Dogstar Theatre (Scotland)
A story of journeys, of how a boy who grew up on a farm in Galicia, Poland, came to be a tailor in Inverness. His life spanned most of the 20th century. His story is not straightforward.
He was taken prisoner by the Soviets in 1939 and forced to work east of the Urals, then freed in an amnesty after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. He then joined the thousands of Poles who travelled to Tehran, then Egypt, to be integrated into the British Army, fighting in North Africa and Italy. He was then resettled in Britain in 1948, joining his brother in Glasgow. This is the story he told.
But there is another story, and perhaps a third and fourth one, for in order to survive, he had to adopt different identities. Like all immigrants, the tailor had to adapt and he did that very successfully, integrating himself into the fabric of Highland life. And fabric was perhaps the most important medium through which he achieved this. He made a variety of clothes for thousands of people, including himself, constructing the outward trappings which play a part in defining hwo we are. Fabric. Fabrication.
Crossing the borders from Poland to Russia to Iran to Egypt to Italy to Germany to Scotland, the fable reflects on the Second World War but is personal, intimate and rooted in two cultures: Galicia and the Scottish Highlands. The play uses the central metaphor of the tailor and his fabric. Layers of ghostly clothes are projected on to with a series of still and moving images from the tailor’s past and present-day Ukraine. The performance combines storytelling, songs, poetry and physicality with a rich soundscape of live fiddle music and effects.
The Tailor of Inverness previewed at the Arches Theatre, Glasgow on July 29, 2008 and opened at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh on July 31, 2008. In the meantime the production toured the globe. Most of the production’s numerous performances to date have been sold out.
Make your own blockbuster, or come and watch Kevin and Amber make one right in front of you.
(Girl) I want hold him
Oh, I know yours isn’t – but I bet you know of someone’s who’s is!
Hip Hop meets theatre
Having come home to visit her mother who has been placed in a nursing home, Diane, now a well-known writer, is being interviewed for the local newspaper. Her remarks are an answer to questions such as where she gets the ideas for her stories, whether her youth in Mountain Grove influenced her work and why she decided to leave home. At first obliging and matter-of-fact, Diane gradually reveals more than her interviewer might have bargained for a childhood marred by the loss of her father and her mother´s coldness; the promiscuity which she was driven to in search of the love and concern which were denied her at home; and, most devastating of all, the molestation by her stepfather which shaped her character indelibly – and led to the harrowing event which she describes at the end.
War meets art in this intimate parable. A painter immerses herself in the creation of a real experience with the perfect image. But in K., a Middle Eastern city, the real images outshine and overshadow everything. She is shaken by the experiences of the effects of war, violence and poverty, impossible to depict. Now, forced to confront her lifelong beliefs in the value of art, she also questions how to deal with her position in the world today.
An Iraqi immigrant tells his story. His name is Sad. He lives here illegally. At night he walks our streets and sells roses. He loves to speak our language but nobody listens. Will you?
Imagine all Karl Marx would have to say after one hundred years of just being able to watch…