Singer-songwriter Ricky Ross, playwright Frances Poet and Citizens Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill on the new Scottish stage play on the bonds formed between Scotland and America since the Lockerbie bombing.
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00:00involvement came about? Well I met Frances four and a half years ago right at the start of lockdown
00:07and we were talking about doing something for theatre together and she came in with a story
00:14which I just found astonishing. I didn't know the story, I knew obviously about Lockerbie, everyone
00:21of my generation knew where they were on that night and I knew a little bit about the story
00:28but what Frances told me was something I'd kind of vaguely heard before about the laundry that
00:35was run by women and the intention was to pass back all the belongings of including the clothing
00:42and belongings of all the people who died in the air disaster but to pass it back with love rather
00:52just like handing things back they were they were washed and ironed sometimes repaired and handed
00:58back as a gift really and that had contrasted I think we discovered with the American families
01:05in the way that some of that was some of the post trauma was handled by some of the American
01:10authorities so they took this as a beautiful gesture and we sort of started from there that's
01:15how the story started and then we discovered that there were there were more acts of love you know
01:21there wasn't just the laundry there were other things that that the community in Lockerbie had
01:26done and it it just sort of I suppose snowballed from from there and I thought it was incredibly
01:34important story apart from anything else an incredibly moving story and I thought it lent
01:39itself to song I could immediately just you know hear songs. How many songs have have you written
01:45so far for this project and how many are going to be in the finals? Yeah well there's been quite a few
01:49written and some have been rewritten and some have been just you know sidelined the thing
01:55changes it changes obviously it's over the over the over the time that we work together but I
01:59think there's about nine or ten in the in the actual piece at the moment and some of them come
02:05and go a little bit as well so yeah I'm flexible on on that one and probably there's not probably
02:14a good answer on that one until it opens. Is it very different writing for theatre than writing
02:18for an album? It's a different task and you know lyrically it's a different task and I think
02:24musically it is as well because it's got to have something that not just one person can sing and I
02:29think it's yeah it's got to work it's it's just got to work in the context of the show and that's
02:37that's that's the important thing it's got to be true it's got to be true to to what the the
02:41narrative is at that point and it's got to feel like something which complements the mood of
02:48things at that point so if it jars it just it just won't work so it's you know it's it's just
02:53you're constantly learning but I've done it before and you learn on the job. There's obviously quite
03:02a big issue that the show is going to be tackling why do you think it's important that that the show
03:06is put on in Scotland next year? Well I think you know from my own experience Lockerbie cast a long
03:12shadow it was the biggest single terrorist act that's ever happened on the on the island of
03:19Great Britain apart from anything else and certainly in Scotland you know it's a huge story
03:24and I think that the more I've talked to other people about it the more I realise that all of us
03:28who who lived through that time all of us have a memory of it so for us it's probably like a
03:34JFK moment where were you that night when did you hear the news and did you know anyone and you know
03:40obviously people pass through pass by that town I mean on the way to England you it's there it's
03:46there you've got the motorway goes through through the town so it's it's it's a story that's got lots
03:50of connections for people and the more we talk to people the more I realised how many connections
03:55there are and I think the story tells our story tells us something about Scotland the way it
04:02reacted to the to the disaster the way it connected with America and the way human
04:09beings picked themselves up from the clearly the lowest point of their lives and and complete trauma
04:16as well and how do you how do you how do you address that how do you recover from it how do
04:22you move on how do you make sense of it all these things are questions I think small acts of love
04:29like would like to address and that's why I think it's important
04:38um small acts of love is about the small acts of love that the people of Lockerbie
04:44showed the um relatives of people who died in Pan Am 103 um so though there were many nationalities
04:52um of passengers on the plane we're focusing specifically on the American relatives
04:57in a kind of transatlantic story um of how the two communities were brought together
05:03in horrendous circumstances and forged incredible bonds of friendship and even romance tell us a
05:10little bit about how long you've been working on this show and the format it's going to take
05:15um Ricky and I started working on it um we we had our first coffee to to talk about a possible
05:21collaboration at the beginning of 2020 um and then um when the pandemic was raging that summer
05:29we were able to use the opportunity that that afforded us to have a lot of interviews we
