We are reduced

to the role of silent

poets, frozen in time

George Gunn

The state of Highland theatre continues to worsen. To date both Tosg, the national Gaelic language theatre company, and Grey Coast, my own company in Caithness, have folded. The demise of both was greeted with complacency by the funders and indifference by the media.
     Elsewhere Theatre Hebrides is struggling to survive in Lewis; Dogstar, with its leading artistic light, Matthew Zajac, based in Edinburgh, have an uncertain future being restricted to project grants and with the 're-organisation' of the Scottish Arts Council into Creative Scotland even this funding stream is uncertain. This uncertainty has intensified due, in part, to the fact that Creative Scotland, at the time of writing, still has no-one specifically in post to deal with theatre in Scotland.
     Neither is the future of Mull Theatre assured – this could be said (with the exception of the National Theatre of Scotland) of all Scottish theatre companies – even though Mull have traditionally been the funders' favourite but as finance in civic society bleeds away their relationship with Argyll and Bute Council and Highlands and Islands Enterprise will be exposed to increased stress. If any artistic group can form a relationship with Creative Scotland then, at present, Mull must possess the philosopher's stone.
     Of the other theatre groups in the Highlands and Islands, they exist from hand to mouth; rise and fall; come and go. Now, it could be argued that discussing the current state of theatre in the Highlands is tantamount to discussing the mating habits of tree turtles in upper Amazonian Ecuador but I would argue that just as looking at the environment of the tree turtle teaches a little more about the state of our planet as a result, by looking at the particularity of the art form which is theatre and how it is performing in the Highland and Islands – which constitutes about one half of the land mass of Scotland – we can learn more about the state of theatre in Scotland and by extension the state of our nation. Too bold a claim? Well, reader, what is wrong with ambition?
     The other major issue constantly nagging at the performing arts in the Highlands is one of identity: just what is Highland theatre as opposed to theatre in the Highlands? Also the 'idea' of the Highlands seems to be beyond many significant players in contemporary Scottish theatre and culture management in general. The artistic director of Scotland's largest theatre company recently asked me to explain 'just what is the Highlands?' as she just didn't get it. She was the second theatre practitioner working at a very senior level in Scotland to ask me this self-same question. The second time I was in Thurso; the first time I was on a bus so I just pointed to Bheinn Wyviss. 'It's that sort of thing', I said, forlornly. The person who was asking now runs a major touring theatre company in England.
     On the question of 'identity' there are many in Caithness who share the confusion as expressed by these theatre directors. Many Caithnessians do not, for example, consider themselves to be Highlanders and there are many in the rest of the Highlands who share that view: that Caithness is somehow separate. I am not one of them and neither, more significantly, was Neil Gunn. In his 1935 essay, 'Caithness and Sutherland' he wrote: 'No writer can now refer to Caithness without using the word Norse. "Not Highland at all but rather Norse". A hundred years ago a traveller from the south would have had to penetrate into the county as far as Clyth (over half way) before he could hear a word of English, no other tongue than Gaelic being spoken'.
     What Gunn didn't say, and what he probably meant by 'English', is the beautiful and idiosyncratic strain of Scots which constitutes the Caithness dialect which would have been spoken by all in 1935 and still by a significant proportion of the native population now.
     Many people confuse geology and topography with cultural history and identity. Caithness to the north and east may be flat, and spectacularly so, but to claim that it is 'separate' from the Highlands is to deny history, not interpret it. Grey Coast Theatre Company in all its work over nearly 20 years celebrated this unique blend of Gaelic and Norse which makes the Gall-Gaelic resonance of Caithness so refreshing. Lewis shares this blend but there, now, they speak Gaelic and English and here we speak Scots and English. All these linguistic strands are the warp and weft of our cultural weave. They are what the Highlands and Islands are all about.
     This land mass, these islands, is not one thing. It would be impossible for them to be so. This is the basis of what Highland theatre should be, what it could be. That it is currently not and is struggling is due to a mixture of a refusal to understand this and a hostility to it from many quarters and agencies.
