Annual Church Play Sowed Seeds for new Fringe Production

Wednesday August 10 2016

AN ANNUAL church play sowed the seeds for the Fringe debut of an actor staging a one-woman show in the Scots language.

Ishbel McFarlane, who grew up in the Kinross Parish Church community, will be performing ‘O is For Hoolet’ at the Scottish Storytelling Centre from August 12 to 29 at 7pm (except August 15 and 22).

The seeds of Ishbel’s fascination with the stage started at church.

“The church at Kinross has staged a Family Week every year for about 30 years. My parents were always involved with that and I was drawn to the acting and the producting of the weekly play for as long as I can remember.

“By the age of 16 I was being asked to produce it wand write the script for Family Week. It wasn’t just an honour – it was a fantastic learning experience for my future life as a professional actor.

The Scots language has long fascinated her and has provided the motivation for her one-woman Fringe show, which follows studies at the University of Edinburgh and a postgraduate degree in acting at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow.

Ishbel explains: “More than 1.5 million people in Scotland claim to speak Scots and over 2 million say they understand it, but English is such a dominant language across the world that lots of languages, like Scots, are marginalised.

“People are judged almost instantly about the way they speak. It’s almost the last allowed prejudice.

“If we hear someone – before we’ve even met them – talking with a Scots accent, using Scots words, we begin to form opinions almost instantly, about their age, their upbringing, their level of education.

“There is almost a need, a desire, to change your accent and the words you use in order to be upwardly mobile, or to fit in to the crowd you want to be in.

“There’s also an insidious down-up way of eliminating a marginalised language due to others correcting the way you pronounce things or the words you use to describe things. People who would never dream of telling someone their hat is ugly or they don’t suit a dress will quite happily correct a stranger’s pronunciation!

“I guess I spent about 10 years processing my feelings about Scots and my reactions to it before I could begin to put pen to paper, but once I did I came up with my one woman play, ‘O is for Hoolet’.

“I won the Arches and Traverse ‘Platform 18 Award’ for early career artists allowing them to produce and perform their own play. It took me two months to research and write and pull it together.

“Earlier this year I did a national, rural tour funded by Creative Scotland and now I've brought it to the Edinburgh Fringe.”

Tickets for Ishbel’s show can be booked here