ANGUS MCPHEE - Weaver of Grass


ANGUS MCPHEE or MACPHEE was a crofter from Uist who spent almost 50 years in a Highland psychiatric hospital. During this time he chose not to speak - instead he wove a series of incredible costumes out of grass. These he hung on trees in the hospital grounds.

This blog follows the progress of HORSE + BAMBOO THEATRE as they develop and tour a show about Angus....

Friday, 3 February 2012

A busy week

After the excitement of seeing those shows in London I returned to our Horse + Bamboo workshop and drastically laid into the model of the set for Angus. 


Substituting angles for straight lines everywhere, and moving the projectors to the sides rather than front-on - the whole thing took on a distinct Daniel Libeskind quality. I was helped in this by having two final year theatre students, Andre and Mariana, arrive for a three month stay with us from EPTC, Cascais, Portugal. Despite being shocked by the Lancashire cold, they settled in quickly (after a Sunday New Year visit to Manchester Chinatown) and were an immediate help in creating new model boxes incorporating the more expressionistic approach to the set design.  


Joanne B Kaar has been busy too - three creels arrived in the post today - here they are hanging on the skeleton of the set:


But most of all, Joanne has been busy re-imagining Angus and his fanciful hats (a new addition to the script). I sent her a mask to fit the hat to. The box containing the mask must have crossed the bag with the creels somewhere in the UK postal service around Dundee by my reckoning! Any way the photograph Joanne sent today, showing my roughly painted mask wearing Joanne's whacky hat is rather splendid:


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