National Theatre of Scotland: A Dramatic Decade

June 2016. A little after one o'clock in the morning.

An expectant audience board buses which will take them

into the Perthshire countryside to watch a play,

The 306: Dawn.

The location is not your usual theatrical establishment,

this will be no ordinary piece of theatre.

This is theatre without walls.

This is the National Theatre of Scotland.

The history of theatre in Scotland is long and rich.

Its legacy is apparent in the strength of Scotland's language,

poetry and humour.

Already it's obvious that you're pleased to see me.

For centuries, Scottish audiences have come together to laugh, sing,

and share their stories.

As a country, I think at our core we've got a really great, sort of,

ability to just engage.

We all tell a story. We all do a turn.

These stories speak in the voice of a nation.

A people with their own diverse, complicated, ever-changing culture.

Theatre in Scotland is like no other theatre in the world.

They were standing,

and their Queen was beautiful and tall and fair.

And yet, until this century,

Scotland had never had a national theatre company.

I know that the debate had been going on for a long time

about what a national theatre would look like, what shape it would take.

Will it be in Edinburgh or will it be in Glasgow?

Maybe we should have it in Stirling?

Is it going to be a big old building with pillars out the front,

or will it be a new, neoclassical building

with big pillars out the front?

Scotland's got a very, very particular identity,

which is music, it's politics, it's direct address.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Feasgar math.

There's no fourth wall in great, Scottish theatre.

Scots kind of like getting right down to brass tacks.

We're not afraid of singing.

We're not afraid of standing up in the middle of the bar and,

you know, singing your heart out.

It's the immediacy of it, I think.

When devolution emerged,

then it became a much more serious notion.

We did need to both capture and nourish and preserve,

and promote a common kind of uniquely Scottish perspective.

Then in 2004, after years of debate,

the National Theatre of Scotland was established.

I turned up in Glasgow and it was a rainy day.

And genuinely walked into a completely empty office,

no furniture at all.

I remember going to the NTS on the very first day, I think,

and Vicky was there.

And she had literally Blu-Tacked to the door,

you know, a white piece of paper that said,

National Theatre of Scotland.

That was my first day, while the rain hit the window outside.

And it wasn't scary,

but it was just a great realisation

that there really was nothing at all.

This was a moment to create a national theatre

that had never really existed in that format before,

and to create a theatre

that was something about the people in Scotland,

and the geography of Scotland, and the stories of Scotland

at this moment in time.

In a way, it's everything that I believed theatre to be,

and should be. So it was thrilling.

But how could a theatre company aspire

to represent all Scottish theatre?

All Scots?

All of Scotland?

When Vicky came up with the idea of Home,

we all went, oh, wow.

This is exactly right, as a calling card.

This is the way to say hello to the world.

To Scotland mainly, and then to the rest of the world.

Could you believe you long for an island?

And you miss your home?

I'd read somewhere that home

was one of the most evocative words in the English language.

And I just felt that it was a really interesting word in terms of

Scotland, having a National Theatre of Scotland itself, what home meant.

Yes.

Come through, here, son.

So we got ten directors, all from Scotland,

we'd place them in ten different locations

from Shetland to the Borders, Glasgow, Edinburgh, all over.

And then they worked with the community

to come up with a piece of theatre which was inspired by the word home.

So the idea was that the National Theatre of Scotland

would start on one particular night in February 2006.

A Saturday night. When all of these ten pieces would be on at once.

And this is where the Theatre Without Walls came in,

which is that we could create work anywhere, for anyone,

as long as it was artist-led

and about the stories the artists needed to tell.

It was... As an idea, it was simple.

And then I found myself...

In Easterhouse, at the bottom of a tower block,

trying to run a tech for abseilers coming down with video cameras.

To a live audience, doing a piece of theatre.

Intercepted e-mail correspondent...

That didn't feel quite as simple, but hell mend me, eh?

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the unique setting of

the Highland football academy.

It's almost time...

The stories began with home,

and soon another narrative seemed timely, even urgent.

The story of young Scottish soldiers,

a very long way from their homes.

Ladies and gentlemen, may we present the Black Watch.

Welcome to this story of the Black Watch, eh?

The reason we had the idea of Black Watch was that,

when I started in Hope Street on the 1st of November 2004,

the newsagent, I went downstairs to the newsagent,

and I bought the Herald and the Scotsman, obviously.

And the first page of the Herald was an article

saying that Tony Blair was trying to disband

the Black Watch regiment and put all of the Scottish regiments

into one thing called the Scottish Regiment.

And then on page three, so two pages on,

there was a little sidebar article

which was talking about two young men,

two 17-year-olds from the Black Watch regiment,

and the tone of the article was about their pride

and their family's pride how their fathers and grandfathers

had been part of the Black Watch regiment,

and they'd been killed in an IED, in Iraq,

and what this meant to the community and the tragedy of that.

