Quoyloo Quill

Thanks to Rachael McGill for providing this blog, bringing attention to the Stromness Plays Project. I’ve just run a couple of playwriting workshops in Stromness and Kirkwall, part of the Stromness Plays project I’m organising with the Stromness Drama Club. The idea of the project is for people to write a short play inspired by one of the themes discussed by the Stromness Debating Society, which ran from 1953 to 2012. My granddad was a founder member and my dad was one of the last secretaries. I was looking through the minutes, which Dad has now given to the Orkney Archives. They’re a funny, fascinating snapshot of Stromness people’s thoughts on issues since the 50s; everything from ‘Old Stromness is not worth preserving’ (1966), to ‘the experiment of democracy has failed’ (1995). I thought it would be fun to use these ideas as prompts for telling stories. I managed to get some funding through a Scottish Society of Playwrights (SSP) Fellowship, so the Stromness Plays project is now one