     In his book 'The Last of the Free', James Hunter relates this incident: 'In the run-up to the 1979 devolution referendum, an old man in Sutherland, a man who couldn't have been more pro-Highland, told me he'd be voting to keep the status quo'.
     'Why?' I asked.
     'Well,' he said, 'in London they don't give a damn about Highlanders, but in Edinburgh they hate us'.
      In 2011, it would appear that in Edinburgh they don't give a damn about Caithness but in Inverness they hate us.
      The temptation to either control or ignore the theatre has been the itch presented to power to scratch down the ages. A vigorous scratching of control has proved too strong for the Inverness-based and Highlands and Islands Enterprise-sponsored arts agency Hi-Arts. In contrast, as it was constituted before its re-incarnation into Creative Scotland, the Scottish Arts Council chose to ignore the achievements and aspirations of Highland theatre.
     In the case of Hi-Arts, control was and is everything. The philosophy here was financial as the development agency top-sliced its way through every budget in order to justify its own existence and to survive. This control continues through the Highlands and Islands Theatre Network and the new North by North East touring fund all of which is dominated by Hi-Arts and the personality of its director. They manage the accounts and take a fee for doing so and if a theatre company wants a review of one of its shows in the online Hi-Arts journal 'Northings', it has to pay for the privilege.
     This cynical control of the purse strings has proven fatal to the plans and aspirations of many groups and individuals. Instead of developing the art form of the theatre in the Highlands and islands Hi-Arts has contributed directly to its present state of malaise. This despite the talent which through the 1980s, 90s and into the present decade was a generational blessing, a creative confluence and a wealth resource.
     Instead of actively supporting these artists Hi-Arts adopted a policy of creating the agenda. They could do this by the already mentioned disinterest of the SAC but also because local government was unable and disinclined to become actively involved. For Highland Council arts provision was always going to be described as 'adequate' even though no-one in the organisation would dare define what 'adequate' meant. For Highland Council the emergence in the 1980s of an indigenous Highland theatre culture was an annoyance: theatre companies are expensive, demanding, political and difficult. The HC Glenurquhart Road HQ in Inverness took the view that it was best not to get directly involved and better still not to get involved at all. A similar view pertained in Oban and Stornoway. This left Hi-Arts with a free rein to use the medium of theatre to promote the ends of the development agency. In this regard they were years ahead of the present Scottish Government.
     This situation of management of an art form such as theatre by an arts agency such as Hi-Arts is validated in this consumer age by perceiving theatre as a commodity. We do, at this time, exist in the totalitarianism of material fetishism where 'things' are the philosophy and consuming is the social obligation and the belief system. While on one hand theatre exists in this vortex it also depends upon such funding agencies as Hi-Arts and has to be 'sold', accordingly the 'commodity' of the production cannot be divorced from the artists who created it, no matter how much they wish it. In this lies the problem for Hi-Arts: the artists, the producers.
     An arts development agency which on the one hand is 'independent' but on the other is absolutely dependent on the contract it has with its parent organisation, which is Highlands and Islands Enterprise, for its revenue will inevitably concentrate its energies on developing itself, the agency, at the expense of the art form and the artists. This is what I suggest is already happening with Creative Scotland. So in this process the content of the theatre, its subjectivity, is sacrificed to the needs of the funder.
      The objective then is not in putting on a piece of theatre which has a specific cultural origin and artistic integrity, rather it must fulfil the criteria of public relations and be altered to carry the signature of the funder in a way which forwards the interest of the funder. So it is then that theatre-makers can live in a comparative period of material plenty but enjoy no translation of that into artistic equality, whereby the work produced is seen as having equal value as the funders and agencies which pay for it. It does not. As it stands the funding comes first, the work comes second. No theatre-maker alive and working in Scotland at this moment will admit to this but all know it to be true.
     The past 20 years has seen this dubious process meet its ultimate conclusion. The main production from the Highlands in 2011 was yet another re-working of Para Handy. The difference since 2008 is that all the money is gone – so they would have us believe – and it is not coming back. For theatre-makers this is the age of equality with poverty.
