National Theatre of Scotland announces adaptation of Damian Barr's memoir Maggie & Me - coming to Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in 2024
Author and broadcaster Damian Barr is adapting his award-winning memoir Maggie & Me for a new National Theatre of Scotland production, which will premiere in 2024.
Author and broadcaster Damian Barr is adapting his award-winning memoir Maggie & Me for a new National Theatre of Scotland production, which will premiere in 2024.
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00:00 (gentle music)
00:02 - So James, Maggie and Me is my memoir.
00:05 - Yes.
00:06 - It's my life, I know what happens in it,
00:08 but how would you describe it to people
00:09 who don't know about it?
00:10 - Yes, well, it's the story of a little boy
00:12 growing up where we are now in Lanarkshire,
00:15 and the story of him surviving first his parents' divorce,
00:19 and then everything else that life throws at him,
00:22 school, being a gay kid at school.
00:25 - The closing of the Ravens' Cage.
00:26 - The closing of the Ravens' Cage,
00:28 the impact on his family, society,
00:32 you've got the advent of AIDS and the fear of that.
00:35 And yes, and of course, Maggie Thatcher.
00:39 - Yeah, so the Maggie of the title is Maggie Thatcher,
00:41 and she's this sort of constant, you know,
00:43 like in a stick of rock,
00:44 running all the way through the '80s.
00:46 You can't have the '80s without Thatcher
00:49 as something, as an unlikely icon,
00:51 someone to survive and sometimes be inspired by,
00:54 but also to rebel against.
00:55 - Yeah, like--
00:56 - You know, she was a weird constant.
00:57 - Totally, and her kind of brutal message
00:59 for a wee boy to be somehow a message of hope.
01:04 And why are we here?
01:06 - We're here because Kirfyn Grotto was a place
01:08 where I would come as a wee boy for solace.
01:10 It was a place that was safe.
01:11 Home was not always safe, very often not safe.
01:15 And so I could come to the grotto, I could find peace,
01:19 I could understand the stories of the statues.
01:22 This was a refuge, so it felt really important
01:24 to put that in the book,
01:25 and also for us to write such big parts of the play
01:28 that are set here.
01:29 - Yeah, that are set here, and they have a reverence,
01:31 they have a kind of, we have lent into the campness,
01:34 but they also have a real reverence
01:35 for the like solace and beauty of the place.
01:39 - This is a powerful place, and it's a meaningful place.
01:41 And I think that this is a story about survival.
01:44 It's a story about hope, it's a story about trauma,
01:47 and it's, but it's ultimately a story about joy,
01:49 about what it means to survive.
01:51 And it's stories that we use to survive.