When
Muireann Kelly moved to Glasgow from County Mayo in her native Ireland, she was
all too aware of some of the differences, as well as the similarities, between
her birthplace and her adopted home. One of these was in the way history and
mythology is dealt with, particularly in relation to how incomers from other
places are treated.
More
specifically, while the actress and theatre director had long been aware of a
major tragedy in 1937, when ten young boys from Achill island in County Mayo
were killed in their bothy in a fire in Kirkintilloch during potato-picking season,
she discovered that few people she met in Scotland had heard of the story.
The
1937 Kirkintilloch disaster is at the heart of Scotties, a new play co-written
by Kelly with Frances Poet, which opens in Glasgow next week as part of a tour
presented by the Kelly-led Gaelic-based company Theatre Gu Leor (Theatre
Galore). Supported by the National Theatre of Scotland and the Abbey Theatre,
Dublin, Scotties aims to put this piece of hidden history under the spotlight
in a way that taps into current concerns regarding the way migrants can
sometimes be treated.
“I
grew up with the story of the Kirkintilloch tragedy,” says Kelly, “so when I
moved to Glasgow, I knew the connection between the two islands. For me, why I
couldn’t let the story go, I feel half Scottish and half Irish, my kids have
all grown up in Glasgow, and they go to Gaelic schools, and I wondered why me
and everyone in Achill knows about what happened, but nobody in Kirkintilloch
does.
“That
sits uncomfortably with me, because everyone in Achill is aware of their
Scottish connections. That’s where the name of the play comes from, because
Scotties is what they’d call themselves when they came here, and spent half the
year here. Out of that, I kept on thinking that how people from other cultures
are treated, nothing’s really changed.”
Kelly
discussed the potential for a play with fellow writer Poet, and the pair
visited Achill together so Poet could get a sense of a community and a story
that had been with Kelly her whole life.
“Frances
was catching up with what I’d been carrying around in my head,” says Kelly.
It
was important for both writers when putting together their bi-lingual
collaboration that the umbilical links between the events of 1937 and today
were explored in a way that made it even more pertinent, as well as much closer
to home.
“The
story is seen through the lens of a fourteen-year-old boy today,” Kelly
explains. “He’s first and foremost a Glaswegian, but he’s a Gaelic speaker as
well, and we see the struggles he has with why he’s learning Gaelic today, and
he discovers the Kirkintilloch story almost by default. Through that process he
finds he has more connections to it that he thought, and by the end he feels
really connected to it. It feels very important for a young lad from now to
tell that story. When Frances and I went to Achill, my sister, who lives there,
and who was commissioned to compose a piece of music for the seventy-fifth
anniversary of what happened in Kirkintilloch, she has a son who was fourteen
at the time, so it was interesting seeing that first hand.”
With
music and movement integral to the production, including a bagpiper onstage performing
alongside the show’s seven actors, Kelly and Poet are effectively giving voice
to other ways for people to connect that go beyond words.
“The
physicality of the piece becomes another language,” says Kelly. “It becomes a
kind of time twister that takes the boy back to the time of what happened in
Kirkintilloch. The movement, music and the words are all rooted in the
contemporary, and they’re all used theatrically as well. We’re writing a piece
of drama that has to have something that you feel strongly about today, and
hopefully by the end the boy realises that’s not just about speaking Gaelic.”
In
this way, the play broadens things out as a way of illustrating the hardships
of migrant workers across the generations. As history continues to show, this
has seen them marginalised by ingrained prejudices and resentments which still
linger today in glaring and sometimes brutal fashion.
“We
need to be not so quick in making judgements about people who look and sound
different from us,” says Kelly, “and I suppose the boy in the play is looking
into the future, so it’s not just about Irish tattie howkers. It’s about people
coming here, and living and working in terrible conditions, and the play is
asking who we think we are to be making judgements in the way we do.”
While
Scotties won’t be playing in Kirkintilloch as part of its tour, it will travel to
Achill, effectively taking the story home in a reflection of how the dead boys’
bodies were in 1737.
“On one level the play is redressing the
balance in terms of getting the story out there,” says Kelly, “but I’d really
like people to be moved to ask themselves questions about how they respond to
people who aren’t like them.
“It’s
easy to think that Irish and Scottish people are the same, but if they were we
wouldn’t be in a position where this story needs to be heard, and that people
in Kirkintilloch are heard as much as people in Achill. It’s really about how
we’re all jumbled up in this, and how maybe we all need to ask ourselves a few
questions about how we look at people. There is joy there as well in the way
things connect, and in that way it’s a celebration of how people and
communities from different cultures are connected, and to embrace that.”
Scotties,
Tron Theatre, Glasgow, September 13-15; Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling,
September 19; Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, September 21-22; Lemon Tree,
Aberdeen, September 24; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, September 27-29; Colaiste
Acia, Achill Island, Co. Mayo, Ireland.
The Herald, September 6th 2018
ends
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