaelic. I know a few words and I also have the Briathrachan app on my iphone i.e a Gaelic-English dictionary. From these limited sources I've excited myself by working out that the two rocks that welcome you to Lochmaddy harbour (above) are the Big Dog and the Gloomy Dog. Even that Lochmaddy itself - Loch Nam Madadh in Gaelic, means the Loch of the Dogs. Actually, and to be precise, Briathrachand says that madadh can mean any wild animal, but somehow I prefer dog. Perhaps because I'm missing my own two, big dog and gloomy dog. 

To tell the story in sequence, I should have started with this photograph, taken from MV Hebrides as we left Uig bay in Skye:

We arrived at Chris Spears lovely house on Berneray at midday. Had a brew together and I then took Loz on a short tour of the island, checking out the Community Hall (where we'll be working next week) and the wonderful hostel (where Alison, Christina and Jonny will be staying when they arrive in the middle of the week). We then went to Taigh Chearsabhagh, stocked up with Weaver of Grass books (Joyce Laing's very special book about Angus McPhee) and introduced ourselves to the Director, Andy Mackinnon. 

Outside the hostel (above - it's right on the beach), Loz swung straight into action, trying out his new gizmo, a smart new palm size 24-bit recording studio. The lower photograph is Loz recording the sound of the waves on the beach, unfortunately slightly marred by the sound of the wind.

Planning our work

Now that I'm able to plan things in a little more detail, I've had another discussion with Chris Spears about the use of Berneray Community Hall in May. We're trying to arrive at a fee for hiring the space for a week. The hall committee meet in a few weeks time, and I hope that we can come to some agreement at that time.

Berneray map: Wikitravel Image Repository Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 1.0.

The hall is at Borve (Borgh) to the NNE of Loch Bhuirgh, numbered 3 on the map above (if you can read it), and Chris lives on the edge of the Loch. Everything is very close by, a short walk away, and it may well be that when we get to having visitors they will stay at the hostel at East Beach (no.6).

The plan is that I travel up and work with Chris to create a rough version of the set, accompanied by Loz Kaye, the Musical Director on the production, who will work with musicians from Lews Castle College Learning Centre on Benbecula. By the end of the week we will be joined by other artists and performers working on the show - Alison Duddle, my colleague and co-director at Horse + Bamboo Theatre; Mark Whitaker, a puppeteer who we hope will be in the final show; and Joanne B Kaar, who will be making the woven costumes and other performing objects for the production. We'll have some of the masks and puppets to work with; possibly even some film material, so we should be able to achieve a lot in a few days of workshopping. 

View across to Berneray harbour; with seals. 

We could easily do this work at our base in Lancashire but it makes real sense to do it on the islands. First it will introduce some our cast to the Outer Hebrides; it will also be far easier for Chris, who lives on Berneray and Joanne, who lives way north on the mainland (near Dunnet by Thurso in Caithness), and the musicians, to meet up with the rest of us here. 

Most importantly we're able to cross the various causeways and visit the place on North Uist where Angus was born and lived until he went away to fight in the Second World War (and, of course, to where he returned after 50 years away). 

Finally I want the set to have a strongly organic feel - not to be a rigid structure of painted theatre flats and screens, but to use local materials to help create a framework where wires or ropes tensioned by heavy rocks can support cloth screens. This will take experiment and probably some  beach-combing, but it's certainly something best done in this island environment. 

The current plan

Angus McPhee drinking coffee at Uist House, the care home on South Uist where he lived after returning to the island after his long, long stay at Craig Dunain psychiatric hospital near Inverness. From Joyce Laing's book 'Weaver of Grass' (photo: Tim Neat).

The plan: Once our current shows are up and running, Alison and I will start working on 'Angus'. Between now and May we'll each find at least a months work to spend on the show - probably masks and puppets will be the first things we make. Some of the puppets required are complex - in particular a set of marionettes for the scene when the young Angus sets off to join the Lovat Scouts at the outset of the war. These I imagine will be carved in wood, and possibly by Alison who has got into wood-carving in a big way over the past year and more... Meanwhile, I'll probably start by creating a series of masks of Angus McPhee himself; masks that represent Angus at different stages of his life.

The plan is to then for us to take these to the Outer Hebrides early this summer, along with our musical director, Loz Kaye, and using Berneray Community Hall as a base for a short time, to start developing the staging for the show and beginning to look at how the different formal elements - the masks and puppets, song, music, film, woven pieces - might all come and work together. At this point we'll meet up with some of the other artists working on the development of the piece - Chris Spears and Joanne B Kaar. I'll also continue with this work throughout the summer months.

Helen and Esther will meantime be working on raising the funding to enable us to continue the work. By April 2012 we'll put together a more formal presentation at Taigh Chearsabhagh of our work in progress as a public exhibition. At this point the Foyle Foundation grant runs out and we'll  

Then the final making period will start at our base in Rossendale in preparation for a tour from July to September 2012. This happening will depend on how successful Helen has been in raising funding support to allow us to finish the making and then to undertake rehearsals. The final part of the funding jigsaw is in the organising and selling of the tour itself, and this is where Esther's work is crucial, and will need to start before we're too long into 2011.