Braw Dramaturgy: Jeffrey Mayhew and Susan Wilson @ Edfringe 2015

Based entirely on written and oral first-hand accounts and detailed research into the period in and around 1959 (the pivotal year for the show) A Cinema in South Georgia not only looks at the darker more contentious side of the whaling industry but is also a celebration of four men, who, at differing points in their lives, in different ways and with differing attitudes and outcomes risked their lives amongst the ice floes.


'A stunning performance from a wonderful cast. The realism of whaling days in the South Atlantic was truly brought to life in this most remarkable production. Gritty, humorous, at times poignantly sad, yet also heart-lifting and thought provoking. A magnificent script matched by acting of the highest quality. I defy anyone not to be moved to tears by the final scene.' - Peter Aitchison: Director of Media and PR, University of Glasgow author of Children of the Sea.

The Fringe
What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?

Jeffrey Mayhew and Susan Wilson
For me this was a discussion with the co-author, Susan, in which she outlined the very personal project she had envisaged of writing a play about some of the last of the whaling men to go “down the ice” from Eyemouth.

Why bring your work to the Edinburgh Fringe?
Having toured (six shows) the area of Scotland from which the characters had come and seen the response of local people to local history it seemed only appropriate. And the sailing was made from Leith with Salvesen being based there.

What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?
Clearly there are issues – this is, after all, about whaling, but these are addressed head on. The core of the play however looks at what drove these men at this time (late 1950s) to take this perilous step.

The Dramaturgy Questions
How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
I think that the driving force of Yiddish theatre – Singen, Lachen, Weinen pretty well sums up where I want to be.

What particular traditions and influences would you acknowledge on your work - have any particular artists, or genres inspired you and do you see yourself within their tradition?
The writer creators – the ones who wrote it, acted it, stuck it on a cart and got out and did it – Shakespeare, Brecht, Moliere, Lorca… I am with Susan on Burns – almost my number one author – pity he didn’t write plays!

Do you have a particular process of making that you could describe - where it begins, how you develop it, and whether there is any collaboration in the process?
The idea has to have resonance and importance and then for me the characters take over. Clearly this is a collaborative show and has involved a long process of discussion and research.

What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?
Vital. Written for them, about them, with them always uppermost in mind. I would hope that they would come away with an insight into the lives played before them.

Braw Buoys is a company of actors (Euan McIver, Frazer Smiles, Jonathan Coombes, Mark Vevers) from in and around Eyemouth, each of whom bring a range of community and professional experience to this project and give it its special flavour and authenticity.

Venue	The Pleasance Courtyard (Beside) : Venue 33
Time	1pm (1hr)
Previews	5th, 6th, 7th August
Show Dates	8th – 16th August & 18th -30th August
Ticket Price	£6 (Previews) other tickets between £9 - £12
Box Office	0131 556 6550
Website	https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/cinema-south-georgia

Intuitive Creatures Arrive At Edinburgh Fringe

He Builds, She Dances, They Love, They Part

Although she took the dance world by storm at the turn of the century, Isadora Duncan occupies an uncomfortable place in the dance pantheon. Less influential than Martha Graham, or even Mary Wigman, she was once the ideal of the contemporary dancer, a wild, free spirit who lived as she performed, refusing tradition. These days she is remembered as a  relic of a naive early twentieth century modernity, full of romantic ideals about the ancients, flaccid mysticism and for wearing a scarf that was ignored health and safety requirements for car journeys.

Nevertheless, she remains an inspiration. Robert Shaw discovered that Duncan had had an ill-fated romance with Edward Gordon Craig, the revolutionary set designer, and has used their letters as the basis of Teddy and Topsy. Part love story, part study of theatrical mavericks, Shaw has homed in on a great meeting of minds and desires.

“Peter Brook says that  most contemporary theatre design owes its origin to Craig’s  ideas, although they have never truly acknowledged,” Shaw begins.  “Duncan's influence on dance (she's often called "the mother of modern dance") is equally important and more widely recognised.  I was fascinated by the fact that these two outsiders, who forced their respective establishments to change, gravitated towards each other emotionally and romantically.”

Part of the problem with Duncan is that she was so determined to be a trail-blazer, much of her official writing comes across as egotistical. Fortunately, Shaw discovered a more personal revelation. “In her autobiography, she writes in a rather grand and portentous style,” he admits. “But in her letters we get an authentic voice.  You get the clear feeling that she writes exactly as she thinks and speaks, making the letters a dream for any actor to perform.  She is funny, romantic, creative, poetic, whimsical.  She describes everything going on around her very clearly and entertainingly.  It's like being present in the same room with her.”   

