Once there were three sisters, and now there are two

(and soon perhaps there will be none at all)

Last night at the Lyceum, we were invited to remember.

Remember being 16.

This was perhaps the unhappiest time in my life:

When I was imprisoned in an abusive institution that was trying to bully me into being a man.

For all I was desperate to deny it, the truth was I was not a man and never would be;

And if that truth came out the bullying and abuse would make my life unbearable.

So I hid my truth in terror, in isolation, and in shame.

So no, Lyceum Theatre, I refuse to go back there.

Instead I went back to 1980, thirty years old, eldest daughter a baby in a sling, in a horrible school hall watching my first play

“The House With Two Doors”

being performed to a tiny audience in the Fringe.

And people laughed: laughed at jokes I had helped create.

And that I was how I knew my vocation.

I knew I was going to write plays,

And I knew that all the doors were closed against me.

Somehow we made those doors open, a group of us,

And we made theatre that put Scotland on the map.

And look at me now, I’m thinking, 44 years and 114 plays later,

And the doors all closed against me again.

And what happened, I wonder, to all the plays that we fondly imagined would make a modern repertoire

That would speak to and celebrate Scotland’s place in the world,

Speak to and celebrate and support our aspiration to be a just and forward looking European country? 

They’re all forgotten now, those plays, 

And the Traverse isn’t producing a single new play of its own,

And the  Citz has closed its doors and there’s no clue as to when it will ever open them again.

And here we are at the Royal Lyceum, watching a play called “The Two Sisters”, which is a sad and wistful reminder of the existence of another play called “The Three Sisters”

Such a stunningly beautiful play which really did have there sisters alongside an amazing cast of beautifully rounded and compassionately drawn characters 

And once upon a time a Scottish theatre company like the Lyceum really could afford to stage it.

But now there’s only money for two sisters and the other professional cast member has had to be paid for by the Malmö Stadsteater.

The play is set in a decaying holiday resort in Fife that was bought by a multinational conglomerate and is now being sold off piecemeal by a private equity company

And it’s a sadly accurate image for the current state of Scotland.

There’s an empty static caravan on stage that’s certainly seen better days; half way through act one the shutters are taken down and the door is opened.

There’s supposed to be furniture and fittings inside it, but there’s nothing.

The cupboard is bare…

As an audience, we’re supposed to skate over this somehow, it’s like an embarrassing relative at a wedding reception…something we cannot deal with and so we look away.

Something else absent from the stage, but very present in everyone’s hearts and minds and imagination, is climate catastrophe and the horrors of Gaza…

But from that, too, we look away.

I know I’m not to be allowed to write the theatre I want to create and that I feel we need:

The post capitalist theatre that is open to the horrors of the world but which also empowers its audience to imagine a collective way forward towards justice and healing.

But I also respect and honour the theatre artists working in this place whose hearts have not yet been broken and are creating this work tonight.

They are doing all they can and I refuse to judge them.

There was a reception before hand, and the room was full of anxious theatre makers awaiting the next verdict of Creative Scotland in the long drawn out agony of their quest for inadequate funding.

I refuse to join them.

I will not allow that body to decide what I can and cannot create.

I’d rather work without funding.

So I’m just taking the Queen Jesus dress and a prayer bell to to tour the USA in June, and then go to Northern Ireland in September.

And then I’ll just be with the prayer bell for a new theatrical happening in St Mary’s Cathedral this August.

I think of all this on the tram early this morning on my way there for communion.

And from there to a singing lesson in Sighthill, because it’s important to never stop learning.

The reading in the service is from Isaiah, chapter 58:

“Shout it out aloud, do not hold back

Raise your voice like a trumpet.”

Thank you, dear Isaiah.

My thoughts exactly….

And thank you, Royal Lyceum.

Let’s not allow ourselves to be silenced. Let’s keep trying to be heard….

(Just to say I haven’t forgotten I still have to write the second part of my sermon. I just got a bot distracted…)