     The 'management' of the theatre in the Highlands and Islands has the indigenous producers, instead of being in a strong place to embrace these circumstances, finding themselves, like the Ecuadorian tree turtle, threatened with extinction. All talent and achievement, both actual and in potential, has been sacrificed before corporate identity and by the very narrow visions of a few non-theatre agenda-driven individuals. The writers, actors, directors, designers, technicians and musicians find themselves diminished, abandoned and out of work. This situation is as needless as it is heartbreaking.
      Instead of the real prospect of five professional Highland theatre companies we have, in reality, one and a half: Mull Theatre which is a client of Creative Scotland, and Dogstar which is project-funded. Theatre Hebrides – although active to a limited degree – is marginalised – and as has been noted Grey Coast and Tosg are gone. This is, of course, the land of 'what might have been'. It is also the land of 'what should have been'. As it stands the theatre sector in the Highlands has not been developed, it has been corroded.
     The lesson of Highland theatre since 1990 is that when middle-class professionals from the world of 'enterprise' get power over an art form then that art form is doomed.
     It is the sheer frustration of living through needless struggle and untold wasted potential and possibility which saps the heart: all sacrificed for brand, image and control. In 2011 we are reduced to putting on productions for £600 for one performance only in a rock venue in Inverness at lunchtime on a Saturday. This 'initiative', Playpieces, according to on 'enterprise manager', has proven there is a demand. It never crossed his mind how this 'demand' can be met if there is no investment in the suppliers; ie the producers. It doesn't have to be – never had to be – like this.
      What the nullification of theatrical talent from the Highlands proves is that the bodies which govern us and are legislated to have responsibility for culture and how it inter-connects with all aspects of public life, such as tourism and education, have little comprehension of that connection. In so doing they betray not only the current generation of Highland theatre artists but the people of the Highlands and Islands and – by extension – Scotland. In short, as theatre is a vibrant part of our culture, they have put us out of ourselves, they have reduced us to the role of silent poets, frozen in time.

Looking back on the ill-fated Drama na-Alba theatre festival of 2007, in the 'Scottish Year of Highland Culture', what has become apparent, other than the chronic amateurism of the entire affair, was the establishment, finally in the Highlands, of managerialism and market forces at work in the field of arts production. That a theatre festival in the Highlands run by people who knew or cared little for either theatre or the Highlands was doomed to fail is beside the point. What was made to succeed was the principle of managerialism, of the abandonment of the 'arms length' principle and the entrenchment of the market and of what the arts can do for the state.
     In other words what we witnessed in the Highlands in 2007 was the commodification of art, of our art, but it was no longer ours. In this particular case it was theatre, my own art from, which was commoditised: all for the promotion of the interests of the state. The energy was in the management of the perception of the event, not in the quality of the product or how that was brought to an audience. Everything was a 'success'. The necessary horizontal structures of communication which theatre-makers and their audience engage in were brushed aside and in their place were put vertical structures, direct from the top to the bottom.
     That the managers of the 'Scottish Year of Highland Culture' in 2007 had not the faintest idea of how this would work in the real world of marketing and audience development was, at the time, not seen as being important. The event, the 'year', was everything: the actuality on the ground, in the village hall, school, and community centre was a lesser consideration. It was enough that the managers of 2007 saw that something was being done. Just what that 'something' was and what it meant was never addressed. The subject gave way in significance to the object. These vertical structures of management apply to everything now, whether it is Playpieces in Inverness or applying for funding to the new North by North East touring fund run by Hi-Arts.
     Why, you may ask, is any of this important? My answer is that this is how our country is going to be run.
     The truth is that government, any government, doesn't really know what to do with artists once they get control over them. This is certainly the case in Scotland and more specifically in the Highlands and particularly in Inverness. Once the artists are quietened then a raft of professionals are brought in to administer this silence. The problem here is that the 'professionals' from the realm of local government and enterprise know little of the real world. It is one thing to insist upon the unleashing of market forces upon Highland theatre and art in general but how, I ask, is that going to be made to work, even if it could, if none of these cultural mangers has any experience of exposure to market competition, even if such a thing existed?
