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SAT 5 AUG, 2006 Black Watch premieres in Edinburgh
Powerful, dramatic and beautiful, Black Watch defined Scottish theatre’s success over the last decade. Kirstin Innes talks to writer Gregory Burke about the play’s extraordinary success
E very decade, there seems to be one cultural event that shifts the way we Scots look at ourselves, and the way the world looks at us. In the 1990s, there was the Trainspotting juggernaut: book, play, film, tie-in-soundtrack, poster. In the 2000s, what got us thinking was another explosive work written by a former football casual about a group of working-class men.
Gregory Burke’s Black Watch, commissioned and directed by the National Theatre of Scotland, premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2006, at the former University of Edinburgh Officer Training Corps drill hall. It played to standing ovations and tear- stricken audiences whose numbers included Sean Connery and Prince Charles. It was televised nationally, toured Scotland, then to New York and London, where it won four Olivier Awards. ‘The reaction – god, it’s scary!’ says Burke. ‘London. New York. You couldn’t write this as a script – you’d be accused of being a fantasist!’ It’s not once, but twice this decade that Burke has created theatre to make the country wake
2006
up and take a startled look at itself. In 2001 his filthy, funny, Tarantino- esque debut Gagarin Way cut through a wave of late-90s poor-me introspection and bloated New Labour platitudes to take a sharp look at unemployment and failing ideologies in Fife. It also identified him as the perfect person to help the newly formed National Theatre of Scotland reflect an issue relevant to the whole country – as was their brief – and respond to the huge news story of the (Fife-based) Black Watch regiment’s deployment to Basra. ‘In 2004, when the regiment had been basically put under American leadership, and there was all this controversy in the news, Vicky [Featherstone], who had just been made director of the NTS, phoned me and said, “I’m not giving out commissions, but since you’re from Fife and know people in the army, can you follow the story?”’
MARCH
JUNE
AUGUST SEPTEMBER
The smoking ban is introduced, despite fears that it could damage business in
pubs and clubs.
Some later blame the ban as the cause of increasing numbers
of pub and bar closures.
The Venue closes in Edinburgh. Over 24 years the 400-capacity gig venue had hosted
such bands as Radiohead, REM,
Muse and The Strokes,
as well as countless Scottish bands.
Black Watch premieres at
the
Edinburgh Fringe. See above.
Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait is
released. Directed by Douglas Gordon and scored by Mogwai, it
features Zidane fighting on the pitch – reminiscent of his infamous headbutt
during the 2006 world cup final.