New play has its Thurso premiere
THURSO High School drama group is in the midst of one of its biggest challenges.
As part of the National Theatre’s Connections project, the group has been working on a new play by Howard Brenton called The Guffin.
The project allows groups from all over Britain to work on new plays, especially written for young people.
There are eight new plays written for the Connections project, with other writers including Lenny Henry and Jim Cartwright.
The far north group, led by Eden Court Creative worker David Hunter, has been working hard on the challenges of bringing the new play to life.
There are a number of companies tackling Howard Brenton’s play from all over Britain but the one in Caithness is getting people excited.
Mr Hunter said: "There was a lot of interest from the staff at the National Theatre in London when I travelled down to meet Howard Brenton to discuss his play.
"They are delighted a group from the far north coast of Britain is part of the project and as a director from the National Theatre travels to each home performance to give comments, they were very excited about coming all the way up to Thurso."
The play is about a young girl Jay, who finds The Guffin and it starts to take over her life. The title derives from a McGuffin, a plot device used in films to push the story forward such as the ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The group performed a preview show at the high school last Wednesday before Saturday’s production at Skinandi’s in Thurso at 3pm.
Mr Hunter said: "It is very important for the group to get used to performing in different spaces and hopefully we will have one more show before the group join up with other groups from all over the Highlands at a special festival in Eden Court at the start of next month."
The Thurso group is in with a chance of being invited to London to perform at the National Theatre in a celebration of all the new plays.
Mr Hunter said: "One of my main aims is to showcase the talent in Caithness to as many people as possible.
"In the past year, young people from Caithness have been involved in shows celebrating the Olympics, Commonwealth Games, the Ness Islands Hallowe’en festival, Burns Night, the Inverness Street Festival and the Shakespeare Schools Festival.
"The staff at Eden Court have been getting to know the Caithness groups really well and are very impressed with the quality of talent shown by the young performers.The group was delighted to be able to perform the play in Thurso and being able to show their hard work to family, friends and members of the public."