Further Engagement

Activity 11

i) A new Scots language project which may be of interest is a short film I wrote and directed, entitled Skeleton Wumman, commissioned and co-produced by the National Theatre of Scotland and the BBC. This was an excerpt from a stage play I had previously written and directed, originally with a cast of three performers – including a live musician playing electric cello, with a looping pedal. I based the drama on an ancient Inuit tale, setting it in a Scotland of the future, during a moment of environmental catastrophe. The text is in Scots, and there is also a deaf character who communicates in British Sign Language.

The short film version for NTS and BBC, 2020, was a lockdown project, with only one performer. The entire process of making the film was conducted online. None of the production team met each other. I’ve never worked in this this way before, but enjoyed the challenge. The actor, Amy Conachan, and I rehearsed online via Zoom, she filming herself on her mobile, setting it up with a tripod. She had to film everything on her mobile, alone in her flat in Liverpool, where she was furloughed from the TV series Hollyoaks. At my request the NTS sent Amy lighting and fabric to drape around her room to create the ’set’, and, based on our Zoom rehearsals, I gave her a shot list. She then recorded herself, sent me what she’d filmed, via WeTransfer, which I downloaded. I then made notes, e-mailed them to her, and then she filmed it all again. It was an absolutely extraordinary process, and totally new to all of us! We never had any physical contact with anyone, yet we worked well as a team, all online – the producer, assistant producer, me as director/writer, the actor, the technical assistant, the sound designer and the editor. View the short film SkeletonWumman, on Facebook. (This video contains subtitles.)

ii) Translation is a fascinating way of engaging with languages. I have recently translated a Norwegian song – Til Ungdommen – into Scots: Tae the Young. I heard it on the radio, sung in Norwegian by Ingebjørg Bratland, and was so impressed that I wanted to sing it myself. The song was written by Nordahl Grieg, in 1936, in response to the Spanish Civil War. He was a Norwegian poet, and distant relative of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. The melody of the song is by the Danish composer Otto Hübertz Mortensen. I hunted online for English translations of the poem, but couldn’t find any that I felt were comfortably ‘singable’.

On close examination of the original Norwegian, it struck me how similar some of the words are to Scots language:

kringsatt = ringit = surrounded/besieged

spør = speir = ask

åpen = appen = open

våpen = wappen = weapon

styrk = sturken = strengthen

går = gar = go

til = til = to

jord = yird = earth

barn = bairn = child/baby

So I set about making my own translation:

By Nordahl Grieg, translated into Scots by Gerda Stevenson

You can hear me singing TaeYouth on my Soundcloud:

And here you can watch and hear me singing one of my own Scots songs Aye the Gean, from my album Night Touches Day, accompanied on lute by Norwegian musician Kyrre Slind: