Edinburgh’s Vision Mechanics have made a name for themselves with visually stunning, site-specific theatre pieces, including the giant puppetry of Big Man Walking and the environmentally-themed Embrace ( from us at the Botanic Gardens last year). This summer they are taking to the beaches of Scotland for Drift, the story of Shetlander Betty Mouat. Artistic Director Symon Macintyre tells us more…
Who was Betty Mouat? How did she become the inspiration for this piece?
I was looking for a story about surviving solitude, and by chance I heard the story of Betty Mouat and was inspired by her courage and fortitude.
In January 1886, in a sudden storm, the captain and the crew of the Columbine were washed overboard. This left 60-year-old Betty, who was on a routine two hour trip to Lerwick to sell her knitting, drifting off to Norway.
When I heard the story, I took a blank page and drew a line drawn across the middle of it. I sketched a small boat resting on it.
This was my vision of Betty – on a line suspended between the sky and the sea, tossing and tumbling, no up, no down, caught between worlds with no references to anything familiar.
It’s been a collaborative process between a lot of different artists, designers and musicians. How has that worked?
I started the collaborative process with a January trip to Shetland to source the story and to soak in the landscape and atmosphere. Unsurprisingly, it was cold and windy, so we spent a lot of time going round the museums and visiting the area that Betty came from.
Judith Adams, the writer, had researched the story and there were a thousand details about the event, but nothing about her. She was somebody whose story had overtaken her and she had become a myth.
I asked the team composer Eddie Maguire, designers Kim Bergsagel, Iain Halket, and Alice Wilson, not to consider the story but consider the journey. Nine days on a boat – very little water, little food, trapped due to her lameness in a small box cabin with the hatch jammed open so she could see the stars.
The brief for the writer and composer was to create a song cycle – nine songs that took us though the emotional stages of the journey. The designers’ brief was to take each day and use the music and the words to create a visual moment in the journey.
The music, now being mixed with the sound, takes us though the storm into the desert of the sea as she drifts on her line. The sets drift from the practical to the abstract.
What’s it been like creating something for a beach setting? Any problems?
Initially, I thought I would place the event in theatres, but when I looked at my line on the page, I realised I needed somewhere on the edge of things, and that beaches are a line between land and sea.
Of course, putting the show on a beach makes it very adventurous a show for the foolish and hardy. Lugging massive amounts of set and equipment across the sands to create epic masterpieces of sculpture on the edge of nowhere is a task of Herzog proportions. But for the audience who find us crossing the sand walking though the dunes, the effect will be amazing. The settings are some of the most beautiful beaches in Scotland.
What would you like audiences to take away from Drift?
The audience move one at a time, spaced at five minutes, wearing headphones and isolated into an amazing soundscape.
I hope my audience will explore, sit, contemplate, dream, meditate, wonder.
I wanted to share her story and immerse the audience in the Drifting experience, put them into her head, get her into their heads and try to get them to empathize with her strength and courage.
What do you think Betty would have made of it?
I’d love say she’d love it but she wouldn’t. Her life was a hard-working, crofting life. She’d think of us as soft city types with fancy notions and a great deal too much time.
When she came back to Edinburgh after the trip she was asked if she would sell the knitting that had been salvaged: souvenirs, keepsakes – she could have named her price. She only sold her shawl. The rest she took back to Lerwick because that was what she was meant to do. The community relied on her to get their work to merchants (they were all on piece work, the zero hour contract of its day). She probably would have smiled and said, “What’s da fus aboot?”