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Fashioning a Scottish Operative: Black Watch and Banal Theatrical Nationalism on Tour in the US

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2013

JOANNE ZERDY
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Abstract

This essay examines the US tours (2007–13) of Black Watch, a docudrama about the eponymous military unit, produced by the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS). I argue that the production manifests a ‘banal theatrical nationalism’ when theatrical national signifiers meet quotidian acts of soldiering and the mundane labour required to remount the production at each tour venue. I focus attention on the regimental history recounted through ‘Fashion’, the play's central military uniform dressing sequence, and introduce into my analysis a New York City fashion show, Dressed to Kilt, to interrogate the stakes of fashion, cultural production and visibility. Black Watch materializes what I am calling a ‘Scottish operative’ that acts on behalf of the NTS in securing international attention and potential investment. In order to query the sociopolitical stakes of this production's US success, I identify political, cultural and military links between the US and Scotland.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , October 2013 , pp. 181 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2013 

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References

NOTES

1 See Strachan, Hew, ‘Scotland's Military Identity’, Scottish Historical Review, 85, 2 (October 2006), pp. 315–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spiers, Edward M., The Scottish Soldier and Empire, 1854–1902 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Henderson, Diana M., The Scottish Regiments, 2nd edn (Glasgow: HarperCollins, 1996)Google Scholar; Forbes, Archibald, The Black Watch: The Record of an Historic Regiment (1896) (repr., Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 2002)Google Scholar; and the Black Watch Castle and Museum website, http://theblackwatch.co.uk, accessed 28 April 2013.

2 See ‘Three Black Watch soldiers dead’, The Guardian, 4 November 2004, guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/nov/04/iraq.world, accessed 30 December 2012.

3 Burke, Gregory, Black Watch (London: Faber & Faber, 2007), pp. 9, 40Google Scholar.

4 Black Watch has toured across the UK and to Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Korea. For more on its production history, see nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=home_Black%20Watch%202010, accessed 6 May 2013.

5 Black Watch has appeared in Los Angeles, Norfolk, VA, Washington, DC (twice), Austin, Chapel Hill, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and New York City (three times). It won the 2009 New York Critics Circle award for Best Foreign Play.

6 I wish to acknowledge the historical conditions in which Scots fought to strengthen the British Empire in North America and elsewhere. Moreover, the UK's Westminster Parliament enacts laws that directly make an impact on Scotland. However, my argument focuses on the historical and contemporary relationships between Scotland and the US articulated in, presented through, and produced by this play and its touring productions.

7 My thanks to Joanne Tompkins for her suggestion to link fashion more explicitly to banal nationalism.

8 Billig, Michael, Banal Nationalism (Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 1995)Google Scholar.

9 Hearn, Jonathan, ‘National Identity: Banal, Personal, Embedded’, Nations and Nationalism, 13, 4 (2007), pp. 657–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Edensor, Tim, National Identity, Popular Culture, and Everyday Life (New York: Berg, 2002)Google Scholar. Although Edensor does not discuss theatre, I find most useful his chapters ‘Performing National Identity’, pp. 69–102, and ‘Representing the Nation: Scottishness and Braveheart’, pp. 139–70.

10 Law, Alex, ‘Near and Far: Banal National Identity and the Press in Scotland’, Media, Culture & Society, 23 (2001), pp. 299–317, here p. 315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Edensor, National Identity, 17.

12 I encourage you to read Robinson, Rebecca, ‘The National Theatre of Scotland's Black Watch’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 22, 3 (2012), pp. 392–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Robinson maps the play's genesis and its reception in Scotland and at some of its other destinations, including in the US.

13 For analyses of the relationships between theatre, fashion and consumer culture see Troy, Nancy J., ‘The Theatre of Fashion: Staging Haute Couture in Early 20th-Century France’, Theatre Journal, 53, 1 (March 2001), pp. 1–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schweitzer, Marlis, When Broadway Was the Runway: Theater, Fashion and American Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 New York City's Tartan Week occurs in April each year. See www.tartanweek.com, accessed 17 May 2013.

