Details

Share the laughs, the sorrows and the songs as Eyemouth whaling men Jim, Archie, Fraser and wee Robbie emerge from recent history to tell us the moving story that is A Cinema in South Georgia. This entirely new and original piece of ensemble theatre written by Jeffrey Mayhew and Susan Wilson brings to life the experiences - bitter, hilarious, rueful and heart-warming - of some of the last men to follow the millennia-old tradition of hunting the whale. Driven by dire need, difficult home circumstances or just the desire to break away, men from these islands found their way, by one route or another, to the whaling grounds of the Antarctic. There, from the grim and perilous foothold of the whaling station on South Georgia, they ventured out into the ice and storms in what would seem to us to be tiny whaling ships to hunt the whale. Jeffrey and Susan hope that this play, based entirely on written and oral first-hand accounts and detailed research into the period in and around 1959, the pivotal year for the show, will evoke for contemporary audiences the flavour of those times. Aspects of this subject are contentious and the darker side of the whaling industry is not shied away from but the piece is above all a celebration of four men, who, at differing points in their lives, in different ways and with differing attitudes and outcomes risked their lives amongst the ice floes.

Creatives/Company

Author(s): Jeffrey Mayhew, Susan Wilson