Blabbermouth festival to be held on referendum day

Among those appearing at Blabbermouth are Ricky Ross, Tam Dean Burn, Hardeep Singh Kohli, Cora Bissett, Douglas Henshall and Elaine C Smith

The next week is going to be tough for those committed to political neutrality. When the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) programmed a year-long season of work, “Dear Scotland”, to mark the independence referendum, organisers knew that the day of the vote would bring their toughest challenge. Having neatly sidestepped the yes/no furore and explored issues of identity and autonomy in myriad ways, from Rona Munro’s James Plays to a night of open-submission, five-minute theatre, NTS now faces the thorniest question of all: how to deal with the vote itself.

The NTS answer to that conundrum is Blabbermouth, a 12-hour long event at Edinburgh’s Assembly Hall on the eve of the vote, which celebrates “Scotland’s contribution to the world through its written word”. Celebrities, politicians, actors, writers and ordinary Scots will take turns to read aloud from the country’s written heritage: letters, poems, political speeches, comedy sketches, sports commentaries. Music will play a key role, with a house band reviving moments of Scotland’s musical history and a string of appearances by guest musicians.

“I think at that point the arguments will have been had, people will have made up their minds – and if they haven’t made their minds up by then, that’s a bigger issue,” says NTS associate director Graham McLaren, who is curating Blabbermouth.

“This is a rare opportunity to see ourselves not as others see us, but as we see us. We are all too often presented with visions of Scotland through another perspective; that’s mostly the vision of Scotland that we get.”

He has brought together a suitably impressive list of readers, from Douglas Henshall and Elaine C Smith to Tricia Marwick and former chief medical officer Sir Harry Burns. Writers and playwrights such as Janice Galloway, Liz Lochhead, Alan Spence and David Greig will take part. More “big names” will be revealed closer to the event, but the line-up will also include nurses, janitors, journalists (including the author and The Scotsman’s chief theatre critic Joyce McMillan) as well as young people from BBC Scotland’s Generation 2014 project. The house band performing songs from Burns and John MacLean to the Waterboys, includes Karine Polwart, Annie Grace, Michael John MacCarthy and Sarah Hayes and Joe Rattray of Admiral Fallow.

McLaren explains that Blabbermouth takes inspiration from Montreal where a friend, theatre director Brigitte Haentjens, curated a similar event, Moulin a Parole (The Windmill of Words) in 2011 to celebrate French-speaking Quebec’s contribution to Canada. “While I was there, Brigitte and I watched the news of the SNP landslide and she turned to me and she said, ‘There’ll be a referendum, you’re going to be talking about independence for the next four years’. And I said: ‘No, I don’t think so’,” he says. “Then she said, ‘You need to do something like Moulin a Parole in Scotland.’ And I laughed and said: ‘Oh god, that could never happen in Scotland, that kind of engagement, that kind of grassroots understanding of the nuances of the narrative just doesn’t exist in Scotland.’” He shrugs and smiles: that much has changed in four years.

But he also drew on another source of inspiration much closer to home: the parties hosted by his large, extended family while he was growing up in Coatbridge. “It reminded me a lot of that, this idea of the noble call, where you sing a song, and after you’ve sung your song you say: ‘Okay, now, mother, you come up’ and mother isn’t allowed to refuse, she has to sing, or tell a joke, or play the spoons. Those gatherings absolutely defined my childhood, right up until I left home. I can tell you what it’s like to be a ten-year-old boy at one of those Hogmanays when you’re terrified you’ll be up next and all you’ve got is the spoons!”

He intends to include personal elements in Blabbermouth, such as the poem written by Liz Lochhead – one of the first after she became the Scots Makar [national poet] – to welcome his daughter, Molly, whom he adopted from China. “I want her and Liz on stage to read that poem together, though I still need to convince Molly, she’s ten now. Some of it will be personal, some of it will be political, some of it will be silly, a lot will be funny, and some of it, of course, will be contentious. At those New Year bashes, my uncles argued in the corner about all kinds of things.”

However, organising the biggest Hogmanay-style shindig ever, with over 100 contributors is, McLaren says cheerfully, a “logistical nightmare”. Participants are invited to choose what they want to read, with some curation to avoid duplications. There will be actors, including Gary Lewis and Maureen Beattie, to tackle some of the more challenging texts, and a database of extracts – from David Hume to Rev IM Jolly, Jimmy Reid to the letters of Mary Queen of Scots – has been compiled to give people inspiration. “It’s a bit like a kaleidoscope. You might look at it and think, ‘Wow, we’re very radical’, and then from a different angle, ‘No, we’re really conservative’; ‘We are really very scientifically orientated’, ‘No, we’re all artists’. It all depends on where you focus.” It will finish at midnight, ushering in referendum day with Auld Lang Syne.

McLaren says he has put aside his personal view, as a Yes supporter (“I took my badge off before I came”) to create a show which celebrates Scotland’s politics without being partisan. “This is not the place for it, I don’t want to use my position to influence anyone. It has made no material difference, other than it has made me really conscious of getting as many people as possible from different perspectives to contribute. But when I’ve been talking to the contributors, it’s not even been a topic of discussion. Nobody has said, ‘Oh, this is great, I can use this as a platform to say something’. They’re like, ‘Oh, I love MacDiarmid…’”

Though steadfastly neutral in aim, it does point, in a subtle way, to the thing the country will most badly need after the referendum, regardless of the result: a reminder of the things which unite us. “It reminds me of what Margo MacDonald said [as recalled by her husband at her memorial service earlier this year in the Assembly Hall]; we must remind ourselves as Scots that we have so much more in common than what is a binary question. We share a love of what’s made us what we are. If we’ve said all we need to say, then it’s time to have a dram, sing some songs, tell some stories, tell those old Billy Connolly jokes, hear a Burns poem, or a song by Michael Marra. There’s something about that which makes us feel like community.

“Scotland is already a winner out of the process, no matter what happens, because people are walking with a spring in their step, whether that’s because they know why they want to stay in the Union, or they know why they want to leave it. And on 19 September, when Scotland will be on the front page of every newspaper in the world, I can think of no greater part to play than be the guy who hosted a bit of a shindig the day before.”

• Blabbermouth is at the Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, on 17 September, with four sessions: 12 noon-2.30pm, 3-5.30pm, 6.30-9pm, 9.30pm-midnight. Tickets are available for individual sessions or all four. For more information see www.nationaltheatrescotland.com