Director's Notes

Benjamin Twist, director of the production, writes about what Sunset Song means to him, why he chose to direct it and why he believes it has relevance seventy years after it was written.

I moved to Scotland when I was 19 and very quickly came across Sunset Song. It had an immediate effect on me and within months I had used part of the novel in a dramatised reading event I took part in. It continues to thrill me and I jumped at the chance to direct a production of the adaptation when it arose. However, I found myself asking why the story still seems important at the beginning of the 21st century. The last thing I wanted to do was direct a nostalgia piece. The society Lewis Grassic Gibbon writes about and the events that affect it are now part of history. How is this story still relevant?

Progress & change
Lewis Grassic Gibbon shows that life was hard in rural Scotland at the beginning of the 20th century, but he has strong views about ‘progress’. It is clear that the advent of the modern age after the First World War brings about the destruction of the type of close community that he and Chris Guthrie grew up in. But it is also clear from his writing that the life in that community could be described as ‘nasty, brutish and short’. It is perhaps unsurprising therefore that Grassic Gibbon’s view of the passing of this way of life is mixed. Chris Guthrie’s view sums up the important point: change happens, it cannot be avoided. She learns that she has to live with change, accept it and make the best of it. Change means that evils pass as well as good things and new evils as well as good things come to pass because of it.

Current relevance
This might be a good reason to look again at Sunset Song as we enter a new period in Scottish history. The First World War wrought great changes in British and Scottish life and society, although probably few understood this at the time.  In 2002 we are facing another set of changes, brought about by such diverse factors as the electronic/information technology revolution, the devolution of power to the Scottish Parliament, global warming, the BSE and Foot & Mouth crises and the movement of people and refugees around the world. These industrial, political, ecological and social revolutions may change Scottish society and life as much as those described in the book and the play. Telecommuting might encourage the re-population of rural Scotland. The Scottish Parliament might change the way politics works in Britain today. The ecological crises have already drastically affected farming and mining communities and may continue to affect us all in unforeseen ways. It is difficult to foresee the changes ahead, but what we can be sure of is that change will happen. 

Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s politics and philosophy
Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s view of ‘progress’ is connected to his politics. He was an ardent communist at a time when communism seemed to be a positive force in the world. In the late 1920s The Russian Revolution seemed to have succeeded, Fascism was rife in Western Europe and the capitalist countries were going through terrible economic troubles. Marxist communism accepts that societies do go through various stages before they become communist. Lewis Grassic Gibbon would have believed that the almost feudal system of landlord and tenant of the crofting society of North East Scotland would have had to change in order to bring about progress towards a fairer society. This may have involved the loss of some aspects of the lifestyle of the peasants, but it would have led to a better society overall.

Gibbon was also strongly influenced by the Diffusionists. This school of thought amongst anthropologists and sociologists considered human civilisation to have developed in the Nile valley in Egypt from the hunter-gatherer communities into communities based on agriculture – the growing of crops using the fertile flood plains of the great river. The Diffusionists believed this changed the nature of the free, small groups of people who led an easy and unfettered life roaming the countryside in search of just enough food to sustain them, without armies, religion or rules.  The development of agriculture meant that the people had territories to defend, static homelands that required maintenance and improvement, they needed rules to allow possession of land to be passed form one to another and so on.

The success of agriculture meant that populations grew. Armies became necessary to defend the land against other hungry groups, religion became necessary to control the home population and justify the new divisions that grew up. Class and wealth divisions became commonplace. The so-called civilisation of man had led to the fall from the golden age into an age of strife, difficulty and hard work. Gibbon relates the hard, relentless life of the Scottish peasant to this fall from a golden Scottish age – into a ‘civilisation’ with a dour church that oppresses the peasants, the terror of war that interrupts the normal way of life and class divisions where the few hold the many in thrall.

Conclusion
How Gibbon reconciles his diffusionism with his communism is hard to untangle and it leads to some interesting struggles on his part in Sunset Song. But it is possible to see both strands in his work and they contribute to the rich and not totally consistent attitudes he has to the lives and values of Chris Guthrie and others. At any rate it is clear that he felt that change was necessary and inevitable. Far from being a Scottish nationalist, or bemoaning the loss of the way of life of the smallholders of Kinraddie, Gibbon seems to embrace change, even though he is lucidly sharp sighted about the pain of the process.

Sunset Song perhaps indicates a way to view change: Chris Guthrie survives because she accepts change. She fights to ensure that the best outcome is found in the changing world, but she doesn’t try to stop change happening. Contrasted with this is perhaps Long Rob Duncan, who is finally unable to accept the change that the war has wrought upon his world. I believe that when he decides to enlist and go to war, it is because Rob knows that his world has changed forever, he cannot live his old life in the new one, and he chooses to die rather than fit uncomfortably in it.  

Preparing for the production I also realised that the most important reason for working on Sunset Song is simpler. It is a great story. It has enormous emotional impact and characters that get under your skin and seem wholly real. The central story of Chris Guthrie growing up from a girl into a woman is a story that is in some basic way important and true and still has the effect on me that it had when I first read it. It bears retelling time and time again. Like any great story or indeed great song, it has new resonance each time it is heard afresh.

Benjamin Twist
© 2002

Part  1: Director's Notes
Part  2: Producing the play

• Collaboration and the adaptation
• Ensemble playing
• Work & Community
• Design and setting
• Language
• Music and song