Details

Intensely physical and loud, driven by explosive choreography and a live four piece band, the National Theatre of Scotland's In Time o' Strife is a powerful reimagining of Joe Corrie's rarely performed classic play, exposing the lives of a Fife mining family staring hunger and defeat in the face during the General Strike of 1926. Produced in association with ON at Fife, In Time o' Strife is playing at Pathhead Hall, Kirkcaldy in October 2013 and tickets are now on sale from ON at Fife box office. In addition to Corrie's original script, the show will interweave fragments of his other plays, poems and songs. Director Graham McLaren, whose productions for National Theatre of Scotland include Men Should Weep and A Christmas Carol, has adapted this classic of the Scottish canon with a contemporary audience in mind. Working alongside choreographer Imogen Knight, this new production embeds a powerful movement aesthetic and a live band comprising members of leading Scottish bands Strike the Colours and Zoey van Goey, performing new songs by MJ McCarthy (Composer and Sound Designer). The creative team also includes Lizzie Powell (Lighting Designer) and Rebecca Hamilton (Design Associate). Corrie was a miner from the Fife coalfields and wrote the play while on strike in 1926, to raise funds for the soup kitchens feeding his fellow miners and their starving families. When the play was first performed by Corrie's hastily assembled local amateur group, the Fife Miner Players, it was an outstanding success, touring to theatres all over Scotland and England, playing to audiences of between 800 and 1000 per night and going on to win international acclaim. Over the years, Corrie has been described as 'the greatest Scottish poet since Burns' by T.S. Eliot, with his works having being compared variously to Emile Zola, Sean O'Casey and Federico Garcia Lorca in their respective local traditions. Despite this, In Time o' Strife and Corrie himself were shunned by the Scottish theatre elite of the day and the play has seldom been performed professionally; 7:84's was the last production, at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow in 1982.

Creatives/Company

Author: Joe Corrie