Matthew Short

Matthew Short

Dramaturgies of the Highlands: Narrativising heritage through theatre

Under current discourse within intangible cultural heritage, there is a lack of study on the role that dramaturgy plays in performance heritage and cultures. By focusing on the theatrical history and contemporary theatre practices of the Scottish Highlands, this study brings to light dramaturgies developed specifically in the Highland area that act as ways of narrativising heritage. 

The study picks out four compelling periods in Highland history to discover what performance heritages survive and how they have altered within current dramatic systems. Firstly, it shall examine the Royal Court of James IV and how Scottish theatre history shares common ground with much of Western Europe. By examining descriptions of court theatricals through this period and Rona Munro’s contemporary play “James IV: Queen of the Fight”, it highlights the cosmopolitan nature of Scottish drama, but a cosmopolitanism that excludes Gaelic communities. 

Secondly, by looking at the Royal Patent Theatres of the Victorian era, around the time of Balmoral’s purchase, this study examines the romanticisation of Highland culture within the theatre where Scottish “national” plays were often written by English men. Through analysing the dramaturgies of literary drama, it explores once more how Highland identity was constructed outside of the Highlands. 

Following this, the MRes examines the revivalist movement of cèilidh plays in the 1970s to see how new dramaturgies were created which altered the landscape of Scotland’s theatre and how these are structured within a more empathetic idea of Highland history. Finally, by examining contemporary Highland theatre companies, an ethnographic account of current dramaturgies will present the evolution of Highland theatre and the importance of seeing these within the intangible cultural heritage framework given a persistent history of suppression. 

Matthew is a full-time researcher based in Perth. He completed his MA in Applied Cultural Analysis at Lund University in 2020.

He is supervised by Professor Ullrich Kockel and Dr. Andrew Jennings