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.

A visit to Craig Dunain

One of the places that Esther and Helen visited on their recent trip was Craig Dunain, the psychiatric hospital outside of Inverness where Angus McPhee lived from 1946 until 1996. Craig Dunain Hospital was the only hospital for psychiatric illness in the Highlands, and formerly the Highland District Lunatic Asylum - Scotland's third oldest district asylum.

In 2007 it was mostly destroyed by fire and is now being transformed into luxury flats, as you can see from the photographs that Helen took there. The places where Angus worked, where he carefully placed all the garments he made from grass and sheep's wool beneath the protective bushes of rhododendron or holly, still remain. But they sit unloved amidst the security fencing and diggers and earth movers that are slowly eating away at the gardens that provided a studio and workshop for Angus for half a century (below).

The meetings in Inverness were really positive. Most were meetings with potential partners, and there is a keenness to tell this story and take it around the Islands and Highlands. On our part the need to work with Scottish partners on this project is apparent, and I'll be spending my time over the next few weeks consulting with friends and colleagues, planning ways of doing this and time-tabling our next visits.

The elective mute

There's an excellent article in yesterday's online SCOTTISH REVIEW by Angus Skinner. 'The Elective Mute', a piece about Angus McPhee and the work of Joyce Laing. 
http://www.scottishreview.net/AngusSkinner33.shtml

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).

A foreign land...

Organising a theatre tour of Scotland is for us, in many ways, the same as organising a tour of a foreign country. The organisations we deal with are often very different to those in England, both those agencies that might help us with the touring logistics and those that could help us with any funding. The Scottish Arts Council has also very recently been superceded by Creative Scotland, so there's a very new organisation to deal with.

Esther and Helen have began looking at all of this. I also wrote to an old friend, Jenny Wilson, who for many years was Director of Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association, and before that Director of the Crawford Arts Centre in St. Andrews. Jenny wrote back with a long list of suggestions, and that helped begin the process. Since then Esther has visited Fife to talk with Joyce Laing, and there's the plan to (very soon) travel to Inverness to meet the people involved with theatre touring in Scotland and, in particular, of the Highlands and Islands. 

The photographs here are a few more from the recent trip I made with Alison to the Uists, and show the ruined house that Angus was brought up in. The blackhouse is actually perched just above the beach, and literally five steps (and a jump down) will bring you to the high-water line. The close up (above) hints at the textures and woven components that exist even within the fabric of that home; textures that clearly meant so much  to Angus himself. Below is a shot of what's left of the interior.