15 The rebranding resulted from a legal dispute between Friends of Scotland and Geoffrey Scott Carroll, the charity's former chairperson.

16 Although Connolly survived his injuries from fighting in Afghanistan, he died in Germany in 2011 during a fight with two fellow soldiers.

17 An important study into the over-saturation of Scottish cultural products and heritage is McCrone, David, Morris, Angela and Kiely, Richard, Scotland – the Brand: The Making of Scottish Heritage (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

18 Burke, Black Watch, 30.

19 Culloden, east of Inverness, is the site of the 1746 battle won by the British (Hanoverian) Government troops over the Jacobite supporters of Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie). The battle effectively ended the Jacobite uprisings.

20 Burke, Black Watch, 30.

21 Edensor, National Identity, 92.

22 Burke, Black Watch, 30–1.

23 ‘Cast Interviews: Rehearsals – Week 2’, on ‘Black Watch (2010–11 tour)’, NTS, www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=s667, accessed 6 May 2013. Starkie's reference to wool unwittingly alludes to cheviot sheep introduced to the Highlands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Finding sheep more profitable than tenant farmers, many large-estate owning landlords evicted dozens of communities. Some of these sheep may have provided wool for military uniforms.

24 Burke, Black Watch, 31.

25 See Calloway, Colin G., ‘Highland Men and Indian Families’, in Calloway, White People, Indians, and Highlanders: Tribal Peoples and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 147–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 The fighting that took place in North America during the Seven Years War came to be known in the US as the ‘French and Indian War’. Great Britain and France battled over territory that comprised New France and the British colonies. The 1763 Treaty of Paris ended the conflict; Britain gained formerly French territories east of the Mississippi River.

27 ‘Captains were entitled to three thousand acres, lieutenants to two thousand, sergeants two hundred, corporals one hundred, and privates fifty acres. Most petitioned as individuals, but many former comrades-in-arms did so in groups and sought lands adjacent to one another’. Calloway, White People, Indians, and Highlanders, 206.

28 Burke, Black Watch, 32. The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada began in Montreal in 1862 when six Scottish chieftains raised troops to form the 5th Battalion. Although the Black Watch of Canada did not emerge directly from the Scottish Black Watch, the Canadian regiment shares a common heritage and highland dress. The Black Watch of Canada website identifies the Scottish military unit as the Canadian contingent's ‘Parent Regiment’. This suggests another kind of familial connection between Scotland and North America. See ‘A Brief History,’ The Black Watch of Canada, http://blackwatchcanada.com/en/heritage-and-history/a-brief-history, accessed 29 April 2013.

29 Burke, Black Watch, 70–1.

30 Jeremy McCarter, ‘Battle Ready: A funny, filthy soldier's-eye view of Iraq’, New York Magazine, 26 October 2007, http://nymag.com/arts/theater/reviews/39927/, accessed 16 May 2013.

31 IED stands for improvised explosive device.

32 Charles Spencer would probably disagree with my reading as he sees in the costume sequence ‘little more than an animatronic museum exhibit’. See Charles Spencer, ‘Black Watch: Searing Insights into the Horrors of Modern Warfare’, The Telegraph, 26 June 2008, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/drama/3555126/Black-Watch-searing-insights-into-the-horrors-of-modern-warfare.html, accessed 6 May 2013.

33 For a listing of all devolved and reserved matters and documents related to Scottish devolution, see ‘Devolved and Reserved Matters Explained’, Scottish Parliament, http://scottish.parliament.uk/visitandlearn/25488.aspx, accessed 28 April 2013.

34 Scotland already had a Royal Scottish National Opera, Scottish Dance Theatre, Scottish Opera, and the National Galleries of Scotland consortium.

