Scotland the Brave?

When August draws to a close, Scotland will be little more than a year away from making the most important political decision in its history. It is a decision that will have significant long-term ramifications—irrespective of the outcome—for the way the country is governed, its presence on the international stage and the welfare of its people. It is a decision that will see millions of Scots wrestle with the high-minded philosophical ideas of democracy, self-determination and national identity – as well, of course, as the slightly more prosaic matter of how much money they’ll have in their pockets after the dust has settled.

It is strange, then, that at the world’s most famous arts festival, taking place in the heart of the Scottish capital and comprising some 2,871 different shows, it requires work and patience to find any indication that the independence referendum is a mere thirteen months away. Indeed, it is possible to count comfortably the number of independence-minded productions on the fingers of one hand. So why is it that Scottish artists, comedians and playwrights seem so disengaged—at least creatively—from the debate? 

Tellingly, the only serious, high profile production tackling the issue of Scottish independence comes from a Welsh playwright, Tim Price, whose play I’m With the Band opens at the Traverse this month. At a superficial level, Price’s play follows the travails of a fictitious rock band—aptly named The Union—and is inspired by recurring tales of squabbling superstars and of band members casting off to begin their own solo careers. 

But scratch a bit deeper, says Price, and “it’s a metaphor for the break up of the United Kingdom. If you’re interested in the Scottish independence debate, the question so often seems to be ‘Can Scotland survive?’ But that’s quite a myopic way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is to ask can the Union survive Scottish independence? What happens to the other countries? That’s all contingent and that’s a story we haven’t been told yet.”

Although Price sympathises with some arguments in favour of independence, his concern with I’m With The Band is to remind his audience that Scottish independence won’t impact on Scotland alone. “This is the kind of thing that keeps me standing in bars at 3am. It’s not just about Scotland! And that’s why it feels like a family breaking up.” Or like a band breaking up.

“That’s part of the reason I wrote I’m With The Band, because there’s no discussion about the rest of the Union in Scotland; they’re just not interested in talking to each other about it. For example, independence will have a huge impact on Northern Ireland and no one in Scotland seems to care about that!”

But for Scots trying to make up their mind about independence, the impact it will have elsewhere is not the core issue. And to this end, Price is baffled by the absence of any Scottish voices on the matter. “If you compare the cultural infrastructure of Scotland and Wales, Scotland is like a super-state. You’ve got so many theatres here from the Oran Mor to the Tron to the Traverse. The National Theatre of Scotland is huge compared to National Theatre Wales, a behemoth! And you’ve got the world’s largest arts festival on your doorstep yet you can’t find the voices to debate each other? It’s really strange.”

Others are more damning in their assessment.

“It’s embarrassing!” says Keir McAllister. “This is the most important constitutional moment this country has faced and we’re not even talking about it!”

McAllister—a comedian whose double act alongside fellow comic Vladimir McTavish is, for the second year running, the only comedy show at the Fringe explicitly exploring the independence referendum—is a Scottish independence supporter and vocal advocate of the importance of artists getting involved in the debate. He argues that comedy serves an important democratic function in speaking truth to power and causing trouble, but that in Scotland it doesn’t live up to that aspiration. 

“I know some Scottish comedians feel that you can’t do a show about Scottish politics. And I think that Scottish comedy, like other things, suffers from a lack of aspiration sometimes. I think there should be more Scottish comedians taking a look at the Scottish Parliament and I think its a signature of our lack of confidence as a nation that this doesn’t happen.”

But McAllister doesn’t think it’s fair to lay the blame for this exclusively at the door of Scottish comedians. In his own show this year, he and McTavish have had to expand their remit to include Westminster politics as well as Holyrood. In part, this is because the pair believe that the UK political situation is important to understanding the context of the Scottish independence debate, but there are more basic concerns too. “It means we have a few more-recognisable targets. One of the things we found about doing Scottish political comedy is that there’s a large proportion of the audience who had no idea who the politicians we were talking about were!

“I mean, I do a joke about when BBC News stopped a guy in George Square in Glasgow and asked what he thought about independence and his response was: 'Are we still going to get Eastenders on the telly?' It’s so frustrating that that’s the level of the debate.”

But one Scottish artist who isn’t too concerned about the absence of independence-themed productions at the Fringe this year is David Greig, one of the country’s finest playwrights. For Greig, it’s not that Scottish artists are apathetic about independence—indeed he believes that there is a majority support for independence among Scotland’s artistic community that isn’t reflected in current polling of the wider public—but that they’re involving themselves in different ways, at meetings, conferences and on the campaign trail. 

More than that, though, he’s not convinced that political work made in the heat of the moment is the best way of conducting the debate. “If I have a message, I’ll send it in the post. I don’t use my plays to tell people how to vote, I do that on my Twitter feed or—nearer the time—I’ll write essays and so on. But my plays need to be plays.”

In that sense, Greig hints that the artist’s true role is deliberative, helping us explore how we got here as a society, not to tell us where to go to – or at least not to do so bluntly. “I'll tell you when a lot of art will be made about Scottish independence, and that’s after the referendum. If the referendum is defeated, there’ll be an unbelieveable amount of plays being made because there’ll be a lot of processing being done, and a play is a good way of processing that... The thing is, whatever happens, we’re going to have to live together afterwards. Scotland will have made a momentous decision and there will be some for whom that’s a painful thing. It might be me and my friends, it might be Alistair Darling! But one way or the other, there will be some people feeling sad, loss, uncertainty, all of those things. And that’s when the art will truly emerge – as we process those feelings. 

“In advance of the referendum, though, all you can do is propaganda.”