Don’t Think It’s Been “Done”

IAN STEPHEN is determined that this summer’s St Kilda – A European Opera won’t be the last word on the a musical depiction of the island’s story.

I WANT TO TELL you a little bit about the shape of an idea for performances of lyrics set to music. The generating impulse is the sea surge and historic sweep of human life on the archipelago of St Kilda. You might think that’s all been done, but please bear with me.

Going to start at the beginning. I hope you’ll see the end. Maybe in 2009, performers in Shetland and Sweden and several other places will bring their own energy and experience into a form of music-theatre. But it all starts with conversations.

I’ve always liked playing with language. People threw phrases around all the time, on Kennedy Terrace, on the Sea-Angling club boats. My mother talked to her brothers and sisters in Gaelic but not to my father and not to her children.

She was big pals with May Hiortach next door (May was one of the Macdonald family from Hirta) but I only ever heard them talk English to each other. Maybe they talked in Gaelic when they took milky coffee and a fag. My mother was strong in her own element but a bit out of her depth when we visited the Broch. The uncles were good at teaching you phrases. Fit like. Nae baud.

There were good yarns in the Forestry van on Mull. You didn’t have to work when it rained and it rains a lot on Mull. Good yarns at the Lewis Hospital when I took a year out from Uni after my mother died.

Music and story are the main elements but the dance element is crucial

I remember only a handful of good yarns at Uni. There were comparative education seminars, suggesting that English Public Schools and Cuban state schools were completely in agreement on one main issue – they knew the end product they wanted. And then there was the study, comparing the socialising effects of institutions whether they were places where you were locked-up or school hostels in the Western Isles.

The time Tom Crawford (author of a probing analysis of Burns’ poems) encouraged a proper stooshie between a guy (me) with massive respect for Stendhal’s irony and one who admired Jane Austen’s. We went on to study (from translations) how Balzac and Tolstoy both freely admitted they couldn’t have done it without the example of Scott’s historical novels.I wrote a piece comparing the writing of Norman Malcolm Macdonald with that of Iain Crichton Smith. Both men helped me in early steps to publish my poems and stories. I admired and still do – Iain’s bold expressionism. Norman’s energy responded to a wide range of influences – “I want to write the first Japanese Noh play in Gaelic.”

That might have been Anna Caimbeul – his title shifting the emphasis from the title of the song, Ailiean Duinn. Norman built a relationship with the Traverse and with other groups who trusted the adventurous. Both writers let the language run. I got the feeling the final form wasn’t too fixed in advance.

At Uni, I went to concerts whenever I could. Didn’t get into conventional opera but was intrigued by contemporary dance. Wandered into a Merce Cunningham group performance in Edinburgh and was engaged. Not sure on which complex part of a whole atonal machine to focus on and then not worrying about it. Which wave do you watch when you’re sailing?

I was addicted to watching waves. Even when I only got to steer motor boats. When I started sailing and had to watch the interaction of wind on water, this reached the level of obsession which leaves you no choice but to make art. I also plotted on water for a living, working as a Coastguard Officer in Stornoway for many years.

I resigned to return to a main focus of working with language. It took a few years, a few projects but a guy asked me to write a play about the Flannan Isles lighthouse story. I reckoned it was all about waves so the design would have to use large screens. So you got the shock of water, wherever you sat. I talked to a lot of people. Surfers are lyrical. Fishermen, of course, are understated, on the subject of waves. Did you ever have to get out of the Flannans in a hurry. “I wouldn’t say so but you were hauling the anchor in your underpants.”

Got a dialogue going with Gerry Mulgrew, director of my play, Seven Hunters. I’d followed Communicado’s touring work. You set up situations, jointly with the director and then you listen. I came to realise that Simon Mackenzie was a guy well worth listening to.

I said, forget the actor’s voice, cove, just tell a story. He was away. I’d say, tell me in Gaelic about crossing to Ensay. I’d listen to rhythms and ask, in English, what was behind and between the words I was hearing.

I’d ask about a particular word, what worlds were inside it and note the connotations, the layers. I remember his soaring language taking me across the Sound and his quiet summary, “And that’s what conditions the crossing.”