And I thought, my God, in a way,

theatre is about the gap between two things.

And I thought, if ever there is the possibility of a piece of theatre,

it's between those - literally, physically -

between those two pages.

I definitely fancy it. What the fuck else are we going to dae?

I cannae be arsed with the pits any more.

Aye, the pits are fucked.

ALL: Where do we sign?

Oh-ho-ho...

OMINOUS PIANO

# In Forfar I was born and bred

# But faith, I d' think shame, sir

# To tell the weary life I led

# A'fore I left my hame, sir

# Hurrah, hurrah, wi' my tilt a fal air al aye doh... #

John Tiffany's got an incredible capacity for sentiment

in the most positive way.

And understanding, you know, why we need story,

and where that comes from.

# Hurrah, hurrah, wi' my tilt a fal air al aye doh... #

So he really was somebody who celebrated

those Scottish traditions and the music.

He was consciously bringing all of those things

which he felt was so important,

and actually were slightly waning at the time, because they were

no longer fashionable, into Black Watch, into telling that story.

# Wi' my tilt a fal air al aye doh. #

I thought we would be the ruin of the National Theatre, genuinely.

I found myself in a rehearsal room having said to Greg,

you can do these interviews with -

over there in Fife, they happened -

you can do these interviews with six soldiers who had

just come back from their second tour of Iraq.

But I want to do a collage,

so that it's not a, kind of, traditionally structured new play.

RADIO NEWS REPORT CRACKLES INTO LIFE

'..it's ten past eight. There was deep concern, anger indeed,

'when the news leaked out a few weeks ago

'that soldiers of the Black Watch were to be sent north

'to help out the Americans in Iraq.

'The area in which they were to be deployed

'was described here as the Triangle of Death.

'So it has turned out for three of them,

'blown up yesterday by a suicide car bomber.

'Eight more were injured. The ambush...'

The first time I heard about the play

was through a friend of mine.

I went with a bit of trepidation, thinking, actors playing us,

and then the scene with the pool table,

where the bayonet comes through.

I think that was that moment of realisation

that there was something special about this play.

We watched one of the first run-throughs,

and I choke up even saying it now, because I sat there,

and I thought, "Oh, my God -

"something's happened which makes me believe in theatre again."

Aye, hold on!

I think they've found something in this car.

I hope it's porn!

EXPLOSION

A GAELIC LAMENT FADES IN

'Mother uniform 3362

'P4.'

What Black Watch did, you know, when it first came out,

at the Fringe in 2006,

it was, obviously, there was a bit of turmoil going on with the

seven Scottish regiments and what was happening with amalgamations.

It did bring a focus.

It did bring a community focus of, we want to keep our regiment,

you know, we want to keep our identity.

I fought for my regiment.

I fought for my company.

I fought for my platoon.

I fought for my section.

I fought for my mates.

And that was important to everybody, and it still is.

It still is to me, as an ex-serving Black Watch soldier.

And to probably ex-servicemen, soldiers 20, 30 years before me.

We will always class ourselves as Black Watch.

And we'll always class ourselves as 1st Battalion.

I'm so glad that we were able to honour those lads.

ALL: Five, six, seven, eight!

Very deep in my, kind of, soul is something

which I feel honoured to have been able to tell their story.

And I know Gregory Burke feels the same.

The thing that I always found really tragic about Black Watch

was that it was so universal.

And that also, it was still so relevant, oddly,

for us to be able to keep touring it year after year.

That was actually a great tragedy,

that we hadn't learned from it and it was still important,

and it still is.

EXPLOSION

Black Watch went where generations of Scots themselves had gone before,

all over the world.

It was an eclectic and confident calling card.

Heralding a year of diverse and innovative productions.

The National Theatre of Scotland had arrived.

And in that same year, they staged a production that represented another

strong strand of Scotland's theatrical tradition.

It was a well-known, well-loved story,

with songs everyone could sing along to.

Scottish audiences welcomed the return

of Danny McGlone and Suzi Kettles

as John Byrne's cult television show, Tutti Frutti, hit the stage.

# But should we be apart

# I really love you, baby... #

Tah-da!

The King's Theatre.

Wow, ten years. It's funny, isn't it,

seeing it without all the tabs and the side bits and...

It looks way bigger. It looks massive.

Ten years, that's ridiculous!

There was a huge hunger for Tutti Frutti.

It had been so huge in Scotland.

I was about 17 or 18 when it came out

and I remember absolutely worshipping the show.

In 20 years, it hadn't been seen nor heard of,

and it became almost like a, kind of, Scottish folklore.

"Tutti Frutti, do you remember Tutti Frutti?"

Danny?

Danny McGlone?

I thought you were supposed to be in New York.

It's me.

Suzi Kettles.

People liked it for the nostalgia as well.

That's a big John Byrne thing.

I'm going to hold my hands up, when I first read the script I was,

like, some of it, I didn't get.

It's from my nana's kind of era.

