WHAT’S THE STORY?
THE National Theatre of Scotland has brought together writers and actors from Scotland and Quebec for a brand new bilingual play exploring family, politics, referendums and sovereignty.
The show, First Snow/Premiere Neige, opens tonight in Summerhall’s Canada Hub as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
WHAT HAPPENS?
IT tells the story of matriarch Isabelle, who summons her fractured family back to their ancestral home in Quebec. Answering the call are her right-wing brother Harry, daughter Mina, adoptive son Francois, and Catherine, the rebellious baby of the family, with her new Scottish boyfriend in tow.
The family discuss what to do with their mother, her house and her land, but they can’t stop arguing about the past and have very different visions of the future. It’s a dispute that’s been a long time in the making and has no simple solution.
WHAT’S THE PLAY REALLY ABOUT?
“IT feels disheartening to be always in the wrong side of an election result,” First Snow’s co-writer Davey Anderson sighs. There have been a fair few political defeats over the last few years for the Glasgow-based scribe.
“I would include the General Election result in that,” he says. “And I would include even something like the US presidential election. Unpredictable outcomes.”
The piece, he says, is about trying to work out how to hold on to your political optimism.
Anderson first met the Canadians in the run-up to 2014’s independence vote, when he was working on a show called How to Choose.
Like that production, First Snow digs deep into the big political questions being debated in both countries, questions about what it means to be sovereign for an individual, what does it mean to be sovereign for a family, and what does it mean for a group of people to co-exist and to make decisions together and be sovereign together.
Anderson says: “Our approach to it has been to try to find the real human emotions and the real human stories within it and try to make sure that anything we talk about has a bigger, conceptual idea attached to it.
“We ground it in things that have actually happened to us and made us feel a particular way,” he says.
WHO’S INVOLVED?
WRITTEN by Anderson, Linda McLean, Philippe Ducros and directed by Theatre PAP’s artistic director, Patrice Dubois, the show mixes fiction with real stories and the real experiences of the seven actors on stage.
“It’s a family drama, and at the same time we’ve kind of layered on top of that a kind of political story about these two nations, Scotland and Quebec, who have both been grappling with questions of sovereignty over the last few years,” Anderson says.
“Our way into that larger stuff is through our seven performers. They tell true stories from their own lives, and draw on personal experience, connected to these key moments in the timelines of the countries.”
One of those real stories involves cast member Fletcher Mathers, whose father is a Tory councillor. The two haven’t always seen eye to eye.
Families divided by politics, and in particular the two referendums, is, says Anderson, something the play wants to talk about He says: “It’s the way families were completely divided over the independence referendum and the Brexit referendum. That has had a very similar effect, dividing friends, dividing families, people being unable to see the other point of view and expressing incomprehension towards people who they would otherwise be friends with or people who they would love.”
First Snow/Premiere Neige
CanadaHub @King’s Hall in association with Summerhall
Until August 26
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