So the Gaelic dialogue entered the play when we all agreed it was the right medium. Subtitles were projected on the screens so there was no need to explain or repeat – two dangerous things which occasionally can be powerful.

At that time I got a phone call from a composer who lived in Germany. David P. Graham had been asked to find a Scottish writer who could make a libretto for a Europe wide St Kilda opera. He had a working relationship with directors of a festival of contemporary opera in Dusseldorf. They knew this Polish guy, director of a great theatre in France. He had an idea to link several theatres throughout Europe in a celebration of the culture of the St Kildans.

I asked David to explain to me what a libretto is when it’s at home. Language that rings – sets up rhythms. Tells a story. Shit, I can do that. I met Lew Bogdan. This was his concept – forget the idea that St Kilda is out at the periphery of Continental Europe. These people had a society to admire. So an lsland becomes the centre – the rest of Europe dances to the tune they receive from there.

How do they receive it? Live broadcast. Sound. I told him stories. We linked them. I said they’d have to be in Gaelic – generating the action. We’d need to find the right partners. Fine. Lew had a great friend, a cameraman, Gilles – could I sail him to St Kilda? I had plans – weather dependent. A wooden yacht built in 1961 for offshore racing in the smallest class. Basic. Good seaboat. No passengers. Gilles was welcome aboard El Vigo.

I sailed from Stornoway to Rodel. With Gilles. Good guy. Picked up Norman Chalmers and Craig Mackay. Norman can sail and play music. His grandmother was a Hiortach (St Kildan). Craig would design Seven Hunters. We punched out of the Sound of Harris, got clear and set a course for Boreray.

Had 2 perfect days on Hiort then had some hard night-sailing, heading north-east through the Seven Hunters group. As close as I dared. It was boiling white. We went under the loom of the light. I think you could say that Craig and me got a feel for the setting.

David set up a meeting across several departments of the SAC. The composer arrived flustered. Lew’s wife is Russian. She was to direct in Valenciennes. There was a problem with her visa. They had both stayed behind. What do we do.? They’re all waiting. We told them Lew’s concept. Our vision of what might happen. Seven Hunters had gone down pretty well. New music was commissioned by the producers, The Highland Festival and Tosg. David told the meeting his main link with Scotland was working with Bill Douglas on the music for Comrades. The SAC were on board.

I had to find a Scottish partner. A group with a strong enough structure to take the organisational lead in a project which would be well over the million euros. First, the composer and writer had to develop a proposal for the form performances might take. Language and music which would build up the momentum.

This is how my libretto was developed. I had close dialogue with David and some input from the Dusseldorf partners, as experienced directors of contemporary music-theatre. The challenge was to make the broadcasts from St Kilda the genuine driving force. I met with Simon and with Anna Murray – told them stories in English.

Seeing again the water and the stones and the volcanic architecture of the stacks. Hearing May Hiortach’s laugh as an element of the spirit which permits survival and more in a such a place. A tone to make the drama human. I made videos of Simon and Anna returning the stories to Gaelic, developed from surviving snatches and sketches. The language was ringing. The imagery clear. We were off.

But we weren’t because there was a lack of the element of trust which is central to genuine collaboration. I came to believe I’d asked Lew to invite the wrong organisation into the partnership. Public apologies to all involved. And, on the continental side, the clarity of the original concept was being obscured by the political wranglings to keep all partners aboard.

For me the Gaelic element had to be the genuine driving force. This is not a question of proportions – if the story begins and its rhythms are taken up by the music and prompt counterpoints in French or German, Flemish or a mountain dialect from Austria, the concept is delivered. If there was too much reliance on pre-recorded material, it couldn’t be – no matter the quality or otherwise of that footage.

I trust the power of both imagery and sound in strong stories. Working toward a contemporary music-theatre, I don’t see a purpose in wrapping the whole show up with TV plot conventions. With chunks of dialogue which will probably be cut in the majority of venues. Inviting distortions.

