Scratch Nights

A Living Archive of Belonging is a verbatim theatre piece sharing the first-hand experiences of loneliness of local community members in Nairn. I hold in-depth interviews for people to share their thoughts, stories, and emotions around loneliness and belonging, and in turn transcribe and condense their word-for-word responses into monologues which I perform as a one woman show.

Venus and the Moon is a tale of two star crossed lovers set to ballad form (like Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner). It incorporates astronomy and placements of the stars and planets over the course of a year, astrology, various star mythologies, and themes to do with a relationship, which goes from Heaven to Hell during the epic tale.

Our Artist in Residence at Eden Court will be reading from his draft play set in a small community in the Canadian bush at the end of the eighteenth century. Drawing on a cassette recording of his Great Grandmother (whose family were displaced from the Highlands to Canada during the last wave of clearances) discussing her experiences as a teacher in a log-cabin schoolhouse in the early twentieth century, the play will consider how emerging communities work to manufacture a sense of home and the importance of that sense in shaping their identity.