You know, going up the dancing and cutting a rug,

and all that kind of stuff.

And I think that's what people love about it,

that it's from a bygone time.

You know, it reminds them of their nana,

and of, "Oh, yeah, my grandad and his quiff,"

you know, it reminds me of all that.

# Dum, dum, dum, dummy-doo-wah

# Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

# Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-ooh-ah

# Only the lonely

# Only the lonely. #

People remembered lines.

These John Byrne-isms that were so memorable from the TV show,

that hadn't been in popular culture for 20 years,

still remained in the audience's mind.

What you mean, it was OK?

Three minutes is a lot better than a lot of guys could manage

coming straight off a Silver Jubilee tour.

And it was more like five minutes,

I can see the alarm clock from this side of the bed.

I'm not always a disaster.

Is that you finished? See, there you go again,

that's twice you've asked that in the past three minutes.

Correction, five minutes.

John Byrne was in the rehearsal room,

and he had a manual typewriter,

and you'd see him watching what you were doing.

Every so often you'd hear...

HE MAKES A TYPING NOISE

And you'd go... Oh, I've not said that right.

And then he would come up at the end of the scene

and hand you bit of paper, and go...

"Try that."

And you'd look at it and go, "Ah!

"Absolute genius."

Ladies and gentlemen...

..The Majestics!

# Bop bopa-a-lu a whop bam boo

# Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy

# Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy... #

They're not a great band.

They weren't meant to be this, kind of, polished, you know,

brilliant band. It's this dysfunctional band.

So even though it was a bit rough around the edges,

you had to just keep thinking,

"Well, this is real and this is what it would be like."

They wanted it to be raw and live, and done every night,

so it wasn't some track that you were miming to.

# Yeah!

# Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy... #

It was a complete and utter joy from start to finish.

It was odd,

it was... Fun. ..fun.

Quite scary.

But really, really, exciting at the same time.

Yeah, you knew you were part of something special.

Yeah. I think. With the NTS, but especially with Tutti Frutti.

# Bop bopa-a-lu a whop bam boo. #

APPLAUSE

Gathered in a theatre,

Scots rarely reflect the dour image often projected

onto the national character.

Nor has the Scottish character been adequately expressed

through macho stereotype.

A richer, glittering persona

has always had its flamboyant voice on our stages, too.

In 2007, its incarnation

was Alan Cummings' rock god, Dionysius, in The Bacchae.

It started with me being lowered, by my ankles,

with my back to the audience, like a god, descending.

I had a gold kilt outfit on and so basically, you know,

the first thing was my bum at the beginning of the Bacchae.

It's an inverted cross.

Which didn't escape me.

And then David wrote this line for Alan.

So, Thebes...

..I'm back!

I hadn't appeared on a Scottish stage for 16 years.

It was a ballsy thing to do. It was a ballsy decision,

it was a ballsy kind of start.

For your benefit, I appear in human form.

Like you...

fleshy.

Man, woman - it was a close-run thing.

He decided to make Dionysius this kind of returning rock star.

The music was very kind of, um...

rousing and anthemy when Dionysius sang

and when the girls backed him up.

And there's nothing like, you know,

playing a god, singing your head off,

being backed up by nine gorgeous black girls.

It doesn't get much better than that.

# We are the Bacchae!

# We left our homes

# To give ourselves to him

# It's free work

# It's easy work

# You! You!

# You stand quiet

# In front of your houses

# Kneel down

# For Dionysus... #

Gospel is the facilitator of religious ecstasy

in such a brilliant, brilliant way.

So we'd always wanted that kind of energy.

Aretha Franklin, you know, through to Whitney Huston.

That kind of amazing power of sexuality - black, female power -

was what we wanted to tap into.

# Do it, do it, do it

# Let's scream demands

# Let's scream demands, everyone in the land

# Everyone must dance

# Everyone in the land must dance to the mountain

# Everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone in the land

# Must dance to the mountain, where the women wait

# Joy! Joy!

# Joy to you who come

# To the mountain... #

I loved the fact that music

was such a big element of The Bacchae.

I mean, there is always singing in that show,

but taking a sort of contemporary style and putting it into a play,

so that you merge both the ancient and the modern.

That's what makes exciting theatre.

And I think that's what Scottish theatre's always done, actually.

# Yes, we flow with milk

# Yes, we flow with wine

# Yes, we are made of honey... #

I think in Scotland, in general, we've got quite a good,

healthy connection with bacchanalia in all its forms.

We're quite sensual people.

We all enjoy drinking, we all enjoy letting go.

It's part of our culture.

Having been away from Scotland so much of my adult life,

I really think I understand what makes me Scottish

and what makes which parts of my style of performing

come from Scottish theatre.

A lot of it is to do with, kind of,

breaking the fourth wall and using music

and connecting with the audience in a very direct way.

As a country, we all tell a story, we all do a turn.

