seven venues

It’s been a long road for Neil Murray. From the initial process of conceptualizing what he calls the idea of Black Watch, to the play’s debut at the Edinburgh Festival in the summer of 2006, to the international tour that followed, Murray, the play’s producer, has remained steadfastly impressed by the communicative power of theater.

"This is a very Scottish play," he confides, "And that we’ve received such a warm response from international audiences is a testament to the universal appeal not just of experimental theater, but of the examination of how a country relates to the soldiers that are tasked with fighting for it."

Black Watch, which appears at the Scope Arena this week as part of the 12th annual Virginia Arts Festival, tells the story of a fabled Scots regiment tour of duty in Iraq, and how they later deal with the aftermath.

Port Folio Weekly caught up with Murray during a lull in the performance schedule while visiting his mother at her home in Wales.

How did you first become acquainted with Black Watch?

I was part of the Mational Theater of Scotland team, and Black Watch was really one of the first big projects that we put together. It was a very experimental piece of work in the sense that we didn’t know what it was going to be. We went into rehearsal for the show without a developed script. What we had was a whole pile of interviews with the Scottish soldiers who had been fighting with the Black Watch in Iraq and had come home. So, the director, John Tiffany, and his team did a wonderful job of taking these stories and putting a narrative together to tell the story of the experience of these Scottish soldiers who were fighting in a war that was quite confusing to them, and quite confusing to the people back home as well. Obviously we had no idea that it would take us to places like Norfolk, Virginia. We did it for three weeks in Edinburgh, Scotland and that’s just what we thought it was going to be. And it quickly became apparent that it told a story that had a universal appeal, and we’ve spent the last two years both in the UK and abroad, and it’s been a wonderful adventure in that sense.

You mentioned that the play was experimental. How exactly did it break with traditional Scottish theater?

I think without knowing we were doing it, we actually tapped into a Scottish theater tradition which is of music and movement. That’s what made the show stand out, that nod back to these traditions, but you’re almost creating a new art form, a new way of telling stories. We have a lot of what you would call "verbatim" or "documentary" theater here in Britain, where it’s literally people sitting down and telling stories that have been told to them. And we didn’t want to do that. And I thought that a way of circumventing that was to figure out how to tap into what makes Scottish theater unique—the Celtic sense of song and dance—with modern technology. So, that together formed this sort of unholy alliance that somehow seems to work.

How difficult was the process of conceptualizing that "unholy alliance?"

With hindsight it’s easy to say that we always knew it was going to be a big hit. I can remember very vividly the director, John Tiffany inviting us to a run of the show and him saying ‘Look, I think this might be crap,’ and this was about two weeks before we opened. This was just in a sort of rehearsal room, with only a modicum of effects and afterwards we were all just literally shell-shocked. It was only at that point that we thought, ‘Oh, my God, this could be really extraordinary." And even after that we had no idea how a public audience might react to the show, so the process up until that point was very terrifying. We weren’t sure how it was going to evolve or where it was going to end. You know there are some shows where you start out with this wonderful script and it’s for you to mess it up. This was the opposite. With Black Watch, what we started out with was just a collection of words and interviews with the soldiers themselves, but we needed to figure out a way to tell them, and it wasn’t until quite late that we did.

There’s been a lot said about Black Watch posing wider implications about the idea of "Scottishness." What specific questions does the play raise about Scottish identity?

Well, particularly in terms of the military connection, the Black Watch regiment has always been seen as the vanguard of any British assault. They were viewed as these fearless Highland warriors who were sent to do the dirty work that nobody else might do. They have this sort of fearsome reputation, and I think the play really questions that. It really questions that traditional view of the Scots as gung-ho. There’s a different country emerging in Scotland, and we’re starting to feel slightly uncomfortable with some of those notions and how we’ve been received in the past. So, I think it absolutely tapped into a national zeitgeist. In a way it was a reflection of what people in the country were already asking: ‘Why is the Black Watch regiment being sent to do this task by a British government, and why are we as Scots not asserting ourselves more generally on the world stage?’ Politically, I think that’s what the play does. It nurtures those questions, and challenges the notion that Scots are willing to make these kinds of sacrifices and happy with their lot regardless. So, there’s this political undertone running through the play, which is not just about what it’s like to be a soldier in Iraq, but also what it’s like to be a Scot in the modern world.

There’s a line in the press kit about theater as cultural diplomacy. Were you and the other creators of Black Watch at all surprised that the British and Scottish governments would financially support a traveling tour of a play that is critical of their policies?

Absolutely we were surprised. We were amazed. Of course the really interesting thing is that when we first toured, we were funded by the Labor government in Scotland. The labor government supported the war in Iraq, so they put funding to a production that criticized their own policy, which is brilliant. Generally, I think, there was this recognition by the government that even though they may not like some of these stories, it was still important that they be told.

Have you found that any political entities here in the U.S. have taken note of the play?

I don’t know really, but what’s more personally satisfying for us is when people who have been in the military come and see the show. I think that’s what has been the most gratifying, soldiers telling us that we’ve gotten it pretty much right.

If there is one thing that you’d have American audiences take from the play, what would it be?

That there is a way of telling modern political stories that’s really exciting. That political theater doesn’t have to be dull. And in that way—and I’d never say this to anyone in New York or L.A.—putting on the play in a place like Norfolk is more exciting because not only do you get to expose people to that, but Norfolk as I understand it is a place where military issues are at the forefront. As such, we want and hope to have a dialogue with people, we want to continue to examine these issues so that we can continue the conversation. And that’s not something that you get in places like L.A. or New York. There’s a wonder about that process, and that’s really what makes this whole thing worthwhile.