Newsletter

June 2010

It's summertime and I'm sitting at my desk thinking about the show I am
going to do in Edinburgh with Philip Contini in Valvona & Crolla. Philip
and I are going to revisit a show we did 17 years ago called Italia 'n' Caledoinia. It is a celebration of the relationship between Scotland and
Italy and it tells the story of our grandparents' generation who came to
Scotland from villages in Italy at the beginning of the last century.

I visited some of the elderly Italians in Edinburgh who told me stories about life in the Italian community before the war. I watched home movies of the Italian picnics in the 1930s – annual events when all the Italians in Scotland gathered to eat and drink together, have a sports day and play football. And I drew on my own experience of the post war years growing up in Edinburgh. I was a lucky boy to have aunts and uncles who ran ice cream cafes and fish and chip shops – a lucky boy, indeed, to be growing up in a community which had so many interesting stories to tell. Nobody talked much about the war.

In the 1960s I learned about the war in history lessons, from reading war comics, watching TV, or going to the picture house. The war had something to do with Germany and Germans and little or nothing to do with Italy and Italians. At university I studied modern history but never connected anything I learned in my classes with any real difficulties that the Italian community in Edinburgh might have experienced. So when I started to prepare Italia n Caledonia for the Edinburgh Fringe in 1993 I found myself ignorantly touching an area of very real suffering.

Mussolini’s declaration of war on Britain on June 10th 1940 was a catastrophe for the Italians who had made their homes in Britain. At a stroke they became ‘enemy aliens’. Some of these men were born in Britain. Some of them had sons fighting in the British Army. Britain stood alone against the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy. MI5, afraid of a potential fifth column, interned and deported Germans and Italians living in Britain. Many of these interned Italians embarked on The Arandora Star to be deported to Canada. On July 2nd 1940 the ship was struck by a torpedo from a German U-Boat and sank. There were very few survivors and nearly every Italian family in Scotland lost a father or a husband.

July 2nd 2010 is the 70th anniversary of the sinking of The Arandora Star. It is a time when the dead will be remembered in public ceremonies.

Seventeen years ago the story of Italia 'n' Caledonia was like a celebration interrupted by the war. Revisiting the story these tragic events seem less like an interruption and more of a defining moment. Looking back from the dark days of the war to the happy days of picnics and football matches you can see the tragedy unfolding. I think the story is worth retelling and seventeen years on the storyteller is a lot older and perhaps a little wiser.

It was our experience of writing and performing Italia 'n' Caledonia 17 years ago which led to our adaptation of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – a similar story of a small community whose lives are torn apart by the war. I recently visited Georgia and talked to the Artistic Director of the Marjanishvili Theatre in Tblisi about a new production of Corelli. We are exploring the possibility of making an international co-production for four actors and a whole host of puppets. The Georgians know all about armed conflict. It is barely two years since they were at war and fighting Russian soldiers in their own land. A few weeks before I arrived a hoax radio broadcast in Georgia announced a Russian invasion and threw the streets of Tblisi into panic. And while I was in Tblisi there was widespread suspicion of Russia when news broke of the plane crash that killed president and other Polish government officials who were on their way to commemorate the slaughter of Polish soldiers by Russians at Katyn during the second world war. Polish nationalism, like Georgian nationalism, is anti Russian and it is religious. That’s something the Georgians also share with the Cephalonians in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - their orthodox Christianity. The director of the Marjanishvili Theatre knows Dr. Iannis and all the other chgaracters in Corelli very well and I am looking forward to working with him, his actors and his puppeteers on this new adaptation which should be ready for the Tblisi Festival in October 2011.

Back home, me and Ali Stephens (who plays the mandolin in Corelli) have decided to team up and produce A Christmas Carol to take on the road at Christmas time. Last Christmas the Cambridge Folk Museum asked me to tell the story for visiting primary school children. It is such a well known story I wonder if it passes us by. I thought I had better not make the ghosts too scary because I was telling the story to very young children. The way I see it - Scrooge is transformed not because he gets a fright but because it is a good idea. Scrooge accepts the generous offer of counselling offered by the three ghosts and is a changed man at the end of the story because he wants to change. Well, I suppose the ghosts are still a little bit scary but then recognising the need for change and doing something about it is a bit scary too. Ali came round to see me the other day and played me some of the music she has written and it all sounds lovely. And we had our photos taken. Check them out on the photo page.

So there it is for the moment – three scripts in a laptop – a new Corelli, a new Italia 'n' Caledonia and a new Christmas Carol. I hope they will all be blessed. It’s time to get up from my desk, take them into the theatre and do them.

Ciao!

Mike