TOSG GAELIC THEATRE COMPANY

TOSG GAELIC THEATRE COMPANY is a professional touring theatre company, and commissions new writing in Scottish Gaelic in a variety of styles for both children and adult audiences

Mission Statement

Tosg is a professional company which produces both adult and children’s drama through the medium of Gaelic. The company was originally established under the auspices of The National Gaelic Arts Project but Tosg is now an independent company served by three full time members of staff and its own board of directors. The company’s administrative base is on the campus at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on Skye.

The company is committed to producing and touring both adult and children’s drama throughout Scotland. It actively promotes new writing for theatre and drama training opportunities for teenagers and young adults.

In recent years, Tosg has focussed on developing children’s theatre, and the appointment of Artair Donald as the company’s youth development officer

Current Production

Tosg has just completed a month long tour throughout the Highlands and Islands and the Lowland cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh with its production of ‘A’ Chùirt’ by Iain Crichton Smith and ‘Atman’ by Iain Finlay Macleod. The touring production opened at the inaugural Faclan, the Hebridean Book Festival which was held at An Lanntair, Stornoway on the cusp of August-September.

The organizers of Faclan invited Tosg to participate in the festival by producing ‘A’ Chùirt’ as part of the feature acknowledging the varied work of Iain Crichton Smith. The historical perspective of Crichton Smith’s play is not simply a re-enactment of Patrick Sellar’s infamous 19th century trial, nor is it yet another presentation of the infamy associated with the Highland Clearances.

The universal nature of man’s inhumanity to man and whether the principles of justice have been observed are issues which pre-occupied Iain Crichton Smith. The historical conflict against which he sets ‘A’ Chùirt’ is almost incidental, although he does draw upon the specifics of the confrontation – not least the inhumanitarian role of the established Church and its leaders and their betrayal of a people bewildered by social and political upheaval!

Iain Finlay Macleod’s ‘Atman’ is a newly commissioned piece which was produced and toured to compliment ‘A’ Chùirt’. The play explores contemporary mores as the relationship between two female characters, a resident psychiatrist and her ambitious client, unfolds before us.

Greed, avarice and lust condition the client’s journey from being an insecure, bored and unnoticed figure to someone who has become supremely confident and ambitious and, tragically, someone who leaves carnage and destruction in her wake!

Both plays explore the universal themes of justice and injustice. Iain Finlay Macleod has travelled to war-scarred Bosnia and as a young writer he has witnessed for himself the painful consequences of man’s inhumanity to man.

The resonances for modern day audiences drawn from conflicts in the Highlands of Scotland in the 19th century and indirectly from the Balkans in the 20th and 21st centuries are stimulating and thought provoking, and they justify the revival of a short but intense classic by Iain Crichton Smith which is complimented and thematically re-enforced by Iain Finlay Macleod’s contemporary expositions.

Work-In-Progress

Tosg is already in advanced preparation for the year’s second major tour. The children’s production of ‘An t-Àite ‘s Àille’, a Gaelic version of Arts in Motion’s ‘The Perfect Spot’, will tour during November and December. This is an important collaborative production for Tosg and it heralds an exciting development for the company in terms of establishing new and creative relationships with other Highland based companies.

The production will tour nationally and performances will take place throughout the Highlands and Islands and in the cities of Inverness, Aberdeen, Stirling, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The performances are aimed at all the Gaelic medium units and the dedicated Gaelic schools throughout Scotland. Throughout the tour, Artair Donald, Tosg’s drama development officer, will lead a team of tutors who will engage with participants from sixty separate primary schools and offer them stimulating workshop sessions prior to each performance of ‘An t-Àite ‘s Àille’.

A further new and collaborative project involving Anne Lorne Gillies and Tosg will be launched early in 2007. The original one woman touring production featuring the songs and poetry and, crucially, the literary status of some of the Gàidhealtachd’s leading female poets is to become a major community project involving Anne, Tosg and the successful story telling projects led by Chrisella Ross. Chrisella’s work was originally developed in conjunction with The National Gaelic Arts Project.

The community based project will feature at its very heart, the bringing together of women from all walks of life – the young and the old, the married and the unmarried, the widowed, women in full time and part time employment, women who have become full time carers within their own families and who have little if any renumeration or official recognition of their work or worth, women whose own personal status has been subsumed whilst focussing on their responsibilities as housewives, mothers etc., etc..

Forums will be established which will enable women to share and discuss their experiences. The shared evidence will then inform the first productive stage of the project which is the creation of contemporary work songs, or òrain luaidh.

Traditionally, the labour intensive work carried out by women in Gaelic society was relieved by the spontaneous communal singing of improvised songs, often uninhibited in style and content and largely concerned with female issues. The songs will be inspired by the women’s personal experiences both from a domestic and a professional perspective and they will be subsequently included in the one woman show which Anne will devise in conjunction with the community participants.

Anne has chosen the singularly appropriate working title of ‘Beul Foidhpe’ (The Mouth Beneath Her). The title famously comes from the the 17th century vernacular poet, Màiri Nighean Alasdair Ruaidh whose deathbed request was that she be buried face downwards in recognition that she spoke with “the mouth of lies”.

Her role as poet to the Macleod chieftains was to praise the chiefly family but in reality she understood that her bardic position had no formal recognition and, furthermore, that it was even more compromised because of her status as a woman.

Classically trained bàrds were always men and women who composed in the vernacular style, regardless of their skills, were regarded as literary upstarts!

Fantasy Theatre – Your Dream Project?

The enormous impact that the fèis movement has had on the Gaelic arts cannot be underestimated, and especially the impact that it has had on the development of traditional music.

Major young musical talent is emerging from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland due to the inspiring and nurturing nature of the fèis movement. It would be marvellous if young acting talent could be encouraged more, and thus compliment the musical excellence that is now established.

Given the resources, Tosg would then produce a major contemporary piece of musical theatre, inclusive of dance, with a young but wholly professional cast. The entire cast, singers, musicians, dancers and actors would all be ex-fèis participants and the book and the score would, ideally, be created by talent from within their own peer group.

This would be the artistic voice of the contemporary Gàidhealtachd, speaking to the Gàidhealtachd and to the world beyond.

Golden Moment

Succeeding in eradicating the accumulated debts which Tosg had incurred and putting the company on a footing whereby it can mount and sustain both adult and children’s drama.

And Not So Golden Moment

The announcement by the SAC that we were no longer to be core funded! The constant worry about funding is so destructive!

Highland Theatre – Is There Such A Thing, And If So, What Is It?

Of course, it exists. Wherever, two or three people gather in the name of drama – it exists. People are informed by their cultural, linguistic and historical values, and within the Highlands, both Gaelic and English speaking, there is a unique and distinctive voice that has a right to be heard and listened to throughout all of Scotland and beyond.

The voice can and should comment on issues that are uniquely Highland, and it should also articulate the Highland perspective on issues which are singularly non-Highland, and it should share those views with the rest of the world. What we may lack in conventional theatrical traditions is more than compensated for by our intuitive understanding of drama and its place at the very heart of our story telling and narrative traditions.

© Simon MacKenzie, 2006