THE ARTS JOURNAL will have something of a nautical theme this month, including the most exciting project yet to appear on these pages. We will bring you daily reports and new work as it is created from Lewis artist Ian Stephen’s voyage from Lewis to St Andrews. The project, which will unfold later this month, is part of the work he is doing for the Stanza poetry festival.

Ian will be sailing in his 33ft single-masted sailing yacht El Vigo, with a crew which includes Nicola Gear managing the log, musician and writer Norman Chalmers (Jock Tamson’s Bairns) taking care of communications and concertina, and Adrian Farrow, the ship’s (real) surgeon, taking care of mishaps, and with luck unemployed in that capacity.

Ian’s plan is to sail initially from Lewis for Stromness, paying homage to George Mackay Brown and the contemporary Orcadian artist, Colin Kirkpatrick (aka Puck, the cowboy). Then it’s on to Wick, and possibly Fraserburgh, Peterhead or Aberdeen, but if the wind is fresh from the east then they will press on for the Scottish Fisheries Museum, Anstruther, where El Vigo will aim to rendezvous with the Reaper, then on to St Andrews for the StAnza Poetry Festival.

All sea-plans are provisional at this stage, but wherever Ian points El Vigo, you will be able to follow their progress on the Arts Journal, in text, image and sound, including a first look at new poetry which Ian will create on route. This is the most technically challenging operation we have taken on so far, and it’s fingers-crossed all round as the countdown begins.

Peter Urpeth will also be reporting on another of the very industrious Mr. Stephen’s current projects, which involves sailing in the opposite direction, to remote St Kilda. The sea also figures prominently in Tabula Rasa’s dance adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which will visit Mallaig (10 March); the Pickaquoy Centre, Kirkwall, Orkney (12 March); Phipps Hall, Beauly (18 March); and Glenurquhart High School, Drumnadrochit (19 March).

Alan Greig’s Xfactor Dance Company return to Eden Court Theatre (9 March) this month, after missing out last year, and the Dancebase studio in Edinburgh also visits Eden Court with Off Kilter (31 March), a show which promises to look at Scottish culture with a “wry and fresh eye”.

Theatre action includes Dogstar Theatre’s Seven Ages, still on the road in the early part of the month (see our interview with Alyth McCormack). Edinburgh-based Prime Productions will be touring their production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to venues in Inverurie (18 March), Findhorn (19 March), Newtonhill (20 March), Thurso (23 March), Dingwall (24 March), Ullapool (25 March) and Skye (27). 7:84 Theatre are also out and about in the region – see Mark Fisher’s review of Reasons To Be Cheerful.

In music, Essential Scottish Opera have a number of Highland dates lined up this month (again, see our review for details), and Sardinian jazz trumpeter Paulo Fresu will play at the Aros Centre in Portree (10 March) as part of the second tour funded by the Scottish Arts Council’s deliberately eclectic Tune-Up touring fund.

Kenny Mathieson
Commissioning Editor