His Play Black Watch has Become the First Cultural Landmark of the 21st Century. So What Inspired Gregory Burke to Take On the Army? Interview

Summary

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NOT all new plays travel well from page to stage but enough do to give Scotland a vibrant theatrical culture, and Scottish dramatists a strong international reputation. Very few plays, however, make that other onward journey: the one where they leap from the stage into the national consciousness, there to grow tall and throw shadows that reach beyond theatre and into the arenas of political discourse and social commentary.

The Cheviot, The Stag And The Black Black Oil, 7:84's historic 1974 touring production about the exploitation of Highland communities, is one that did. Harry Gibson's 1994 adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting, which starred Ewan Bremner and played at the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, is another.

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His Play Black Watch has Become the First Cultural Landmark of the 21st Century. So What Inspired Gregory Burke to Take On the Army? Interview

Black Watch, written by 38-year-old Fifer Gregory Burke barely a year ago and produced at last year's Edinburgh Fringe as a co- production between the Traverse and the National Theatre of Scotland, is a third. Indeed it is shaping up to be the first landmark cultural event of the 21st century.

Every Festival throws up a must-see show but very few live up to the title.

Black Watch did. From its first preview to its closing night the play the Fringe programme called "an unauthorised biography of the famous Scottish regiment" and "a searing piece of verbatim theatre" played to ra...

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