Brought together by their studies at UHI, Gracie Davie and Marit Schöpel combine theatre and music performance in their new play.
Gracie Davie and Marit Schöpel didn’t enroll at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) expecting to create a play together.
In fact, For the Sea and Sky, which was performed in South Uist’s Cnoc Soilleir this week, came about almost by accident.
“I had a play on up in Dublin,” says Gracie. “And I wanted to practice it with people here, so we did a read-through.”
“We all had quite a lot of fun with it, so we’re like, ‘Oh, let’s see if we can do something like this between us.'”
“It came naturally,” Marit says.
‘Built-in space for music’
The result was a performance that combines Gracie’s playwriting with Marit’s musical compositions.
“The text has built-in space for music,” Gracie says.
And it’s a space that Marit has used to create a unique listening experience.
“There’s only one composed piece in the whole play,” Marit says. “The rest is improvised.”
While she directs the improvisation, “it’s not written on a sheet”.
A modern take on a classic poem
The play takes inspiration from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Like Coleridge’s work, For the Sea and Sky tells the story of a disaster caused by killing an albatross.
But, rather than a crossbow, it’s humanity’s pollution of the ocean that strikes the killing blow.
Concern for the environment formed “one of the starting points” for the play, Marit says.
“We said from the beginning, we want to do a play about endangered birds. Yes, there are lots of oystercatchers [here], but oystercatchers are actually an endangered species. Northern gannets as well, arctic terns as well.”
The play raised donations for the RSPB.
“Before I came here, I studied geography,” Marit says. “So I’m interested in writing things tied to the environment.”
Opened in 2022, Cnoc Soilleir serves as both a venue for community arts events and study space for UHI students.
And it’s performances like these that highlight the importance of places like Cnoc Soilleir, says Catherine Yeatman, a local artist and the building’s project manager.
‘A real advocation’ for in-person learning
“It’s a real advocation for having students [learn] in-person,” she says. “Gracie and Marit had a conversation over a cup of coffee […] and it came together from that sort of ad hoc thing.”
Friends and staff members were soon “roped in” – including Catherine herself.
“I leant them some books, and talked to them, and apparently I talked so enthusiastically that they said, ‘would you be in it?'” She remembers.
This led to her using her own past artwork to complete the staging: a life-size albatross sketch and a sculpture modeling the seabird out of plastic waste.
“That’s kind of how it came together,” she says.
For Catherine, the importance of places like Cnoc Soilleir is more than the people students will meet – it’s also the landscapes they become part of.
“That deep conservation message wouldn’t have been there in quite the same way, with the same force, I think, if they weren’t here.”
More local reporting from the Western Isles:
Conversation