Free Thinking

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Free Thinking: John McGrath's Scottish Drama

John McGrath's Scottish Drama

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, John McGrath's Scottish Drama

Anne McElvoy revisits the 1973 play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil

Theatre critic Joyce McMillan, director Joe Douglas and actor Bill Paterson, who was in the cast, explore the impact of The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil.

Bill Paterson is a founding member of the 7:84 company established by John McGrath, his wife Elizabeth and her brother to create radical, popular theatre. Fusing techniques popularised by Bertolt Brecht with Scottish performance traditions, their best-known play The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black, Black Oil (1973) explored class struggle, the clearing of the Scottish highlands and the impact of drilling for oil.  With energy in the news again, and the resurgence of political theatre on the British stage - Anne McElvoy looks at the writing of John McGrath with Bill Paterson, theatre critic Joyce McMillan and Joe Douglas, who directed a successful revival of the play for the National Theatre of Scotland, Dundee Theatre and Live Theatre which toured Scotland in 2019 and 2020. 

Producer: Tim Bano

BBC Radio 3's Breakfast programme is travelling through Scotland this week. You can listen live or find Petroc's journeys on BBC Sounds.

You can find a series of discussions about influential plays, films, books and art collected together as Landmarks on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01jwn44

A blu-ray DVD of The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black, Black Oil is available.

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