Gorgeous Avatar by Jules Horne

Writers Have Time Off Too

Sunday morning on Lewis: All the shops are closed. Even the main hotel door is shut. The manager has to let us out specially. The door closes behind us and we're out in the street, feeling like the scruffiest heathens on the planet. Stornoway is heaving with smart black-suited men and wedding-hatted women off to church. Even the wee girls wear berets to cover their heads. We shake off the merest frisson of guilt then head north to see the Callanish standing stones and the whitest, emptiest beaches on the hottest day of the year. Skylarks and bog cotton, sand and freezing sea... Anne sends a phone-pic back to Andy at the Traverse. Evil, yes. But necessary.
A short flight back to Edinburgh, and the city is another world. Down into the guts of the Traverse into final rehearsals for three radio plays that are being recorded for BBC Radio Scotland in front of a live audience. I've cocked up the timing and missed all but the last run-through. But who needs the writer? The director, Marilyn Imrie, has phoned through with notes while I've been in Stornoway, and the actors (Louise Ludgate, Eileen McCallum, Billy Riddoch) have brilliantly populated the play with a cast of thousands. And in one of those circularities that have been appearing right through the Avatar production, it's part of a season called 'Stornoway, Kelso and Kirkcaldy' - three comedy dramas by regional Scottish writers, including Lewis' own Iain F MacLeod.

So hey! A shameless plug:
BBC Radio Scotland
92-95 FM and 810 MW
(each Thursday 11.30am, and following Sunday 17.05)

6 July: Sons of Star Wars - Martin J Taylor
13 July: Overdue South - Jules Horne
21 July: Gold Digger - Iain F MacLeod

posted by Jules Horne @ 6/05/2006 12:00:00 PM