The township of 12 people
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George Gunn
on the purpose
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What my
father taught
me about love
Gerard Rochford’s April poem
I knew but never heard you say the word,
although you may have whispered it in the night.
So was it the day you looked up from your digging
and nodded at me? Did those arms I saw at work
once hold me, did those blue eyes look down?
There are no photos.
Or was it the day I came with my wife and children
and when we left I thought you were nearly in tears.
It seems you taught me love without the words
and with my sons I took my father’s path,
followed them with my eyes, silently, almost in tears.
Gerard lives in Aberdeen. He is the Scottish Review’s makar and contributes
a poem each month. Publications include: ‘Failing Light’ (Embers Handpress) and ‘Of Love and Water’ (Koo Press/Malfranteaux Concepts).
We need a theatre
of healing in our
lost un-cities
Thom Cross
Ouch! Kenneth Roy (22 March) found a trope that troubled and inspired me greatly with his existentialist piece on Kilmarnock, its loss of Johnnie Walker and its victory at fitba. I immediately drifted into asking what is the appropriate play-text for that dread paradox in Kilmarnock?
I do that play-selection game regularly. What is the appropriate theatre for/with or by Motherwell or Paisley or Kirkcaldy to help these hurt towns heal? It is a question I would raise with students many years ago in a wholly different place and time but with similar contextual burdens of loss, hopelessness but with some bitter-sweet flashes of ritual celebration. Theatre is nothing unless it disturbs and heals. (I find it impossible to finish reading or viewing Millar’s ‘Death of a Salesman’, it hurts too much).
In an odd serendipity I listened to David MacLennan just last week in Edinburgh reminiscing with love in his rheumy eyes on the work of 7:84 in which he played a leading role. I asked David what was the core Scottish theatre expressive vocabulary. Without hesitation he called out ‘the ceilidh and the music-hall’, with their ability to juxtapose dramatically theatre’s dual-mask of laughter and pain, song and tears with such immediate impact. (I am paraphrasing of course).
Then again I have just bought (in a wee second-‘read’ book shop) ‘Chapman 43-4 on Scottish Theatre’ (spring 1986) full of bitter faith, loss and wee bits of fleeting celebration. Donald Campbell on the abandoned Robert McLellan caught my attention as did George Gunn on ‘Too Late for Tomorrow: Scottish Theatre’, while community drama (Kenneth Roy’s joy/ despair) was well expressed with appropriate enthusiasm and frustration by Rona Munro.
And so I looked again for the desperate binary of pain and pleasure of a Kilmarnock play. Here is a wee touch of fitting text from Robert McLellan in a 1946 short play, ‘The Carlin Moth’, a drama ‘of fact-fouling fantasy’:
They canna set aginst the bliss they fin
A lang held dream o ecstasy sae sweet
That aa their bliss is dule, their journey vain.
He pooer to bring a braw world in his brain
Marks man the only craitur that can greet.
Then of course we have a text that sits so well in my Lanarkshire. The play of course is ‘Waiting for Godot’ – oh, for a real Scottish production! The Kilmarnock folk too, in their moment of rapture and rupture would well understand and feel:
We wait. We are bored. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste… In an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness!
But many/some/a few will say nothingness is no longer an option. ‘We are angry and bitter at….’. So we can turn to Bert Brecht. He knew anger. Listen to him in Mother Courage:
Young Soldier: I’m hungry!
Mother Courage: Oh, I see. you’re hungry. I see what you are angry about.
Young Soldier: I won’t have it, it aint fair and I’m not standing for it.
Mother Courage: You’re right: but how long? How long you not standing for unfairness? One hour, two? Your anger ain’t long enough. It’s good for nowt, is pity. If you’d a long one I’d be still trying to prod you on.
Clerk: The captain’s here sit down!
(The young soldier sits down)
Mother Courage: He’s sitting now. See what did I say? You’re sitting now. Ah, how well they know us, no one need tell ’em how to go about it. Sit down! And, bingo, we’re sitting. And sitting and sedition don’t mix.
But Kilmarnock wants, needs its own celebration beyond the fitba; the dialectic of victory and loss desperately needs a theatre of healing. Self- realised community action through a true community popular theatre might give Kilmarnock back its confidence with an empowering voice and a vision of hope.
David MacLennan and Dave Anderson might have to put on their guns again and give us a new 7:84 (perhaps a 99:1) to revitalise our placid/flaccid drama and create some vigorous, fulfilling liberation theatre for our lost un-cities.
Thom Cross is a writer and playwright