In the interim I’d had the pleasure of working with two different Scottish theatre directors, Morven Gregor and Alison Peebles. Both develop strong teams. The script is formed from a genuine interaction. Both bring out the best in their players. Allow scope within a secure structure. But that structure is discovered. Morven asked me to listen to the jazz-like rhythms of an actor with cerebral palsy. Write for him. Alison asked me to keep all thinking and all language in The Sked Crew within the minds of three women.

After that experience it was impossible to work with a Scottish organisation which had still not started a dialogue with an experienced director, and suddenly declared that a Gaelic writer was needed. So I said my goodbyes to one St Kilda project. Took the rights to all my material with me and lodged a copy with the Scottish Society of Playwrights.

The new writer would thus have complete freedom. Explained my position to the people who’d given such brave support and said I’d do nothing to hinder the development and production of the work. As my mother would say, “You can make a kirk or a mill of it.” I don’t think either is supposed to be good or bad.

Felt so much for poor David. His drive and powers of communication had kept the whole thing alive thus far. So what happened next?

There were performances in most of the venues, as planned, during June of this year. The project eventually took Gerry Mulgrew aboard for the Stornoway shindig. Too late for me. It looked like the organisation had the good sense to appoint Alison Peebles (director of Afterlife) to direct filming on Hirta but it seems there were anxieties about using a person with the early stages of MS.

I can’t comment on the performances because I was at sea at the time, in a sgoth Niseach from Lewis bound for the Moray Firth (see an Sulaire log archive on Northings). I couldn’t comment anyway – how could anyone be objective there?

But in the two years since leaving that project I met this Czech guy who started translating my poems. They went down well at the Poetry Without Borders festival in Olomouc. The British Council funded Bob Hysek to make a book of my poems. He and his publisher decided the range could include all previously published work but also work devised for theatre; new poems; videopoems. All language.

There are poems from 24 years of work in their selection. The editors wanted all the St Kilda lyrics in there, along with other excerpts from a synopsis of the libretto. A huge challenge to make that work in the language of a landlocked country. A two year commitment, from Bob, to a process of interrogation and response.

I’ve heard the Czech versions– they are poems in their own right, not simply literal translations – and I trust the sound and rhythms. The book has parallel text on facing pages across the two languages.

Something else happened. I won the commission to make work relating to an extension of the Taigh Chearsabhagh project in North Uist. A team sailed through the routes suggested by three Gaelic songs, in three different community-owned boats. Each has resulted in two contrasting responses to the song, as short films, made with Andy Mackinnon.

One of them has Bob Hysek’s performance of his Czech version of the Domhnall Ruadh Choruna poem which celebrates the internal combustion engine that drives Motor Boat Heillsgeir. The experience has made me certain that there is much fun still to be had with the interaction of film and lyric. Across languages. But the original rhythms are the horse-power. A Gaelic engine.

Then I got a call from David. Our shared work could be performed in Bonn and Cologne with choir, piano, trombone and clarinet soloists. Could the stories be included, phrase by phrase told live in German and English? And could the video material developed as experiments to see how it worked with story and sung lyrics be used?

So I edited video and tuned stories. Partnerships worked. David heard his music for the first time, in October this year. The Bonn newspaper’s music critic thought that all elements came together in a common cause. A professional dancer worked with senior pupils from a local comprehensive. A Vivaldi choir faced the challenge of David’s working of my lyrics. I visited a school. Passed on some stories. It will be done again in Germany, but as an education project, in January.

It looks like we have momentum for an adventure. You’ll excuse me for being a bit cautious about how much I give away at this stage. Suffice to say the composer and writer have support for developing the performances further. Music and story are the main elements but the dance element is crucial.

I think it should all begin on North Uist and then happen in other islands and on the Scottish Mainland. And countries with offlying islands or mountain villages. It’s not only about St Kilda and we should look wide for partners who are good crack. There’s a need for long and meaningful dialogue – but that should all happen off the stage.

I don’t see any artistic advantage in live links and expensive technology. The performances will be music-theatre, driven by the rhythms of languages. The starting ones are Gaelic but they could set up a dialogue with Orcadian, Shetlandic or Czech. A series of tight narratives which amount to one story.

© Ian Stephen, 2007