NEXT week two brothers will take their show about upheavals in Hebridean society to Inverness and Wick, the furthest north the show has toured to since debuting in 2016.
The Dwelling Place, created and performed by Jamie and Lewis Wardrop, is an immersive multimedia show inspired by an abandoned house they discovered in Leverburgh, South Harris.
Theatre designer Jamie and film location researcher Lewis are interested in how audiences in the Highlands will respond to the show, which received much acclaim during its run at last year’s Fringe.
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“They are much closer to the challenges the show presents,” says Jamie, who is a Royal Scottish Conservatoire-trained actor.
“Depopulation is still going on, with young people still leaving the Highlands. I know there’s a lot of efforts going into that but I think it is a burden for people there. Also, there’s a strand of the show which explores what often happens in old age, not uniquely in the Hebrides but Scotland-wide, about people getting forgotten about and lonely in that time of life.”
The abandoned house in Leverburgh, a village named after an English businessman who funded the construction of houses and infrastructure in Lewis and Harris in the 1920s, had “an atmosphere” which piqued brothers’ curiosity when they came across it during an island-hopping trip in 2013.
“The doors were panned in, as were the windows,” says Jamie. “It looked like a toothless face. It was left in that state and it looked as if its personality had gone through something traumatic.”
The discovery was made in the months leading up to indyref1, a time during which the brothers were “really looking at our own country” through history, culture and politics, Jamie says.
Research uncovered that the inhabitant was forced to leave Leverburgh in the 1950s.
Using imagery, poetry and a mixture of traditional folk music and atmospheric electronica, The Dwelling Place weaves that individual’s personal story around a wider narrative about the socioeconomic challenges faced by the Highlands and Islands.
“These places have also gone through a period of trauma, through no fault of their own in many ways,” says Jamie, who is based in Glasgow while Lewis lives in Edinburgh. “They have been the victims of history, or the victims of either careless or oppressive attitudes towards them and their way of life. Everyone knows a little bit about the story of the Clearances and the crofters revolts. But there’s also a more kind of modern history, of the person who lived in that house, who had to go off and join the merchant navy, as a lot of Gaels do. Standing in the house again after we’d found out about it, we saw the pattern of about at least two hundred years, and further back. That was why the house fascinated us so much; it told us these two stories that we as central belters felt in our guts.”
With the audience free to move around the set, The Dwelling Place could be described as something of a theatrical art installation.
“I used to work as as gallery guide at Tramway, so I’ve seen a lot of art installations,” says Jamie, who plays keyboards during the show while Lewis performs on fiddle.
“The Dwelling Place comes from our love of visual art, and also our love of club nights as well, in that immersive sense. We wanted to find a method of making people feel like they’re standing in the house and have an experience of what we sensed.”
Much of the poetry featured in the show is by Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley Maclean and Iain Crichton Smith, a trio whose work was often inspired by Highlands and Islands history and culture.
“These poets were philosophers in many ways,” says Jamie. “They were tapping in to the roots of their culture and seeing the degradation and loss of it. They were also thinking about where Scotland’s place was in a wider context of Europe and the wider world, which seems very relevant now.
He adds: “A lot of their works are about abandoned houses or social conditions and changes in the last century. When we found their words, and the depth to which they went into things, it was all a bit of a revelation.”
Mar 28 and 29, Eden Court, Inverness, 7.30pm, £7.50 to £12. Tickets: bit.ly/DwellingInverness
Mar 31, Lyth Arts Centre, Wick, 8pm, £6 to £14. Tickets: bit.ly/WickDwelling
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