05:35started with a lot of journalists and police who were at Lockerbie in the immediate aftermath of
05:40the atrocity and then from there opened out and were able to get access to a lot of the
05:46American families um and just found more everyone we spoke to put us in touch with another person
05:52until we were speaking to a lot of people who had had um direct experience and specifically
05:58had forged kind of family-like friendships together with um these two communities Lockerbie
06:05and um east coast of America and tell us a little bit about the kind of research you've done
06:09particularly with um you know the relatives of uh some of the victims in America yeah so um I mean
06:17we did you know I did tons of sort of reading around the subject before we started but the
06:22the the core of what the play is built on is is these series of conversations with um with people
06:30who lost children and partners um if through the atrocity so the play tells um it tells a number of
06:41these stories um and sort of has these kind of choral moments um where the um where the stories
06:49kind of come together and the similarities of the stories are played out um and so that yeah the risk
06:56part of the part of the process I decided kind of quite an early stage that because I had formed
07:02such a bond with these incredible um people who had died hearing stories about them and what some
07:08really amazing people um were lost because of that atrocity and because I wanted to honor those people
07:15and name them I realized quite early that actually um I didn't want to fictionalize the stories um
07:22and uh as a result I wanted to be able to represent those people and the family members
07:28so I've had to work very closely with the families to be sure that every step of the stage of
07:33development that they're happy with how they and their loved ones are being represented
07:37and there was a moment at which we um we shared a kind of quite developed version of the script
07:42and the number of the songs and a sort of film of some actors sort of um showing the way that
07:48the songs and the text interplay together um and I thought possibly we might have a few uh of the
07:55contributors who at that point didn't feel comfortable and that we might have to kind of
07:59pull out some narrative strands but luckily everyone that we'd spoken to was happy that they
08:04um happy with the intentions of the piece and excited by it and and we got everybody to agree
08:11to move forward with it which was an incredible sense of responsibility and privilege to be able
08:15to tell those stories. Would you be hoping if it proved successful in Scotland and you'd get an
08:19opportunity to take it to the United States? I mean I think that would be amazing I think that
08:24you know it's this is a transatlantic story where you know we're focusing on these small acts of
08:30love that the people of Lockerbie um showed those American relatives but I think the play is very
08:36much also about how open and resilient those relatives were I mean some of the most extraordinary
08:41people I've met so I think you know this is this is a story about both of those communities and
08:46it's wonderful uh to be able to open it here in Scotland but I think
08:50um it going to America would be feels right for this project.
09:01So the show tells the story of how uh the people a group of people in Lockerbie basically
09:10were forced to engage with that terrible moment in in 1988 and through their small acts of love
09:21created these extraordinary bonds of friendship and love with the families of the American victims
09:29of that night and and it looks at how over 35 years these group of people gradually got to
09:37know each other and how what the people of Lockerbie did whether it was uh collecting clothes
09:45ironing clothes um finding things finding belongings and sending them back how how these
09:53kind of uh through these actions these extraordinary um friendships grew from between two groups of
10:00people who before that night had absolutely nothing to do with each other. A lot of these
10:05friendships are they still enduring? Yeah absolutely absolutely they're still zoom calls
10:10that happen monthly between groups of people um Father Pat Keegan's who lived on Sherwood Crescent
10:16which was destroyed apart from his house um he has officiated at weddings um of family members of
10:25people who died um there was a a sort of beautiful romantic relationship that happened between um
10:34uh the uh the guy who found a guy who found uh a body and and got to know the mother of this person
10:44and they eventually fell in love so there's extraordinary um relationships that that echo
10:49out over time I guess. To what extent does this um the launch of the show for you to reopen the
10:57sits next year is that it's a kind of statement of intent from how you how you see this that's
11:02gone into the future? Yeah I think I think what it says is that um we are a theatre that isn't
11:10afraid of of of putting on large-scale bold imaginative pieces of of important drama it's not
11:18just uh revivals of Shakespeare plays but actually that we we are and maybe even more so with the new
11:25sits that that we are committed to working with writers and and creating new work uh and and big
11:34work and and important work so it feels important that that that it really reflects the ambition of
11:39the new building I think and this is a big Scottish story an important Scottish story
11:45um and and and it's exciting that and feels right that that it's the first show in the new building.