"You can judge a nation's culture by the state of its theatre..."

“Lorca once said you could judge the health of a nation’s culture by looking at the state of its theatre. And for him theatre was a natural extension of poetry: a poetry that leaps off the printed page, escapes from between the pages of books “and becomes human. It shouts and speaks. It cries and despairs.”

For him there was nothing precious about poetry; it was simply part of living. “Poetry is something that just walks along the street”. Because for him it was a part of living, to be deprived of it was a kind of torment; and to deprive people of the chance of experiencing it was a kind of crime.

In an interview he gave to an English journalist, he spoke of his anger at the lack of theatre that could then be seen in Spain outside the capital: “theatre is lost dead outside Madrid, and the people suffer accordingly , as they would if they had lost eyes or ears or a sense of taste.”

He also said: “I will always be on the side of those who have nothing.” He was a political writer in the deepest sense, in that the act of writing was part of the struggle for a better world. 

“Sometimes, when I think of what is going on in the world, I wonder, ‘Why am I writing?. The answer is that one simply has to work. Work and go on working. Work and help everyone who deserves it. Work even though at times it feels like so much wasted effort. Work as a form of protest. For one’s impulse has to be to cry out every day one wakes up and is confronted by misery and injustice of every kind: I protest! I protest! I protest!”.

I wrote this as a programme note for the Royal Lyceum production of my translation of Lorca’s “The House Of Bernarda Alba” 

It opened on 7th April 1989: these are words that need to be repeated today. 

I was out to supper with some dear old friends on Monday and they gave me their collection of theatre programmes of my work…

It makes me very proud to see such a solid reminder of decades of fine theatre productions made in Scotland since the 1980’s.

And it fills me with rage to think that it is no longer possible for a Scottish theatre to mount a production on this scale; no longer possible for any Scottish playwright to create such a body of work; no longer possible to think of that work as being part of a vibrant and enduring Scottish and international theatre culture.

Because that theatre culture has been all but destroyed.

And destroyed by an SNP government that has colluded with the Tory party to diminish and weaken Scottish culture.

The programme note ends:

“As Lorca wrote the play a general called Francisco Franco, with his head stuffed with dead ideas, was preparing a revolution. He may not have consciously known it, but Lorca was writing under the shadow of death. Civil war broke out, the fascist authorities took him away and had him shot. he was 38 years old.

All of us now watching watch under a shadow of our own. Authorities parrot nonsense at us, dazzle us with intellectually void and morally bankrupt talk of “growth” and “profitability” and “enterprise”. 

Old and moribund ideas, ideas which should have died with the 19th century, but which still haunt us and threaten our environment and our lives.

We may imagine the threat to be remote. So did Lorca. Threats have a habit of seeming unreal until it is too late to avert them. We have to take the play as a warning: we have to learn”.

Can we listen? Can we learn?