Show voiced in local language

I REFER to your review of Oyster Wars (June 26), which I felt on the whole to be very positive. However, as the person responsible for script development, I’d like to take issue with your reviewer’s assertion that the remit for the show was "teaching young people the varied and often difficult history of north Edinburgh".

I can assure Ms Cribbin that the remit was community-broad, as should be clear from the cast alone - age is not a restriction at either end of the scale, neither for participant, nor audience. And the history concerned stretches far beyond North Edinburgh.

Her subsequent comment is that the show is improperly "peppered with strong language". Now what constitutes a peppering for one may be barely a taste to another, but the issue of strong language generally is another more serious matter which we gave serious consideration to during workshop.

The feeling that art has a duty to "improve" was voiced and so too the view that art - especially community theatre - should truly represent the language of the people.

At the end of the scripting process, the text contained perhaps half a dozen words that your newspaper may require an asterisk or three in order to print.

Admittedly a few more crept in unexpectedly while the furnace of first night flamed. But this is not an apology. Indeed, speaking personally I would echo the words of that great contemporary Scottish poet and radical Tom Leonard, in saying that all living language is sacred.

RA Jamieson Archibald Place, Edinburgh