I think, at our core, we've got a really great sort of ability

to just engage and, you know, do our turn.

That's what I've been doing all these years.

# Yes! Yes!

# Yeeesssss! #

Scotland's National Theatre was starting to find its place.

Some of what it did broke new ground.

Some strengthened older traditions.

Other aspects of Scottish experience had yet to be addressed.

But there is one constant in the life of any theatre company,

a continual argument as to the value of creative arts.

In 2008, the UK had entered another recession.

And the argument had to be made for the necessity

of bringing live theatre to every part of a nation.

Often the best argument that can be made is to do so,

and demonstrate its effect.

The National Theatre of Scotland

took a wide range of its productions to the furthest venues in the land.

One of these was Long Gone Lonesome,

the story of Shetland's Thomas Fraser.

I was approached by the National Theatre of Scotland

round about 2008.

They asked me if I'd ever heard of Thomas Fraser.

I said, "What, you mean the singing creelman from Shetland?

"Yeah, I've heard of him."

The opening scene, for me, was fantastic.

They put on a simple reel-to-reel player, like Thomas had,

and it was all dark. The only thing lit was the machine.

And out came My Melancholy Blues.

And it was the closest thing you'll ever get

to a live Thomas Fraser performance.

TINNY RECORDING: # Because I got those melancholy blues... #

He was a very shy performer in his younger days.

So, latterly, when I was growing up, he wasn't performing any more.

But he was still doing his tapes.

And people would give him blank tapes

and ask him to record for them.

There was a lot of that.

Almost all the theatre pieces I've ever written

have been simple, straightforward

and about establishing that direct contact with the audience.

So, when electricity arrived in Burra,

what was the first thing that Thomas Fraser -

a 26-year-old bachelor, crofter,

fisherman, fiddler, would-be singer -

what was the first thing he rushed out to buy?

So when I started to work with Vicky Featherstone,

my natural inclination towards direct address

and her natural inclination towards finding something stripped down,

and immediately effective,

these two things came together.

We were singing off the same hymn sheet.

It was the latest in cutting-edge technology -

a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

I think my favourite moment of the play

is where we hear Thomas singing.

And he's singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow, which is a surprising song.

It's a showtune, it's a Hollywood number.

TAPE: # Somewhere

# Over the rainbow... #

Most of the time,

he did down-to-earth blues or heartfelt country songs,

and here he is doing a Judy Garland number.

But he's got a fantastically inventive arrangement for it,

and it becomes almost like soul music.

# ..once in a lullaby

# Somewhere

# Over the rainbow... #

And then, me and the band join in, backing him up.

So instead of just being Thomas and his acoustic guitar,

he's got a whole band behind him.

And then I had to join in singing harmonies to his lead vocals.

# Someday I'll wish upon a star

# And wake up where the clouds are far behind me

# Oh, yeah...

It was sort of surreal but, um...

..really, really well done.

And we enjoyed, you know, we enjoyed every minute of it.

I felt that the National Theatre's play really made a terrific job

of putting Thomas Fraser across.

His personality, his musical ability,

the environment and the circumstances he faced.

I was very proud. It was a great moment for us.

A great moment for Thomas.

Every song in the play was one that Thomas recorded,

sometimes favourite numbers of his that he recorded many times.

But, as I was writing the play, I...

..struggled to find a song that would sum up everything

that had come before, or at least sum up everything

I'd come to understand about his character.

And I was searching around, thinking,

"In all these hundreds of numbers he recorded, there must be one."

And I couldn't find one.

But then I did stumble across a song

that felt like he should have recorded it.

# I don't want to set the world on fire... #

It's about somebody who has

no ambition for worldly fame or fortune,

he just wants to light a flame in one person's heart,

the person he loves.

But I felt that's what Thomas was doing with his music.

He has no interest in going to the London Palladium.

He wanted to record his songs,

or play them to one or two people who were in the room with him.

And he would light the flame of music in their heart.

# I've got no ambition

# For worldly acclaim

# I just want to be the one you love

# And with your admission

# You'd feel the same

# I have reached the goal I'm dreaming of...

I think there's lots of untold stories out there,

lots of local heroes.

I think the National Theatre are doing a great job

in taking these stories out to the wider world.

# ..a flame in your heart. #

The National Theatre of Scotland was now five years old.

Its slogan, Theatre Without Walls, had been realised in many forms

while always recognising particular Scottish theatrical traditions.

I killed him!

And in 2011, the very particular nature

of Scottish political identity was soon to become clear.

History demonstrates that Scotland has often made different choices

to her southern neighbours.

We shall bring forward a referendum,

and trust the people with Scotland's own constitutional future.

And as those tensions became increasingly evident,

the National Theatre looked back to the culture of our borderlands

with The Strange Undoing Of Prudencia Hart.