     Is this, to paraphrase outlandishly Hannah Arendt, 'the banality of evil', where ordinary people do all sorts of unspeakable things because they perceive them to be 'normal'? What has happened to Highland theatre is certainly the banality of mediocrity, with a good dose of amateurism thrown in, and what it amounts to is organised vandalism. The result is that a generation of Highlanders are being denied the right to see their society portrayed and deconstructed in a public forum, for that is what theatre is.
     What is discernible when one looks at the close circle of individuals and agencies who have stepped into the hole left by the Scottish Arts Council is their narcissism. Personal opinion and taste are being substituted for quality and strategy. That HIE through Hi-Arts and Highland Council believe their own spin does not make their actions right or true.
     In the end Highland theatre-makers will prevail because art must and will always prevail. It is currently struggling because the under-funding mirrors the lack of belief in it by the funders. The unspeakable motto is this: if it is local it cannot be any good. This would be unthinkable in any other comparable country in Europe. The tragedy lies in the plays which have never been written because of this motto and the productions which have never seen the light of day. All of this, one would hope, is out of step with the political foot-fall of the Scottish people. I maintain that the Highlands could be, potentially, the radical life-breathing engine of Scottish theatre. At the moment it is being asphyxiated.
     It is often said, jokingly, but nonetheless with that whiff of seriousness which betrays a certain truth, that the purpose of an arts development agency is to see itself out of business after three years. So what can one make of an arts development agency which has been going since 1991? Also, as has been highlighted, what is its worth when that arts agency has 'developed' Highland theatre into a lay-by?
     Hi-Arts is the shadow without the body. In this vampire world there is only one form on the go: tragedy. In the night much blood is consumed but come the daylight, bright and revealing, nothing is seen. The actors, the directors, the poets and playwrights – they are gone. Consumed. Buried. The emptiness is as bald as the rocks of east Harris. So if the primary measurement of success for the development agency is that it no longer needs to exist then, by this measure, Hi-Arts must be judged a resounding failure because after 20 years it is still with us, whereas the likes of Tosg and Grey Coast are not.
     This would be alarming enough yet the director of Hi-Arts continually recites in public that mantra that there are 24/25/26/27 (it depends when he is speaking and to whom) professional theatre companies in the Highlands. This is a perfidious fiction and says more about the needs of Hi-Arts than the development of Highland Theatre. He might as well say there are 27 black cattle in Borgie. While this is entirely possible it is a statement which offers no illumination into the state of black cattle and tells us nothing about north Sutherland.
     Likewise a woman whose husband is a pilot at RAF Lossiemouth, who has an interest in Samuel Beckett and who has created a group to indulge that interest, does that fact allow her to be called a professional Highland theatre company? Beckett, after a time, would probably say 'no'. The director of Hi-Arts says most definitely 'yes'.
     The job of a Highland theatre company is to be locally grounded; to have a national profile and to create international links – most definitely with Ireland, Iceland and Scandinavia and the Celtic diaspora across the Atlantic and the Pacific. That is where our influences and our audiences are.
     In Scotland, more generally, the job of theatre is to entertain and prepare the people for the future by allowing them to discuss their past and present in the here and now, in their own public space. Theatre facilitates the individual and the collective imagination. At this point in her history Scotland needs this most dearly, more vitally than ever and no place, more specifically within the national debate, than the Highlands and Islands.
     Given adequate (yes, that word again) support Highland theatre could be – and I believe will be – the most unlikely centrifugal force which turns the prevailing formal conservatism of everything in Scottish theatre around. I also believe that the north of Scotland (and the far north in particular) even as things stand now, possesses enough talent in acting, directing and writing to bring this necessary revolution into being.
      In as much as Yeats dreamed up the cultural landscape for Ireland to place and find her political and theatrical voice so do I dream that the Highlands can do something similar for the rest of Scotland. It is not an arts management we need but an arts manifestation.
     One way is to begin at the beginning, through education. Theatre, in the Highlands, has to grow the roots it does not have due to history, religion and politics. There are still many Free Presbyterians who consider theatre to be part of Satan's vainglorious chorus. They are right. Theatre is part of the oral culture which has been one of the glories of Celtic culture since the Iron Age. Be that as it may, theatre in education and education through theatre cannot be done at once. So, what can be done?
     Logically the thing to do is to keep the focus of any activity local, garner that experience and, to use a management term, initiate a 'pilot project', even though I consider the past 20 years to have been a 'pilot project'. As I write there are definite proposals to build two new primary schools in Wick alongside the new Wick High School. This project is expected to cost around £57 million and will take five years to complete.

What I propose is that there is a 300-seat theatre built into the new high school and that in both the primary schools there should be a 150-seat theatre. What is important to stress here is that these should be 'proper' modern theatres and not the usual half lecture hall-half theatre compromises which serves no-one. A theatre serves everyone. It allows everyone to do what they need to do but only if the theatre is designed by people whose profession it is to design theatres and not some council appointed 'architect'. What architects do is enclose space and, usually, as far as theatre design is concerned, they do this from the outside in. A theatre needs to be designed from the inside out and the starting point is the physical relationship between the actor and the audience.
      So let us assume (and I know it is a huge assumption) we get that right and Wick has three theatres in three brand new schools – what then? First up should be the appointment of three drama teachers with the facility to engage professional theatre-makers on a rolling contract. Beginning in the two primary schools we make theatre an integral part of every aspect of the curriculum. In this way the children, from P1, learn to express themselves physically, of being at home in their own bodies and how to use drama as a way of solving problems, of gaining self-confidence.
     This, if you like, is the 'primary' objective: the naturalisation of theatre in school. On a more subjective aspect the children should be encouraged to dramatise stories and events from the history of Wick and Caithness and there should be at least one big production from each school every year which will be produced with the help of the professional theatre-maker.
     This rolling programme of using theatre to engage with both the curriculum and everyday life would be continued in the High School but would have to have a more formal nature due to the requirements of the exam system. But a Standard Grade (or whatever they become) and a Higher in drama should be seen as normal. In the high school, for example, with a mixture of the senior pupils and the special needs pupils there will be scope to undertake more diverse theatre projects relating to what the pupils think is important to them and, of course, linking in to local cultural experience. In the high school, also, there will be the desire/requirement to mount one big production per year and, again, in this the school would seek to work with the professional theatre-maker.
     What this does is to give children a through-line from P1 to S6 in theatre-making and for individuals to discover in themselves, through participation and working with others, just what they are capable of. This process, over time, will also educate the Wick audience – and by extension the rest of Caithness – into going to see theatre. The first reason is because the productions are there to see. The second reason is that they will have a vested interest in the process because they will have a son or a daughter, or some other member of the family, in the show. I believe that if this idea is allowed to find its form then the educational, theatrical and cultural life of Wick – and Caithness – will be transformed within 10 years.
     What then? The next stage is the murky water of further education. What I think should happen is that the University of the Highlands and Islands should establish a Higher National Certificate course in touring theatre and this should be based in Wick. Although the general approach of this course is on touring the course should also emphasise the honing of individual acting skills which should also encompass playwrighting and local history and cultural awareness. In short: what are the stories from the past and from today that the audiences in the north of Scotland need to hear, engage with and debate in order to be entertained into considering the future? This touring theatre course will draw on Wick High School initially but over time (10 years) the course should be (will be) looking for students from throughout the UHI college confederacy.
     In here lies a problem: despite the spin put out by the UHI the component colleges within the UHI find it very difficult to co-operate with each other and in fact, most of the time, do the opposite: which is compete with each other. This is what you get when education is designed along monetarist principals and quantity prevails over quality.
     What I propose is that there is a department of theatre studies created for a pan-UHI usage and that this department has its headquarters, its offices and studios, in Wick. This will both help to regenerate the town but will also give the on-going work of the two primary schools and the high school a focus and a context so that pupils can see that, physically, there is a direction in place and that they can actually go somewhere and achieve something by studying theatre.
     The final, local, component of this initiative in Wick should be the establishment of a professional touring theatre company that would be based in the UHI theatre studies department in the town. This company would undertake, at the end of each academic year, to tour the HNC students' work around the north Highlands initially but over time would be expected to expand that circuit.
