Slide 1

States of MindPaula ledziska27th September 2016

National Theatres have since their inception run a certain risk of being appropriated by nationalist and xenophobic forces. Globalization and European integration provoke political, economic and cultural nationalism as a counter-reaction, either as a nostalgic cry for safety and predictability, derived from an idealized idea of the past, or as an obsession with the identity that prompts all sorts of exclusivist delineations and ultimately a self-defeating self-enclosure. In some cases () [It] appears as cultural conservatism, obsessed with the imposition of national identity despite truncated traditions.

Dragan Klaic, National Theatres Undermined by the Withering of the Nation-State, in National Theatres in a Changing Europe, ed by Stephen Wilmer, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 226

If you asked about Scotland, Id say its very, very important. Ironically, were not an independent nation, so theres a sense in which its one of institutional statements of our existence. So its incredibly important. And because were fortunate enough that it exists in this () geographically, socially, ethnically, linguistically diverse way its an incredible statement, incredibly important defensive statement of the diversity of the word we, when we say who we are. Its a we not limited to white middle-class men who speak in a particular way its a we encompassed within what is as thorough a section of the we who actually live in this chunk of ground. When it comes to the National Theatre of Scotland, it was always a () key thing for me () that it was our great good fortune that we had not had a national theatre before, that we had not had the independence in the nineteen hundreds and therefore had a national theatre then. Because it would have been a building and it would have looked to create a single repertoire () So for me it was a sort of luck that Scotland didnt get a national theatre as we have been able to question the values of older national theatres and create something in the twenty-first century.

David Greig in conversation with Paula Sledzinska. August 2015

John McGrath, The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black Black Oil, 1973In line with the NTSs drive to create inclusive performances, which often destabilise the conventional fourth wall and openly engage with the theatre audience, The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart has been staged in casual venues such as pubs and community halls, where a troupe of musically talented actors begin the show with a live folk session a practice invoking the tradition of a ceilidh play, famously represented by the 7:84 company and their 1973 production of The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil. From the very opening, when the audience receive whisky and are requested to produce snow by shredding napkins, it is clear that Prudencia is a piece of immersive theatre which, although described as rambunctiously life-affirming and touchingly beautiful (The Herald, 2011), offers a highly critical take on the state of Scottish culture today.

I need to write a poem.

I need to write an article.

I need to write an article about Scotland and where she stands now fuck it, I need to stop writing articles about Scotland and where she stands now. Im sick of writing articles about Scotland and where she stands now. Im sick of reading articles about Scotland and where she stands now. If I have to write or read another article about Scotland and where she stands now Im going to puke a pure mixture of Irn Bru and Lorne sausage over my copy of The National.I need to stop using Irn Bru and Lorne Sausage as an easy trope of identity.If anyone asks me where Scotland stands now I need to say.

Roughly in the same place it was the last time you looked.

Or

b) Its too soon to tell.

David Greig, Notes to Self: A To Do List for Scottish Culture presented during Culture: What Next event , Scottish Storytelling Centre, available on-line: http://www.front-step.co.uk/2015/05/12/notes-to-self-scottish-culture-writes-a-to-do-list/

Melody Grove as Prudencia Hart, 2014It was as if history had gone into reverse and the pastreturned like a tide over a beach wiping out ourfootprints so that all the mess and ugliness of modernlife was smoothed away and the world was once morefull of old pure things like sledges and rosy cheeks anda genuine need for warming soups

Thought Prudencia Hart

Tides and blankness

As she drove south through the great bleezing blinding blowing blizzardSouth into the Borders.

David Greig, The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, (London: Faber and Faber, 2011), p.5

This is exactly the sort of snow that if it were in a border ballad would poetically presage some kind of doom for the innocent heroine or an encounter on the moor with a sprite or villain or the losing of the heroines selfhood in great white emptiness of the night.

She thought.

But this is not a ballad.

She thought.

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, pp.5-6

[t]he border has become a key conceptual framework for expressing dissatisfaction with fixed notions of nation and culture that deny the existence and potentiality of multiple cultural formations evolved through overlap and hybridity

Nadine Holdsworth, Travelling Across Borders: Re-Imagining the Nation and Nationalism in Contemporary Scottish Theatre, Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol 13, Issue 2, (2003),p.25

As I was walking all alane,I heard twa corbies makin a mane;The tane unto the ither say,Whar sall we gang and dine the-day?

In ahint yon auld fail dyke,I wot there lies a new slain knight;And nane do ken that he lies there,But his hawk, his hound an his lady fair.