# I heard twa corbies makin a mane

# The tane unto the other did say

# "Oh, whar sall we gang..." #

Vicky said to us, she wanted to do something about the Borders

and I knew about Border ballads

and so she sent us to Kelso,

where we stayed for a couple of days

and interviewed various people.

We went to the pub and there was a folk session.

And a huge amount of that two days ended up in the play.

# His hawk is tae the huntin gane

# His hound tae fetch the wild-fowl hame

# His lady's tain anither mate

# So we may mak oor dinner swate

# So we may mak oor dinner swate. #

I wanted to make a story that you could...

A yarn, you know, something you could sit and tell over a pint.

It's difficult to know where to start

With the strange undoing of Prudencia Hart.

Then the act of translating that into rhyming couplets

was a means of harnessing that story's power.

And storytelling, that most misused of all arts.

Horses absolutely must not go ahead of carts.

There's a central idea as well, which we were both driven by,

which was the theatricality of the troupe.

The travelling band of actors, who have, at their fingertips,

the skills of song, music, storytelling, mime, gesture.

Prudencia Hart, then, was a prudent 28-year-old postgraduate student.

And, indeed, you know, the ability

to create set and theatricality out of nothing.

And you think of it in Scottish terms,

it goes back through Communicado and Gerry Mulgrew's work,

It goes back through 7:84.

It's the folk tradition of theatricality.

CRACKLY, INDISTINCT HUMMING OF A BALLAD

This is nice. Nice?

It's Robert Burns.

Oh? It's sung by Robert Burns.

That's Burns' own voice.

In a pub, in Mauchline, in 1789.

I found the record under a pile of lectures by Hume,

in a box labelled "pornographic etchings".

LAUGHTER

And so I think, to me, that way of storytelling,

where you mix all these forms together,

yes, it's a really Scottish tradition,

and I feel very proud that we appear to be, sort of,

cornering a market in it,

but at the same time I don't think it's just Scottish.

I think it's absolutely universal.

As, I think, is attested to the fact that Prudencia has been able

to tour the world to similar responses wherever it's been.

# I just

# Can't get you out

# Of my head

# Oh, your loving

# Is all I think about... #

It was a wonderful, wonderful experience.

It was really very, very enjoyable.

It's a beautifully anarchic piece of work.

Oh, yeah. There's so much energy.

# La-la-la, la-la la-la-la... #

Everybody was drawn into the action.

I think it's a marvellous piece of work.

I think the best thing about it, it's theatre for everybody.

It's not a theatre for people that live in the big city

or have access to those facilities.

It's taken drama and taken it where it should be,

which is at the heart of a community.

And getting people involved.

Which they certainly were tonight.

CHEERING

A GAELIC REEL IS SUNG

Scots song, Scots story and Scots poetry.

A National Theatre inherits a responsibility

to represent all the voices of the nation.

In its brief life,

the company has only begun to wrestle with that gigantic task.

But it has frequently honoured

another ancient Scottish theatrical tradition -

producing work which highlights social issues

and challenges political power.

The true story of the Glasgow Girls' fight for justice

for families seeking asylum in the city

had captured the attention of the nation.

Now it was given theatrical form.

My name's Agnesa.

In March 2005, I was detained

and taken to Jarlswood detention centre from these flats.

Then one day, there was an empty seat on the bus.

Aggie? Agnesa? Where's Agnesa gone?!

LOUD THUDS

'..Home Office Border Agency health and safety report.'

'Dawn raid, Glasgow, 2005.'

She'd been living in Glasgow for five years at that time.

And for her to be treated so cruelly was just really inhumane.

I think we all felt really, like, angry and upset.

We were crying our eyes out in the corridor of our school.

That one of our friends was just taken away.

I felt really angry. I felt as though

it wasn't really the kind of impression of our country

that I wanted to give.

We want to help. It's just not right.

I can't believe this is happening in Scotland.

You want to help? I know we don't know you guys that well,

but Agnesa's one of us now. We can't just let folk take her away.

If you're on strike for Agnesa, we're on strike, too.

I'd been very aware of the story, way back in 2005.

I thought this story -

particularly because it's led by a group of teenage girls

that just have a passion for life

and a kind of defiance and a kind of fearlessness -

I thought, "This deserves a bigger, bolder, more popular form."

And I thought that a musical was the best way to do that.

I just looked at her and thought, "What?"

And she's like, "A musical." And I was like,

"Do you know what our story's about? It's about child detention.

"How are you going to make a musical about that?"

If you've come to see triumph over adversity,

I'm afraid you're going to be a little bit disappointed.

Our story is mostly about photocopying.

Amal! What?

I must have burst out laughing, I mean,

how on Earth she was going to turn our story

about seven wee lasses from Drumchapel

campaigning for the rights of child refugees, I didn't know.

But she did a wonderful job.

And the way it turned out, it's kind of like a love letter to Glasgow.

