‘Yae, Nae, or Dinnae Ken’: Dramatic Responses to the Scottish Referendum and Theatre Uncut

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In this paper Sıla Şenlen Güvenç surveys the key plays staged in the run-up to the Scottish Independence Referendum of September 2014, with special emphasis on the six Theatre Uncut plays – Rob Drummond's Party Pieces, A. J. Taudevin's The 12.57, and Lewis Hetherington's The White Lightning and the Black Stag (composed in 2013), and Davey Anderson's twin plays, Fear and Self-Loathing in West Lothian and Don't Know, Don't Care, and Kieran Hurley's Close from 2014. Written prior to the referendum and performed together for the first time at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014, these plays became even more meaningful with developing events in the United Kingdom, especially Brexit and the potential for a second independence referendum in Scotland. The plays reflect many of the issues discussed in both the ‘Yes Scotland’ and ‘Better Together’ campaigns. Sıla Şenlen Güvenç is currently Associate Professor at Ankara University's Department of English Language and Literature. Besides articles and theatre reviews on English drama, she is the author of ‘Words as Swords’: Verbal Violence as a Construction of Authority in Renaissance and Contemporary English Drama (2009) and ‘The World is a Stage, but the Play is Badly Cast’: British Political Satire in the Neo-classical Period (in Turkish, 2014).