Even the title of the play emphasises that this is not the Duncan of official record: however, she perhaps reflects herself more closely in these unguarded missives. “Her letters reflect exactly the freedom she looked for in her dancing,” believes Shaw. “And I was especially drawn to the fact that she was quite determined to succeed on her own terms. A lot of what Isadora stood for seem very contemporary but was most unusual in her day.  For example, she was an unmarried mother of two children and she made a career without a man behind her or guiding her.” 

Perhaps her lifestyle, more than her dance style and idiosyncratic interpretations of Classical Greek religion, makes Duncan our contemporary. Even the relationship with Craig faltered for very recognisable reasons. “I think their romance was fated to fail, as so many also are today, through pressure of work,” Shaw concludes.  “Duncan was always on the road.  Craig was looking for a location for his school.  Duncan was constantly touring northern Europe.  Craig was in Italy.  In the end, it was geography that did for them - and Craig's notorious promiscuity.”

As Shaw notes, his project is very different from the many organisations around the world who seek to preserve Duncan’s choreography – a thankless task, given the lack of documentation she cultivated. And rather than a hagiography of two greats, he strives to represent a powerful love affair between two individuals who made great changes to their art-forms and came together in a passionate and intimate, if doomed, embrace.

Welcome to Edinburgh, Fringe Fans

It may just be wilful patriotism, yet I am tempted to make my annual Edinburgh Fringe Preview an all Scottish spectacular. I’m not ignoring international performance – if it says Belgian or Czech on the label, I’m first in the queue– but I’d like to remind the hoards of London-based performers and agents and PRs and promoters that wee Caledonia can do quite nicely without their annual invasion.

My inbox currently receives around twenty emails an hour, each containing dreams of success, arrogant claims about the future of theatre, promises of sex, alongside appeals for reviews. I haven’t been this popular since I logged into an adult chat site as “22-36-22DirtyBabe”.  I do love the Fringe – it is a rare chance to indulge my joy in unpopular, awkward theatre, and catch up with the latest excuses for on-stage nudity. However, there is something unsettling in the sheer amount of performance, most of which will end up seen by two men, a student critic and a bored technician. The only way to be successful in the Fringe is either to be an established comedian or own real estate.

That said, my nationalist inclinations allow me to concentrate on shows that I feel confident to support. The Tron showcased A Slow Air as part of Mayfesto, Cryptic’s Orlando got its premiere at Glasgay!, in the same week as Fish and Game heralded a new use for the iPad through Alma Mater. Even these three demonstrate how Scottish performance has diversified beyond the simple script as template: A Slow Air is a reassuringly intimate two-hander by Glasgow’s master of linguistic detail, David Harrower; Orlando follows Cryptic’s distinctive passion for music and technological experiment; Alma Mater is am ambiguous reflection on education and childhood that uses film to evoke ghostly presence. All of these shows share a fascination with the possibilities of self-conscious performance, tapping away at the inherent unreality of theatre.

Harrower deliberately disconnects his two actors, letting them describe their mutual love and hate directly to the audience. Although the two characters, a brother and sister, seem to be dwelling on a family argument, Harrower subtly weaves larger themes – the split between generations, the rivalry between East and West coasts, the mixed blessings of personal history, the redemption power of absurd conflicts – into their homely, defensive chatter. Without making huge statements, and capturing the nuance of sibling compassion, Harrower champions the traditional script as the blue-print for a moving, intimate performance.

Orlando is a far more expansive work, even if it is a solo for one actor. Originally staged with live music, it mixes Virginia Woolf’s magic realist story of an immortal transsexual, cutting edge computer graphics and an electronica soundtrack to remystify the text, revealing fragments of passion, beauty and insight within the century spanning narrative. It is exceptionally hi-tech for the Fringe, intensely serious and blinding in its neon beauty: Cryptic are as fascinated by the image as the word as the music, and while Orlando is familiar from the superb Sally Potter film, this version’s transformative, hallucinatory rhythms cuts to a mystical heart.

Fish and Game are “Scotland’s Live Art supergroup”: Alma Mater, ironically, is a video performance. Originally a site-specific “guide” to Glasgow’s Scotland Street school museum, it has been displaced to Remarkable Arts’ Edinburgh church venue. Refusing to fall for either clichés about the greatest days of your life, or school as bullying hell, Alma Mater is beautifully balanced between celebration and critique and uses the iPad as a tool to layer reality with a supernatural resonance.


 Witty and moving, it is a reminder that experimental theatre can bypass theatrical artifice for an immediate, compassionate, emotional hit.