Wonder Fools explore Traveller history in The Kelton Hill Fair

It’s not Scotland’s highest hill, at just under 400 feet; but for centuries, Kelton Hill - just outside Castle Douglas, in Dumfries and Galloway - was the scene of one of Scotland’s greatest annual Traveller gatherings, a magical time for horse-trading, merrymaking, striking deals, and finding love.

The Fair has long since faded into folk memory; but now, the stories surrounding it are about to be revived in a new show created by the Wonder Fools company of Glasgow - and their joint directors Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse - along with a team of young theatre-makers from Dumfries and Galloway.

Ava Hickey as Flora in The Kelton Hill Fair | Contributed

“I grew up in Dumfries and Galloway,” explains Nurse, the show’s co-writer and director, “and one of the impulses behind this project was my feeling that the pathway I had followed - from a small town in south-west Scotland into life as a professional theatre-maker - was simply disappearing behind me. There seemed to be a reduction in arts opportunities in schools, for example, and the Youth Theatre that inspired me as a teenager was no longer running.”

“So we first worked with these five young people from the area when we were touring a show there, four years ago. After an open call-out across Dumfries and Galloway, they became our apprentices for that tour, learning all the practical skills involved in taking a show on the road. And that went so well that we decided to try a new project that would put those young people at the heart of the creative process, from the very beginning.”

Jack Nurse | Contributed

“In a way, it was a bit like the process we use in Positive Stories For Negative Times,” says Gordon, referring to Wonder Fools’ hugely successful youth project - born during lockdown - that involves major playwrights writing short plays on themes developed by groups of young people, who then perform the final work.

“And we found that the Dumfries and Galloway group wanted to create a piece of theatre that both dealt with the 21st century problems facing young people there - the housing crisis, social isolation, lack of career opportunities - but also drew on Dumfries and Galloway’s rich history of stories and legends.”

Robbie Gordon | Contributed

“So that,” says Nurse, "is how we came to the idea of the Kelton Hill Fair, and of this legendary figure called Billy Marshall - Traveller, soldier, smuggler - who was said to have lived to be 120 years old, and who vowed that wherever he was, he would always return every summer for the fair. The play revolves around a strange encounter between Billy and the young heroine, Flo, and features a professional cast of six, with plenty of songs and powerful movement sequences; and we hope that following the success of our show 549: Scots Of The Spanish Civil War this will be our next really substantial mid-scale production.”

After eight years of operating on a project-to-project basis, Wonder Fools are still celebrating their promotion - in the recent Creative Scotland funding round - to regularly funded status, which will enable them to plan further ahead, and to develop more complex projects. For now, though, their focus is very much on The Kelton Hill Fair, and its premiere this weekend at the Theatre Royal, Dumfries - a venue well known to Robert Burns, who also appears in the play.

“Our initial work with the Dumfries and Galloway group included what we called a manifesto for a good night out at the theatre,” says Jack Nurse; “and we were struck by how rich their cultural frames of reference were - everything from Brigadoon to the Oscar-winning 2017 film Coco - and by their very high standards. When you can see world-class storytelling on your screen at any time, you’re not going to accept lower standards in a stage show. So we hope we’ve created a show that meets those high expectations; and one that might, with a bit of luck, go on from Dumfries and Glasgow to have a longer life, in theatres around Scotland.”

The Kelton Hill Fair is at Dumfries Theatre Royal, 21-22 March; and at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 25-29 March.