# We're at home in Glasgow

# It's really not that bad

# There's bits of the city that are pretty shitty

# But at least it's not Baghdad

# We're at home in Glasgow

# We're getting on quite well

# They say it's a hard and a difficult place

# But trust us

# They know nothing

# About hell... #

I had been developing close relationships with the girls.

I'd absolutely vowed I would involve them at every stage of the way.

And we stuck to our word.

Let's just go over Emma and Jennifer arriving in.

At the end of a long week where I'd been working

with all the actresses, the girls walked into the room,

and at that point are actresses were right in the middle of singing

a five-part harmony of what was to be the anthem,

We Are The Glasgow Girls.

# We are the Glasgow girls

# We show them how to do it when we... #

And the real girls came into the room

and I think they were quite blown away by it.

# The Glasgow girls together, we are strong... #

We all started crying, and they cried,

and nobody knew why everybody was crying,

but it was a great feeling.

When I seen my actress, I was like, "Oh, my God.

"She's actually just like me, she just acts the way I act."

I was quite shocked that Cora picked the individuals

for the right people.

And I got to a stage where I was like, a bit emotional,

because it took me back to when I was detained.

SINGS IN OWN LANGUAGE

The music really captures your emotions.

Especially if you don't know the story, as you go along with it,

and you listen to the story, the music's in the background.

People that have never really known about it

then understand the feelings that are there.

# We are the Glasgow Girls

# We'll show them how to do it... #

Teenagers get a really bad press.

I think we underestimate their skill and their bravery.

Here was a bunch of girls who wanted to be lawyers,

who wanted to be activists, who wanted to, literally,

go out and grab the world and change it and make it better.

# Glasgow Girls will show them how to do it... #

If seven Glasgow girls can make a difference, then anybody can.

Especially coming from Drumchapel as well.

# We are the Glasgow Girls! #

After seven years, a new stage

of the National Theatre of Scotland's existence began

as Laurie Sansome took up the position of artistic director.

One of his first jobs was to grapple with how to respond

to a much anticipated vote, when, in 2014,

the nation was asked to make a historic decision.

Hey, girls. What youse talking about?

The referendum. Oh, God.

The National Theatre of Scotland produced a timely

theatrical response, with a whole range of productions

as the community of Scotland made up its mind.

With independence, we will be a fairer and more successful country.

A time when Scotland was struggling to reach consensus

on the strength of her desire for independence.

When she was alternately threatened

and wooed by her powerful southern neighbour.

When her own internal divisions seemed likely to erupt.

Not 2014, but 1424.

The James Plays Trilogy demonstrated that the history being made now

had deep and familiar roots.

Cos I'm a bit passionate about Scottish history,

it became my ambition to try and make that period of Scottish history

visible to Scotland.

Whenever I've talked to any audience or any group,

they all say, with this note of apology,

"Of course, I don't know anything about this period of history."

Well, the truth is, nobody does.

And I think that, particularly at the time I was writing,

was a moment when Scotland was examining what it was as a nation.

And it felt like a really fertile moment

to bring these plays to the stage.

Sorry, are you still...?

What?

I don't want to disturb your prayers. Oh, no. I'm finished.

I was waiting on you. Good. No, I'm finished.

So...

..now we're married. Yes.

We'll have the wedding blessed again in Scotland,

and then we can have our wedding night. Yes.

The characters all talk a very contemporary form of Scots,

so that people could really get that sense of,

this, in a sense, is happening now.

Or is still happening now.

We're still connected to these lives,

and they're still affecting decisions we make today.

I asked to see the Treasury papers.

Why? Because someone has to start helping you.

Have you looked at these? God, no. There is no money, James.

A choir, Margaret, a few singers.

How many?

A small choir. How many? Only 40 or so. No.

I wrote Queen Margaret of Denmark,

and every time anyone talked about casting,

I went, "Yeah, Sofie Grabol."

And everyone's going, "Yeah, right. Like you're going..."

And I was going, "Ask her! Ask her! Just ask her!"

And they did. And she said yes.

I must say, when the project was presented to me,

I thought, "I don't have the nerve to do that."

Because, I mean, one thing is to...

..to take on a great part, a big part.

But in another language than your own?

But then I read it.

Who would want the job of ruling Scotland?

I'm Danish, you ignorant, abusive lump of manure.

I come from a rational nation with reasonable people.

You know the problem with you lot?

You've got fuck all except attitude.

You scream and shout about how you want things done,

and how things ought to be done, and when the chance comes?

Look at you.

What are you frightened of?

Making things worse?

I remember actually,

when she said, "You've got fuck all except attitude,"

I remember the reaction in Edinburgh,

in the Festival Theatre, was so massive.

And very often people applauded.

And they always laughed and cheered, and it was like you felt this...

..this very strong focus on, "Who are we Scottish people?"

When I first started writing,

we didn't know there was going to be a referendum.

And then it was, I think,

halfway through the writing process that we found out

there was going to be one and also it was going to be in 2014.

And I remember thinking at that point,

"Oh, please, please let them go on that year."

