Michael Cox speaks with Lewis Hetherington about his latest two plays and political theatre.
“That is what is amazing… as angry as these people are… they are expressing themselves creatively.” So says playwright Lewis Hetherington in speaking about his latest work: the adaptation of The Archivist and Instructions for a Butterfly Collector as part of A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland.
Both plays come from Theatre for Identity, a theatrical movement from Argentina that mixes personal stories with harsh political realities. In The Archivist, the main character learns that the family who raised her weren’t her birth family. In Butterfly Collector, the main character is aware of the actions committed against her family by the dictatorship but must still confront her feelings and her past. “Whilst [the plays] are born out of a really turbulent time, they are full of passion, energy and life. They are not morose or relentlessly bleak. They are tough and really tragic in their stories… but they are full of hope.”
To better understand the context of the original plays, Hetherington took it upon himself to learn about Argentina’s political past. Through his research, he learned about many disturbing events that would haunt him and influence his work, including the stories of how people were blindfolded, taken into helicopters, flown out to the middle of the sea and then dropped. He also discovered a website of photographs of disappeared people, a site he found heartbreaking. In speaking about the website, Hetherington said, “[The pictures are] all they’ve got left. They have all literally disappeared off the streets.”
Hetherington chose to keep both plays in their Argentine location. “Theatre for Identity is particularly Argentinean… I didn’t want to relocate it to Scotland, I thought I could open it and keep it distinctly Argentinean, whilst hopefully making it universal enough… that is why I keep going on about the human stories…” While the cast are made up of English, Scottish and Irish actors speaking in their own dialects, all of the names have remained original—making the production more of a “theatrical presentation” than plays primarily set in South America.
Hetherington believes that they are a timely reminder of what is happening in places like the Middle East today. After all, “complex injustices” and “problematic regimes” are not only South American phenomena. He sees great potential in theatre being used as a way “to acknowledge that we all exist in a political sphere.” However, at the heart of political theatre, and Theatre for Identity, lies the human experience, for with all of the atrocities being committed, Hetherington finds it vital for the people to find a way to “bear witness” and “to make their stories and their voices heard.”
The plays have concluded their run at Oran Mor but perform at the Traverse until Saturday, February 26.
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