35 Kenny Ireland quoted in ‘Education, Culture and Sport Committee Official Report’, Scottish Parliament, 1 December 1999, http://scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28862.aspx?r=532&i=2159&c=106405&s=national%20theatre, accessed 29 April 2013.

36 For more on the NTS see Leach, Robert, ‘The Short, Astonishing History of the National Theatre of Scotland’, New Theatre Quarterly, 23, 2 (May 2007), pp. 171–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reid, Trish, ‘From Scenes Like These Old Scotia's Grandeur Springs’: The New National Theatre of Scotland’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 17, 2 (2007), pp. 192–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Harvie, Jen, Staging the UK (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 31–4Google Scholar.

37 In 2011 and 2012 the NTS produced ‘Five-Minute Theatre,’ brief performance pieces created by people across Scotland (in site-specific locations and theatres) and streamed live online. See ‘5 Minute Theatre’, NTS, http://fiveminutetheatre.com, accessed 5 May 2013.

38 Hamish Glen, quoted in Education, Culture and Sport Committee Official Report.

39 According to journalist David Lyon, ‘The American name for their ex-Saddam military camp may have been Dogwood but the Black Watch called their corner of it Camp Ticonderoga, after the fort where their troops had fought two epic battles against the French in North America in the 1750s.’ David Lyon, ‘An Elegy for the Black Watch’, Black Watch Barbican Programme, 2008, p. 9.

40 Kwan, SanSan's essay, ‘Performing a Geography of Asian America: The Chop Suey Circuit’, Drama Review, 55, 1 (Spring 2011), pp. 120–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has influenced my thinking on this point.

41 My thanks to an anonymous reader for questioning the relationship between nationalism, sentimentality and spectacle within the production.

42 I am grateful to Will Daddario for this insight.

43 Robinson, ‘The National Theatre of Scotland's Black Watch’, 393.

44 These Homecomings encourage Scottish descendants (many of whom are targeted from North America) to visit Scotland in order to celebrate Scots achievements in arts and science as well as Scotland's landscapes and iconic goods such as whisky. 2009 events included a clan gathering, highland games and a military tattoo. A restaging of the Battle of Bannockburn will feature in the 2014 Homecoming. See Homecoming Scotland, www.homecomingscotland.com, accessed 6 January 2013.

45 My thinking has been shaped by Knowles, Ric, Reading the Material Theatre (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

46 See ‘Black Watch (2010–11 tour)’, NTS, www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=home_Black%20Watch%202010, accessed 6 May 2013.

47 Colleran, Jeanne, ‘Disposable Wars, Disappearing Acts: Theatrical Responses to the 1991 Gulf War’, Theatre Journal, 55, 4 (2003), pp. 613–32, here p. 632CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 My theorization of banal theatrical nationalism within Black Watch has been informed by Loeffler, Toby H.'s essay ‘“Erin Go Bragh”: Banal Nationalism and the Joycean Performance of Irish Nationhood’, Journal of Narrative Theory, 39, 1 (Winter 2009), pp. 29–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 United States Senate Resolution 155, ‘National Tartan Day’, 20 March 1998, Congressional Record p. S2373. You can read a summary about this designation at www.tartanday.org/about, accessed 6 May 2013. In 2000 Senator Trent Lott, architect of the resolution, received the [William] Wallace Award by the Scottish American Foundation.

50 ‘Creative Team Interviews’, ‘Black Watch (2010–11 tour)’, NTS www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=s668, accessed 6 May 2013, emphasis mine.

51 In 2012 Tiffany co-directed a production of Macbeth starring Alan Cumming. After performances in Glasgow, the production transferred to New York City's Rose Theater as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. In April 2013 the production returned to New York with a two-month run at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. The NTS appears keen to maintain links with New York City venues and American audiences.

52 Steven Hoggett, ‘Cast Interviews: Rehearsals – Week 2’, ‘Black Watch (2010–11)’, NTS, www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=s667, accessed 6 May 2013.