Fw: [scottish_theatre] John McGrath

[Denis Salter]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gerard Mulgrew" <gerry.communicado at virgin.net>
To: <scottish_theatre at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 6:47 AM
Subject: Re: [scottish_theatre] John McGrath


> on 24/1/02 16:27, editor_list at editor at list.co.uk wrote:
>
> > The death of John McGrath on Tuesday of this week came as depressing
news.
> >
> > If it was only for The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil and A
Good
> > Night Out, he would be remembered as a fundamental influence on Scottish
> > theatre. But he was also a warm, passionate and intelligent man,
creative to
> > the last, whose contribution was so much greater.
> >
> > What does everyone else think?
>
>
> Like everyone else, I am very saddened by John McGrath's death. I never
knew
> him well, which I regret, although we did talk from time to time, and I
> think there was a mutual, if critical, respect for each other's work.I
> personally chart my own interest in the possibility of a new Scottish
> Theatre back to the time when I first saw The Cheviot, the Stag, and the
> Black Black Oil. As for so many people this was a revelation for me. For
the
> first time in my experience I could watch a vibrant entertainment deriving
> from the roots of my own culture -  critical, grotesque, hilarious,
> emotional, ancient and modern, staged in the formless form of the ceilidh
or
> cabaret variety, as if McGrath had taken the "well made" English play
form,
> with its codified restraints, tastes and "civilised" manners, and, having
> loosened its stays, allowed its trousers to drop and its belly,
thankfully,
> to flop out, with a fine Rabelaisian view of the arse underneath.
>
>
> I was lucky enough to meet John one last time at the Traverse during the
> Festival of 2001. This was during a platform debate on "political
theatre",
> and John was in the audience. He was obviously not well, but as he told
me
> afterwards, he "didn't want to miss this", since debates on political
> theatre in Scotland are thin on the ground these days, to say the least.
> Like the practised debater, he listened carefully all the way through and
> then spoke for fifteen minutes near the end, after which there was little
> point anyone saying anything else, as he had said it all.
>
> It would be indecent not to mention, of course, that John McGrath had been
> effectively ousted from his own company and from the Scottish Theatre
scene
> which he had so invigorated. Perhaps he was just too successful in his
> mission to irritate the establishment. Whether you agreed with his
politics
> and his analysis of culture or not, the fact remains that he was an artist
> of integrity. In the eulogies which are now appearing to the man's legacy,
> it is rightly acknowledged that he is a great loss to the Scottish
Theatre.
> The sad thing is that he had been lost to it for ten years before he died.
> We need people like him more than ever now.
>
>
> Gerry Mulgrew
>
>
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