     Ambition here is everything. This company would also be there to work with the students who have completed their HNC and who have gone to other formal education and training such as the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland or Queen Margaret University or wherever and are now looking to return in order to practise their skills. Not all of them will seek to do this – we cannot nail their feet to the A9 – but if even five or six per year decide to do this so then the professional company can develop its repertoire accordingly and then begin to establish a national profile and seek international partners. The professional producing arm is not a luxurious add-on but a vital cog in the machine of the renaissance of theatre in Wick, Caithness, the Highlands, Scotland. It completes the circle – from P1 to a job is the ultimate ambition.
     So the main question arising from all of this is: how is it to be paid for? The Scottish Government has already committed £27 million to the Wick High School new build, although according to Highland Council this is £10 million short of the estimated price, but if it was left to Highland Council nothing would be built at all. It remains to be seen if the combined sum for the three schools of £57 million will be realised but if it is then the three theatres will be included in the building costs and should not create an extra outlay.
     A theatre has already been included in the plan for the new Wick High School. As to the teaching posts and the theatre company, if there is a general consensus that this entire idea is a good thing – and that is, well, as Donald Rumsfeld might say, a 'known unknown' – then a combination of the Scottish Government, Highland Council, Creative Scotland, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the University of the Highlands and Islands and whatever foundations and trusts and private sponsorship that can be found, I, at least, can see no reason why this partnership cannot be brought together to achieve something unique, practical, visionary and realistic. Out of the bourgouisfication and mistreatment of current Highland theatre-making along with the chronic managerialistic disinterest of civic officialdom some good, as yet, might come.
     The other question is (and in many ways the crucial one): why bother at all? Does not the cry go up when arts funding is mentioned 'Don't you know there's a recession on?'. That always sounds like 'Don’t you know there's a war on?'. My answer is that if we do not do this we will be continually living in a 'recession'. Arts funding is state resources just like any other and now, when we are at the beginning of the worst financial collapse anyone alive has ever seen, is the most appropriate, the most crucial time to invest in something which ultimately will not depend upon bricks and mortar but will help prepare and develop the future of Caithness, her people and the economy.
     You think that too grand? Let me remind you that our children are our greatest asset and resource so instead of crippling them emotionally through self-doubt and through debt they are not responsible for why not enlighten, empower and educate them so they, at least, can prepare a world fit for their children to live in? As the great Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal said: 'Theatre is the first human invention and also the invention which paves the way for all other inventions and discoveries'.
     I believe that a theatre in each of the two new Wick primaries and a theatre in the new Wick High School will go a long way towards making the future happen for our children and ourselves. In the several years since the announcement of the closure and decommissioning of Dounreay – by far the major employer in the area for over 60 years – and over all the years leading up to it I have heard no-one come up with any plan for the future of Caithness and the far north: it's as if we are to be left to our own devices. Very well, what I am proposing is very much our own devices.

One further question: what is culture? This is an important question because it is either overlooked entirely or brushed aside when any strategic or economic planning takes place. I believe culture is what we, as people existing in a society, do and make. Art is the expression of that. As the atomic dust of Dounreay is buried beneath the unwelcoming ground at Buldoo, as fishing and farming struggle under European Union mandarinism and mismanagement and as depopulation begins to kick in, what can the people of Caithness expect? The answer is nothing, other than cultural, social and economic deterioration. Unless we do something about it. What I am advocating is that we do something about it.
     There is much loose talk bandied about in Highlands and Island Enterprise and Highland Council meeting rooms on such topics as the 'creative industries' and 'cultural tourism'. Personally I have never met anyone who utters such phrases display the faintest idea of what they actually mean. What I do know is this: Caithness is an unknown quantity as far as the rest of Scotland is concerned. In the arts sector you might as well mention Botswana (and no disrespect intended to the Africans) as Caithness. This is all to our good.
     Much as HIE and HC would dearly love to be able to, you cannot snap your fingers and create 'cultural tourism' or conjure up 'creative industries' overnight. They need investment, support and time. But most of all they need structure. Three new theatres in three new schools is a step towards that structure. Of course they will be infra-structure but usage and direction will create the cultural structure which in the end will create an economic structure.
