The nightmare of war

After taking a few days out for a sunny Easter and the various holidays we're back at Horse + Bamboo and suddenly our visit to Uist and Berneray seems just round the corner. There's still a million jobs to do - programmes to design for the Puppet Festival in July; helping Helen write applications for funding support for the Angus tour in 2012; planning for the next productions here (including Alison's version of The Nightingale), auditions, and more...

But also of course there's the jobs we MUST get completed before I set off to the islands in a weeks time. Making a tweed hat for Angus; finishing the horse puppet; cutting a window in the back screen for the set; more repainting of masks, finding costumes, and creating a short animation to try out front projections over the stage action. 

The picture above is a still from the animated film - there will be four main film and animation sections in the show. The first to set the scene and portray the view out of the window of Angus's small croft house. The second the wartime nightmares and return home from the front; a third will be the garden of Craig Dunain, and a final film will be the return to Uist as an old man. The photograph above is from the second animation - the nightmare of war.

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. 

Artists...

Despite working flat-out on Red Riding Hood (a new and small-scale show for Christmas) there's plenty happening here with Angus. Joanne B Kaar finally returned my email - the original had been chewed and rejected by her spam-eater - and we made contact. This has really delighted me as Joanne's work looks both fabulous and perfect for a show about Angus McPhee.....

Above we see Joanne after a recent fishing expedition with her husband, dad - and Chip. Joanne has also put me in contact with Tim Johnson, who has worked on Uist, and is a multi-skilled maker, working in photography, basket-maker, sculptor and painter. I also spoke with Chris Spears on Berneray yesterday, outlining our current plans and discussing the possibility of hiring a hall, perhaps even the community hall, on Berneray or North Uist in 2011 to use as a base for making parts of the production. 

In the course of our conversation Chris gave me a link to a number of artists associated with the island, including Chris Drury, whose show Land, Water and Language is currently at Taigh Chearsabhagh in Lochmaddy (though closing shortly). So far as I can see it looks stunning. All of this confirms to me just how much really good creative work is happening in the Highlands and Islands.

Above - guisers on Uist (love this photograph); and finally - a link to a short section from 'Hidden Gifts: The Mystery of Angus McPhee' the excellent 25-minute film made by Nick Higgins for Landsdowne Productions in 2004.

Angus McPhee - Weaver of Grass

This is a blog following my progress putting together a theatre show about Angus McPhee. So, already it's getting complicated - who was Angus McPhee? What kind of theatre show? Who is going to do this? So here goes...

Angus McPhee was from Iochdar, in South Uist, part of the Outer Hebrides, or Western Islands of Scotland. He was a crofter who as a young man went off to war in 1940. Something happened during the next few years and he was invalided home, a changed man, an elective mute. Soon he was transferred to Craig Dunain, a Victorian psychiatric hospital outside of Inverness. There he spent the next 40-odd years. During this period he created extraordinary woven grass objects. These were hardly recognized by the hospital staff, until in the late 1970s the noted art therapist Joyce Laing visited the hospital, looking for examples of 'Art Brut', Outsider Art, or 'Art Extraordinary'. Joyce seized upon the pieces she found in the hospital grounds, and thus fortunately was able to preserve a small part of Angus's work. 

As Artistic Director of Horse + Bamboo Theatre I visited the Outer Islands in the 1980s as part of an extensive horse-drawn tour. I made many friends during that memorable time. Several years later, one friend, Chris Spears of Berneray, sent me a copy of the booklet written by Joyce Laing about Angus. Called Angus McPhee: Weaver of Grass, it told Angus's story and I immediately felt it would make a wonderful subject for a theatre piece. Angus had been sent home to spend his last years in Uist, and had died there in 1997.

Last year I finally got round to take taking Joyce's book down off the shelf again. I discussed the subject with my colleagues at H+B, and found they were extremely enthusiastic about the idea of a touring show on this subject, and furthermore a show that would be designed in such a way as to be suited to touring to the Hebrides themselves, as well as to other island and similar isolated communities. So with the help of my colleagues, in particular Helen Jackson, who has started the unenviable task of fundraising for the tour; Esther Ferry-Kennington, who as producer to the company, will be selling the tour, and my co-artistic director Alison Duddle, work has begun on the task - this blog will document the journey. 

I visited Joyce earlier this summer at her wonderful 'Art Extraordinary Gallery' in Pittenweem, Fife, and there saw some of Angus's amazing pieces for myself. Joyce was very enthusiastic about the project and has already been extremely helpful and supportive. Esther visited her at the gallery to maintain this dialogue and Alison and I visited the Uists (see foggy photo above) in July. There we tracked down Angus's old tigh dubh (black house - see below) and visited Chris Spears, who had prompted the whole adventure on Berneray.