Because, of course, it added so much for an audience.

I think, probably,

the most exciting moment in my professional life

was when the plays were on in Edinburgh, before the referendum

and feeling how the attention of the audience came alive

at all the moments that were actually talking about

what it meant to be Scottish,

what it meant to be independently Scottish, or not.

Would one of you please explain to me

why it is I still love you so much?

Would someone please tell me...

SHE SCOFFS ..why a rational woman,

born in a reasonable country,

would rather live here and be your Queen

than exist in quiet, happy peace anywhere else on Earth?

I am the Queen of Scots.

And I don't always like that.

But I do love it.

Always.

From the referendum to the general election,

two potent and particular results.

Politicians and pundits are still arguing

their meaning and consequences.

However, it was undeniable that, at this moment,

Scottish audiences were vividly aware

of their own cultural identity.

The National Theatre's voice had developed into something

as uniquely Scottish as its audience.

It had all the vigour of its strong tradition of song and story,

but still remained youthful and rebellious.

Demonstrated by Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour,

based on Alan Warner's novel, The Sopranos.

# ..whence cometh

# Whence cometh

# Whence cometh hell... #

The play is about six Roman Catholic schoolgirls from Oban,

who are travelling to Edinburgh for the choir competition,

but the choir competition is the last thing on their minds.

# Lift thine eyes O, lift thine eyes

# Eyes to the mountains

# Whence cometh

# Whence cometh

# Whence cometh hell. #

It's so out there. It's so full-on, in your face.

No holds barred, and there's no apology for it.

This is fucking ridiculous!

Six in the fucking morning, and Condom's not even here.

My wife was in a school choir, Catholic school choir.

And I'd been hearing lots of stories

about the adventures they'd had.

On the bus, ladies! Yes!

Got the goods, girls?

Two bottles of lemon-flavoured Hooch,

disguised in a bottle of White's Lemonade. Whoo!

The idea was to move this choir from the countryside down to the city

and then back to the country again.

That idea of transition has a dramatic element to it

that interests me very much.

So that contrast was something I wanted to explore.

We've all read the book, haven't we? THEY ALL AGREE

Yeah. It's totally mental.

Like, its quite a challenging read, I think.

But absolutely incredible, just, like, the way it's written.

It's just, like, overflowing with these gutsy, amazing, beautiful,

horrific descriptions of every little thing.

I've got two years' worth of pocket money and a packet of condoms.

Let's go mental! Yes!

I thought you were saving to go to Lloret de Mar?

When my sister went to Lloret de Mar, right,

she drank so much that she puked up all over a pedalo,

then she ate paella that gave her diarrhoea so bad

she had to stick sanitary towels up her arsehole.

It was fucking brilliant!

I'd love to do that.

ALL: We'd all love to do that!

I don't think I have any insights whatsoever into female psychology.

You just observe.

It's true I spend time hanging around Boot's make-up counter,

but other than that, you observe, you have life around you.

And you just see what's going on.

It's obviously really clear that they were in a choir, so, obviously,

there's going to be some really classical stuff.

But it was the ELO stuff that was a surprise to me.

Ladies!

A one, two, three!

# The sun is shining in the sky... #

It's inevitably structured around music,

because it's a choir competition.

The genius idea of the play is to bring in music

as almost a character in the play.

# It's a beautiful new day... #

It absolutely generates this momentum

that just wasn't there on the page.

# ..the sun shines brightly... #

When we hit Mr Blue Sky,

it's the first song of the show that's not a hymn or choral music,

so it really just hits the audience.

And we're singing it straight to them.

Like, I'm walking along the stage,

pointing at people, looking directly in the eye.

I want to give them that shock factor,

cos it's the first time that we get to do that.

# Hey, you with the pretty face

# Welcome to the human race

# A celebration

# Mr Blue Sky's up there waiting

# And today is the day we've waited for

# Oh-oh-oh

# Mr Blue Sky, please tell us why

# You had to hide away for so long?

# So long

# Where did we go wrong? #

It's a gig, essentially.

It's, like, part choir concert, part gig.

And that's why I think that the songs fit in the way that they do,

because we don't try to explain why they are where they are.

When we come out, we almost come out

and go, "Well, you're not judging us,

"we're going to judge you.

"We're going to judge you as an audience now.

"We're going to tell you this."

It's everything that you ever wanted to do as a teenager,

that you would never have done.

You're literally getting to put that every single night on stage.

You all right? She's only had a couple of gin and tonics,

but she's no' that used to it. SHE VOMITS

Jesus Christ!

What did you do that for?

I didn't want to get sick on the carpet.

We piss on there rather than risk the fucking bogs!

Your clothes'll be ruined, Kay.

These girls are heroic figures.

In the novel, and also very much in the play.

# You got me running, going out of my mind

# You got my thinking that I'm wasting my time

# Don't bring me down... #

They come across to me, not as victims,

not as troubled people,

but people whose energies

give us all something that we can learn from.