     If there is courage abroad then within a generation Wick in particular and Caithness in general could be (will be!) the centre of the theatre world. From this place will come actors, directors, writers, designers, composers, and all the technical back-up services such an industry requires. We should expect new plays done in new ways which have their settings and their style rooted in the far north but with their eyes upon the wide world.
     Film-makers too, for Caithness possesses a landscape which is every film-maker's dream and if we have a production infrastructure grounded in the schools and further education with a healthy and vibrant theatre company then films of all kinds can be made. When this begins to happen then we can talk about 'cultural tourism' because people will only come to Caithness for something they cannot get elsewhere and how better to advertise that 'something' than through the arts? When the means of production for all of this are established in Wick, in Caithness, then we can also begin to understand just what 'creative industries' really are.
     There will be those who will say: Caithness – Scotland – cannot afford this, has no tradition in this. We had no tradition in steam engines or television either but it didn’t stop us from inventing them. As I have mentioned earlier: I have heard of no scheme – social, economic or industrial, cultural or whatever – which is aimed at the long-term sustainability of our community which has the people at its core. There are plenty of enterprises which will benefit one or two individuals and companies but none that will benefit everyone.
     One of the main dangers to my proposal, ironically, lies not within local or national government and the perennial anguish over the use of resources, not the amateurish and dilettantish way in which Highland theatre has been administered and promoted, but rather it is from the actual way we make theatre in Scotland.
     In this country, as in much of Europe and the USA, we have a director-led theatre industry. That is to say the artistic director of any theatre company – let us say it is the Traverse or the National Theatre of Scotland – is also the employer. So artistic decisions are also part of the economic, employer-employee hierarchy, which is a power relationship which distorts and damages the creative process. This also has an impact on the culture of the nation because it puts the emphasis on how things are done and made (and how they have always been so) instead of on why things are done and made and how they could be done differently. At the moment the strap-line reads 'We, the company, are doing this play because the director has always wanted to direct it', not because it will add to the general cultural stock of the nation and engage our people in debate and stimulate and entertain them.
     As the director of one of Scotland's most senior companies said to me, rather tetchily, when I pressed him about the content of the schools production they were mounting in Thurso, 'Well, I'll tell you what it's not going to be about, which is Dounreay and the Highland Clearances!'.
     The assumption here was that these subjects were my responsibility, not his. The fact that he had the means of production and I did not didn't seem to affect him, nor did he offer to assist me to that end. Yet I was struck by the censorship which subjective exclusion is. None of the children involved in his production would know very much about the reality of Dounreay or the Highland Clearances. I have, over the years, mounted several productions about Dounreay and the Highland Clearances but the difference between us was that he could do as he pleased and I could not.
     In contemporary Scottish theatre that is how it stands – if you are in the loop and therefore have the means to mount your production, fine. If not, too bad. There is no sense of cultural responsibility or solidarity. But then, if there was, Scotland wouldn’t be the nation it is which has for too long had its theatrical reality stifled by the all-consuming desire of individuals who put on the work they please because they can.
     It is this reluctance – and the pressures are understandable – not to look beyond 'the moment' which erodes the future of Scottish theatre. What is proposed for Wick will contribute, if it happens, to the re-emergence of Scottish theatre, as well as Caithness, from the ground up and if it is successful it can replicated in other areas of the Highlands and Islands and throughout Scotland.
     In this way we can begin to revolutionise both general education and theatrical education and practice. It is one way to circumnavigate the reactionary and monetarist policies of the 'conservatoire' approach to theatre training currently adopted in Scotland – mainly to attract American money – and the dull-witted, quantitive approach to further education ingrained in the University of the Highlands and Islands.
     If the Wick idea were to catch on then Scotland may yet begin to create a genuine national theatre with the Highlands, Caithness, Wick at its centre. It is about time the world was stood on its head. Yes, indeed: 'It's that sort of thing'.

 

George Gunn is a playwright and founder of the Grey Coast Theatre Company. Since this piece was written, Theatre Hebrides has folded