His hawk is tae the huntin gane,His hound tae fetch the wild-fowl hame, His lady's tain anither mate,So we may mak oor dinner swate.

Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,And I'll pike oot his bonny blue een;Wi ae lock o his gowden hair We'll theek oor nest whan it grows bare.

Mony a one for him makes mane,But nane sall ken whar he is gane;Oer his white banes, whan they are bare,The wind sall blaw for evermair.

The Twa Corbies

Ric Knowles argues that culture generally exists only insofar as it is performed into being by the daily and (extra-daily) ritual and performative activities (Interculturalism, 2010, p.1). Theatre is a suitable environment for such an exploration of cultural representations, imagining the audience as both an immediate viewer community, and, in the case of national theatres, a community performatively addressed as a nation (Fintan O Toole 2005). Approached in his way, not only does Greigs use of The Twa Corbies evoke and question traditional cultural practice, but also sheds a somewhat sinister light on the unravelling story.

The Twa Corbies

Dr Colin Syme blokeish, obsessed with his kit,Hed eat himself if he was a biscuit Who can you believe this gets actual grantsFor the recording and analysis of football chants

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, p.7

the political is situated in a dynamic web of relations and in the forms of representation through which those relations are mediated all of which connect music to words, to singers, to musicians, to settings, to audiences, to industries, and so on. Any description either of classical or of popular music should attend to () the socially circumscribed discourses in which all types of music find their full meanings.

Lydia Goehr, Political Music and the Politics of Music, in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol 52, No. 1, The Philosophy of Music, p.141

One thing Im very interested in at the moment, as a kind of coalescence of all the things Ive been thinking about over the last five years, is theatre as a sort of semi-shamanic process of transformation where the play functions as a show and brings the audience together, and then takes them on a journey down into another world. And in that otherworld, issues are worked out via metaphor and story and those issues are kind of.. important wounds in the body politic, if you like, and theyre explored in this otherworld and then eventually brought back out again into the real world with an awareness that the otherworld is there, and youve experienced it, hopefully with some kind of healing having taking place(). Now, when you look at any shamanic process, it uses theatrical techniques to create in the audience disturbance. It ploughs the ground so that its ready to take the seeds so you have darkness, () and then fire and then you have weird noises and then theres a rhythm, and then theres music and then theres a story(). For me its the same. The light is like the fire, the story is the otherworld in visions of it, the music is trying to bring you in and transport you, I suppose.

David Greig in conversation with Paula Sledzinska, August 2015

From the chaos of the night, somehowWe conjured a conclusionSpontaneousAndColourfulAndCathartic-What was it?This apt ending we made for ourselves?We boaked()And everything that had gone in came outAll the singing and the talkingAll the stripping and the fightingAll the slaving and the psalmingAll that which wasThat which had beenThe pastCame roaring back up from below.And impressed itself upon the present.Up up up and out it cameIn wavesIn chorusesUnstoppable as a songUntil it lay splattered all over the lavatory bowlLikeA poemAbout a really good night out.

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, pp.36-37

its more about the way folk and folk songs tell Stories about the Devil and his supernatural habitatThe images, the erotic tropes, the landscape and the details that make up Hell: and by asking What is Hell like if you like we Can explore Hells place in the collective psyche The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, p.13

Working-class performativity Isnt plainsong or ballad, its all celebrityIts X Factor its flash mobs its being on YouTube OhIts less Tam Lin and more like Su Bo.()Prudencia you are, essentially a librarianPeddling a kind of romantic tosh.Your time has passed Pru bish bash bosh!

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, p.9

In spite of clear references to Tam Lin, the heroic roles in Greigs rescue are reversed: Prudencia, far from possessing the strength and agency of the earlier heroine to transform worldly and fantastic realities, relies entirely on male assistance and essentially gives in to the dominant macho-discourse represented by Syme. As she re-enters the wild Ceilidh, her undoing is certainly complete but it is not clear whether she is liberated in the culmination point of her self-discovery or is she sacrificed amidst the Dionysian celebration of progress.

What song are you going to sing, Prudencia? - This is a little something for an old friend. Said Prudencia slyly.Not so much Devils Ceilidh as the Devils Kylie.

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, p.82

Thank You!

National Theatre of ScotlandNational Theatre of Scotland93504.0eng - Not for public use, educational use onlyNational Theatre of ScotlandNational Theatre of Scotland93504.0eng - Not for public use, educational use onlyNational Theatre of ScotlandNational Theatre of Scotland151128.0eng - Not for public use, educational use onlyNational Theatre of ScotlandNational Theatre of Scotland151128.0eng - Not for public use, educational use only