Supporting new writing from the community by John McEwen

One of the most impressive things about DunsPlayFest these past few years has been the number and quality of new plays written and presented by local people. While this is a festival with limitless ambition regarding the quality of professional work it aspires to attract from all corners of Scotland and beyond, DunsPlayFest will never forget its roots in the community and is delighted that its very existence has proved so encouraging to the aspiring playwrights of Duns and district. A perhaps surprising number of people cherish a quiet ambition to write a play but when there is a very real possibility that the play you write will be read, rehearsed, performed, even given a full production, that ambition can grow wings and prepare to fly.

And so it has proved at DunsPlayFest which will always take place at the beginning of May, when the world outside reflects the tingling, slightly nervous beauty and wonder of what the festival has to offer. Ambition is all very well – the courage required to fulfil that ambition is an absolute necessity which is why the encouragement provided by the sheer presence of DunsPlayFest, and by such ever-supportive luminaries as our phenomenal producer, Sara Best, can prove so crucial. But the courage – that most important virtue for without it none of the other virtues can be expressed – belongs to the creators themselves.

This quality has perhaps been most amply demonstrated in Duns’ recent history by a remarkable young gentleman, Jamie Mein, who has since 2024 produced a wonderfully entertaining trilogy of plays based in The Red Lion pub in Chirnside, centred around characters first encountered in that other triumphant local production, Jim Clark: The Musical by Gordon playwright Alex Watson with music by Allanbank maestro Mike Hardy. Jamie’s plays (The Red Lion, The Red Lion Strikes Back and The Red Lion: The Final Chapter), with their couthy themes and closely observed characters from the 1960s and gentle humour, might not have been expected from a writer who has even now not yet finished school, but you can never be too confident predicting what might emerge from the pensmiths of Duns.

While historical dramas (often produced in collaboration with The Wilson’s Tales Project) have probably predominated among local produce in the seven iterations (one on-line) of DunsPlayFest, the playwrights have ranged widely for their subject matter – from Duns-based comedy romps by the late great Bob Noble and by Berwickshire hero Peter Lerpiniere, to meditations on murder, Scottish Literature, the devil, cot death, homosexuality, violence against women, suicide, madness, delusion and – inevitably – the peculiar current President of the United States, Duns playwrights have proved themselves unafraid to tackle any challenging subject.

And, every year, the plays are getting better and the productions tighter. Inspired by such top professional shows as those put on at the festival by, say, Firebrand, John Nichol and Shark Bait, Duns playwrights continue to up their game and exhort their actors (sometimes, admittedly, given insufficient time) to up theirs.

It was the ambition of Duns Players – which has always concentrated on classics and new writing – which gave rise to DunsPlayFest in the first place - when writing workshops, by Firebrand and by Playwrights Studio Scotland, gave rise to three new plays which Duns Players determined to present – so it is only fitting that this extraordinary troupe should continue to provide the bed-rock (six or seven shows in each of the last few years) of the festival.

Having just put on a barn-storming production of The Tempest, Duns Players will shortly be presenting MAIR WAUR!, a show which comprises nine short dramas about Berwickshire at war through the ages, each drama written by a local playwright not all of whom have had their work featured at DunsPlayFest. It is possible that this show will figure in “DunsPlayFest on tour” when, in the month before the festival, we take a mini version of a DunsPlayFest evening (a play, a film, some music, hot food and a bar) to village halls throughout Berwickshire. These have included Longformacus, Gavinton, Abbey St Bathans and Cockburnspath, as we seek to spread the word about the wonders and delights and challenges of theatre to a county which – lamentably - has no theatre.

DunsPlayFest is nothing if not determined to encourage and inspire, with a particular emphasis on getting the young involved, either as participants at our Free Family Day which happens every year at Duns Castle, or as interns, working mighty hard and learning lots while assisting our top-class tech crew. But the greatest encouragement we can give is simply to be there, to be open to possibilities, to welcome new writing at all stages of development. And it seems, from the evidence of Duns playwrights’ response to our presence, that something about this approach is working.