When Henry Adam first wrote the play that was to become ‘e Polish Quine, the Bosnian war was in full swing. Concentration camps hitherto only seen in stiff-upper-lip war films such as The Great Escape, became regular real-life fixtures on the television news. Adam was living in Aberdeen at the time, working on youth and community plays. A trip home to Wick reminded the fledgling writer of the claustrophobia of such seemingly wide-open spaces, and how small-town gossip can be so clannishly damaging. Reminded too of his dead father, Adam set to thinking about the generation who’d lived through World War Two, and how, just as other conflicts were beginning, were gradually dieing off.
Fifteen years on, ‘e Polish Quine is finally set to appear onstage in a touring production by Inverness-based Dogstar company, which opens in Caithness next week. Set in a rural community in the 1940s, a young soldier attempts to reclaim the simple life of his youth on the family farm just as an influx of Polish refugees start to make their presence felt.
“These three things sort of merged,” says Adam, taking some time out before starting work on his next play. “Seeing concentration camps put up for Muslims in Europe was really quite a shock. It was a really big thing. Then going back to Wick, there was this real Presbyterian feel to it. What happened in the 1940s has pretty much been swept under the carpet. In Fife especially, the unions organised against the Poles and tried to get them deported. They couldn’t understand why they were still here once the war was over, and they couldn’t quite get their head around the fact that they were running for a reason. There was also this idea that the industrialisation of farming had made the Holocaust possible. Given the way animals were treated, it’s a small step to treating people the same way.”
Such events clearly have a resonance to more recent waves of dawn raids and subsequent incarcerations of refugees previously considered pillars of the community, but now deemed potential enemies of the state. Yet ‘e Polish Quine is a love story between the returning war hero and the daughter of the neighbouring Polish family.
At first glance, such a romantic framework might appear out of step with the bulk of Adam’s back catalogue, which first made a national mark at The Traverse Theatre with Among Unbroken Hearts, about a young junkie’s return to his highland home. Its follow-up, The People Next Door, was a sofa-bound sit-com drawing on post 9/11 paranoia in a multi-cultural Edinburgh tenement. The tone changed again in 2006, when the far denser Petrol Jesus Nightmare #5 (In The Time Of The Messiah) exploded onto the stage with an obliquely scathing attack on America’s destructive fundamentalism.
Peer closer through the mesh of ‘e Polish Quine’s cross-cultural post-war fall-out, and it becomes apparent that it’s fed by the same sense of injustice that fuels Adam’s other works. Like them, ‘e Polish Quine remains understated, none-aligned and un-didactic. Married to this is a casual absorption of pop culture and world affairs viewed from the apparent comfort of Adam’s living room. This mix of fact and fiction channels itself in various ways into the plays, tempered by the anger, sensitivity and black humour recognisable in Adam’s own personality. Much of this is rooted in his use of language, which goes some way to explaining why ‘e Polish Quine is written in Doric. Where some Doric or Gaelic drama still deals primarily with the nature of language itself, however, by not making it an issue in the play, Adam gives its indigenous demotic an unapologetic weight.
“Doric’s closer to my own speech patterns than standard English,” he points out, “and living in Aberdeen I was around it a lot. I was quite political back then in wanting to use genuine Scottish language in writing rather than try to master English.
It was weird, because you spoke one language at home and then found another one for school, and that puts a split in you, which isn’t healthy at all. There’s worse examples of language discrimination, when people come from foreign countries, but it makes you feel not quite at home. I remember someone telling me about being at a party in London and being laughed at for talking about Freud and Jung in an Aberdonian accent. Things like that just get into you and you want to react.”
‘e Polish Quine is a product of that reaction. As is its production by a company from outwith the central belt. Having gone through a variety of titles over the last decade as he learnt his craft, Adam regards ‘e Polish Quine as a new play some considerable way from his initial observations of theatre.
“I thought plays were a bit light,” he says now, “and wanted to put big ideas you’d find in novels into a play. I knew there was something wrong in what I was watching, but had no idea what. What I wanted to do,” Adam says, accidentally summing up his work, “was take my own language, then apply it to big themes.”