So I see it as a celebration.

In 2016, Scotland is agitated by the results

of yet another referendum.

The British people have spoken, and the answer is, "We're out."

Her National Theatre is ten years old,

but 2016 marks another anniversary.

It is 100 years since the Battle of the Somme,

the most devastating conflict of World War I.

It was this anniversary that the National Theatre of Scotland

chose to commemorate in the recent production, The 306: Dawn.

# No name

# I have no name

# No name

# I have no name... #

The piece is about the 306 men

executed for cowardice, desertion, mutiny

in the First World War.

It makes us think about, not just the glorious dead,

the valiant dead, the brave dead,

who died fighting for their country,

but it makes you think about the people

who were just totally broken by this horrendous experience

that we put people through.

# Tell me those things that you want to forget

# I don't have, I don't have, I don't have

# What's mine is yours Have words... #

My grandparents, Gertrude and Harry Farr,

are the real-life characters in 306: Dawn.

# Show me where it hurts

# And I can make it better. #

God, I wish I could crack your head open, like an egg.

I wish I could climb inside your brain

and see what has been going on in there. Yeah. Me too.

During the 1980s, I was tracing the family tree,

and, at the time, my grandmother, Harry's wife, was still alive.

So I thought, well, I'd ask her the question,

as we were going over to France,

if she could tell me where his grave was.

And my grandmother said to me,

"Unfortunately, he hasn't got a grave."

Then she told me that he was executed

for showing cowardice in the face of the enemy.

But she added, "He wasn't a coward.

"He was suffering from shell shock."

I saw the medical officer's report.

Yeah, he reckons I'm pulling a fast one.

I'm sure he doesn't. Yeah, he does.

He thinks the stammer and the screaming are for show.

No-one thinks that.

Shell shock.

That's what one of the blokes called it.

But the MO don't believe in it.

Thinks that men who cry because of the guns are faking.

There was such a dreadful stigma about the executed soldiers,

that my grandmother had never told anyone about it.

Harry's father, who was an ex-military man,

forbade the family to even talk about him.

Repeat after me.

The facts...

Desertion. Desertion!

Mutiny. Mutiny!

We were stepping into unknown territory,

making a piece that, is it an opera?

Is it a musical?

Is it somewhere in between?

But we all know that song

is carrying a lot of the heart of the story.

# Insubordination

# Insubordination... #

Often, the work we want to make at NTS

doesn't feel like it fits well in a rarefied proscenium arch,

where you're asking an audience to sit back and respectfully observe

something going on in another room.

This isn't about that.

This is much more about putting the audience in a place

where they can be reflective.

And, when we started to explore the stories,

and the men were often kept in barns in the French countryside

after the court martial, waiting for their execution.

And we wanted the audience to be in that barn,

and that felt like the most honest way of the audience

being invited to remember and bear witness

to stories that had been forgotten.

Firing squad, attention!

# No name

# I have no name... #

For 75 years, this particular episode of the war,

the executed soldiers, was kept under wraps.

And young children of today don't really know

what happened in the First World War.

Firing squad, present.

There were schoolchildren sitting all around us,

watching the play while I was there.

And, actually, someone said, "It made me cry."

And I actually wanted to turn round and say, "It made me cry, it really

"made me cry as well, that's my great-grandfather up there."

GUNSHOTS

We were living the experience, you know.

When you had the...

Especially the blasts.

You felt like you were there.

That you were in the turmoil, that you were in the chaos,

that you were in the trenches.

And just you get that feeling of hopelessness.

The whole journey here,

you're coming somewhere you've never been before.

So it's kind of surreal.

That was amazing.

I don't think I've ever been moved so much by a piece of theatre.

That was really quite powerful.

How can a theatre company aspire to represent all Scottish theatre?

All Scots? All of Scotland?

The task is huge.

The nation itself is constantly changing.

The National Theatre of Scotland is only ten years old.

Its future is unknown.

But it's made a memorable beginning.

The National Theatre of Scotland is a product,

literally and figuratively,

of devolution and how devolution changed Scotland.

Ten years on,

I think both the company and the country have really grown,

and we're on the brink of...

..hopefully more greatness.

When the work was entirely unique and only came about

because of that Scottish form, or that Scottish story,

that was what people were interested in.

Because no-one else could have made that in that way,

at that moment in time.

The Black Watches, the James Plays, the Bacchaes - they'll happen.

They'll happen cos artists will make them happen.

But, strategically, it's about getting out into those communities

and being a national theatre, a truly national theatre,

by actually taking work to the nation.

It can't stand still, by definition.

It's always changing, and that means it can really respond

to the cultural moment in which it's making work.

And I think that's its great strength.

We mustn't ever lose that spirit,

that idea that it's Scotland's National Theatre

and we don't need to be like anybody else.

We should keep doing it our way, whatever that way is.