‘e Polish Quine, Lyth Arts Centre, Caithness, May 16, then tours the Highlands, central belt and North East until June 23
www.dogstartheatre.co.uk
The Herald, May 10th 2007
ends
Fifteen years on, ‘e Polish Quine is finally set to appear onstage in a touring production by Inverness-based Dogstar company, which opens in Caithness next week. Set in a rural community in the 1940s, a young soldier attempts to reclaim the simple life of his youth on the family farm just as an influx of Polish refugees start to make their presence felt.
“These three things sort of merged,” says Adam, taking some time out before starting work on his next play. “Seeing concentration camps put up for Muslims in Europe was really quite a shock. It was a really big thing. Then going back to Wick, there was this real Presbyterian feel to it. What happened in the 1940s has pretty much been swept under the carpet. In Fife especially, the unions organised against the Poles and tried to get them deported. They couldn’t understand why they were still here once the war was over, and they couldn’t quite get their head around the fact that they were running for a reason. There was also this idea that the industrialisation of farming had made the Holocaust possible. Given the way animals were treated, it’s a small step to treating people the same way.”
Such events clearly have a resonance to more recent waves of dawn raids and subsequent incarcerations of refugees previously considered pillars of the community, but now deemed potential enemies of the state. Yet ‘e Polish Quine is a love story between the returning war hero and the daughter of the neighbouring Polish family.
At first glance, such a romantic framework might appear out of step with the bulk of Adam’s back catalogue, which first made a national mark at The Traverse Theatre with Among Unbroken Hearts, about a young junkie’s return to his highland home. Its follow-up, The People Next Door, was a sofa-bound sit-com drawing on post 9/11 paranoia in a multi-cultural Edinburgh tenement. The tone changed again in 2006, when the far denser Petrol Jesus Nightmare #5 (In The Time Of The Messiah) exploded onto the stage with an obliquely scathing attack on America’s destructive fundamentalism.
Peer closer through the mesh of ‘e Polish Quine’s cross-cultural post-war fall-out, and it becomes apparent that it’s fed by the same sense of injustice that fuels Adam’s other works. Like them, ‘e Polish Quine remains understated, none-aligned and un-didactic. Married to this is a casual absorption of pop culture and world affairs viewed from the apparent comfort of Adam’s living room. This mix of fact and fiction channels itself in various ways into the plays, tempered by the anger, sensitivity and black humour recognisable in Adam’s own personality. Much of this is rooted in his use of language, which goes some way to explaining why ‘e Polish Quine is written in Doric. Where some Doric or Gaelic drama still deals primarily with the nature of language itself, however, by not making it an issue in the play, Adam gives its indigenous demotic an unapologetic weight.
“Doric’s closer to my own speech patterns than standard English,” he points out, “and living in Aberdeen I was around it a lot. I was quite political back then in wanting to use genuine Scottish language in writing rather than try to master English.
It was weird, because you spoke one language at home and then found another one for school, and that puts a split in you, which isn’t healthy at all. There’s worse examples of language discrimination, when people come from foreign countries, but it makes you feel not quite at home. I remember someone telling me about being at a party in London and being laughed at for talking about Freud and Jung in an Aberdonian accent. Things like that just get into you and you want to react.”
‘e Polish Quine is a product of that reaction. As is its production by a company from outwith the central belt. Having gone through a variety of titles over the last decade as he learnt his craft, Adam regards ‘e Polish Quine as a new play some considerable way from his initial observations of theatre.
“I thought plays were a bit light,” he says now, “and wanted to put big ideas you’d find in novels into a play. I knew there was something wrong in what I was watching, but had no idea what. What I wanted to do,” Adam says, accidentally summing up his work, “was take my own language, then apply it to big themes.”
‘e Polish Quine, Lyth Arts Centre, Caithness, May 16, then tours the Highlands, central belt and North East until June 23
www.dogstartheatre.co.uk
The Herald, May 10th 2007
ends
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