00:00involvement came about? Well I met Frances four and a half years ago right at the start of lockdown
00:07and we were talking about doing something for theatre together and she came in with a story
00:14which I just found astonishing. I didn't know the story, I knew obviously about Lockerbie, everyone
00:21of my generation knew where they were on that night and I knew a little bit about the story
00:28but what Frances told me was something I'd kind of vaguely heard before about the laundry that
00:35was run by women and the intention was to pass back all the belongings of including the clothing
00:42and belongings of all the people who died in the air disaster but to pass it back with love rather
00:52just like handing things back they were they were washed and ironed sometimes repaired and handed
00:58back as a gift really and that had contrasted I think we discovered with the American families
01:05in the way that some of that was some of the post trauma was handled by some of the American
01:10authorities so they took this as a beautiful gesture and we sort of started from there that's
01:15how the story started and then we discovered that there were there were more acts of love you know
01:21there wasn't just the laundry there were other things that that the community in Lockerbie had
01:26done and it it just sort of I suppose snowballed from from there and I thought it was incredibly
01:34important story apart from anything else an incredibly moving story and I thought it lent
01:39itself to song I could immediately just you know hear songs. How many songs have have you written
01:45so far for this project and how many are going to be in the finals? Yeah well there's been quite a few
01:49written and some have been rewritten and some have been just you know sidelined the thing
01:55changes it changes obviously it's over the over the over the time that we work together but I
01:59think there's about nine or ten in the in the actual piece at the moment and some of them come
02:05and go a little bit as well so yeah I'm flexible on on that one and probably there's not probably
02:14a good answer on that one until it opens. Is it very different writing for theatre than writing
02:18for an album? It's a different task and you know lyrically it's a different task and I think
02:24musically it is as well because it's got to have something that not just one person can sing and I
02:29think it's yeah it's got to work it's it's just got to work in the context of the show and that's
02:37that's that's the important thing it's got to be true it's got to be true to to what the the
02:41narrative is at that point and it's got to feel like something which complements the mood of
02:48things at that point so if it jars it just it just won't work so it's you know it's it's just
02:53you're constantly learning but I've done it before and you learn on the job. There's obviously quite
03:02a big issue that the show is going to be tackling why do you think it's important that that the show
03:06is put on in Scotland next year? Well I think you know from my own experience Lockerbie cast a long
03:12shadow it was the biggest single terrorist act that's ever happened on the on the island of
03:19Great Britain apart from anything else and certainly in Scotland you know it's a huge story
03:24and I think that the more I've talked to other people about it the more I realise that all of us
03:28who who lived through that time all of us have a memory of it so for us it's probably like a
03:34JFK moment where were you that night when did you hear the news and did you know anyone and you know
03:40obviously people pass through pass by that town I mean on the way to England you it's there it's
03:46there you've got the motorway goes through through the town so it's it's it's a story that's got lots
03:50of connections for people and the more we talk to people the more I realised how many connections
03:55there are and I think the story tells our story tells us something about Scotland the way it
04:02reacted to the to the disaster the way it connected with America and the way human
04:09beings picked themselves up from the clearly the lowest point of their lives and and complete trauma
04:16as well and how do you how do you how do you address that how do you recover from it how do
04:22you move on how do you make sense of it all these things are questions I think small acts of love
04:29like would like to address and that's why I think it's important
04:38um small acts of love is about the small acts of love that the people of Lockerbie
04:44showed the um relatives of people who died in Pan Am 103 um so though there were many nationalities
04:52um of passengers on the plane we're focusing specifically on the American relatives
04:57in a kind of transatlantic story um of how the two communities were brought together
05:03in horrendous circumstances and forged incredible bonds of friendship and even romance tell us a
05:10little bit about how long you've been working on this show and the format it's going to take
05:15um Ricky and I started working on it um we we had our first coffee to to talk about a possible
05:21collaboration at the beginning of 2020 um and then um when the pandemic was raging that summer
05:29we were able to use the opportunity that that afforded us to have a lot of interviews we
05:35started with a lot of journalists and police who were at Lockerbie in the immediate aftermath of
05:40the atrocity and then from there opened out and were able to get access to a lot of the
05:46American families um and just found more everyone we spoke to put us in touch with another person
05:52until we were speaking to a lot of people who had had um direct experience and specifically
05:58had forged kind of family-like friendships together with um these two communities Lockerbie
06:05and um east coast of America and tell us a little bit about the kind of research you've done
06:09particularly with um you know the relatives of uh some of the victims in America yeah so um I mean
06:17we did you know I did tons of sort of reading around the subject before we started but the
06:22the the core of what the play is built on is is these series of conversations with um with people
06:30who lost children and partners um if through the atrocity so the play tells um it tells a number of
06:41these stories um and sort of has these kind of choral moments um where the um where the stories
06:49kind of come together and the similarities of the stories are played out um and so that yeah the risk
06:56part of the part of the process I decided kind of quite an early stage that because I had formed
07:02such a bond with these incredible um people who had died hearing stories about them and what some
07:08really amazing people um were lost because of that atrocity and because I wanted to honor those people
07:15and name them I realized quite early that actually um I didn't want to fictionalize the stories um
07:22and uh as a result I wanted to be able to represent those people and the family members
07:28so I've had to work very closely with the families to be sure that every step of the stage of
07:33development that they're happy with how they and their loved ones are being represented
07:37and there was a moment at which we um we shared a kind of quite developed version of the script
07:42and the number of the songs and a sort of film of some actors sort of um showing the way that
07:48the songs and the text interplay together um and I thought possibly we might have a few uh of the
07:55contributors who at that point didn't feel comfortable and that we might have to kind of
07:59pull out some narrative strands but luckily everyone that we'd spoken to was happy that they
08:04um happy with the intentions of the piece and excited by it and and we got everybody to agree
08:11to move forward with it which was an incredible sense of responsibility and privilege to be able
08:15to tell those stories. Would you be hoping if it proved successful in Scotland and you'd get an
08:19opportunity to take it to the United States? I mean I think that would be amazing I think that
08:24you know it's this is a transatlantic story where you know we're focusing on these small acts of
08:30love that the people of Lockerbie um showed those American relatives but I think the play is very
08:36much also about how open and resilient those relatives were I mean some of the most extraordinary
08:41people I've met so I think you know this is this is a story about both of those communities and
08:46it's wonderful uh to be able to open it here in Scotland but I think
08:50um it going to America would be feels right for this project.
09:01So the show tells the story of how uh the people a group of people in Lockerbie basically
09:10were forced to engage with that terrible moment in in 1988 and through their small acts of love
09:21created these extraordinary bonds of friendship and love with the families of the American victims
09:29of that night and and it looks at how over 35 years these group of people gradually got to
09:37know each other and how what the people of Lockerbie did whether it was uh collecting clothes
09:45ironing clothes um finding things finding belongings and sending them back how how these
09:53kind of uh through these actions these extraordinary um friendships grew from between two groups of
10:00people who before that night had absolutely nothing to do with each other. A lot of these
10:05friendships are they still enduring? Yeah absolutely absolutely they're still zoom calls
10:10that happen monthly between groups of people um Father Pat Keegan's who lived on Sherwood Crescent
10:16which was destroyed apart from his house um he has officiated at weddings um of family members of
10:25people who died um there was a a sort of beautiful romantic relationship that happened between um
10:34uh the uh the guy who found a guy who found uh a body and and got to know the mother of this person
10:44and they eventually fell in love so there's extraordinary um relationships that that echo
10:49out over time I guess. To what extent does this um the launch of the show for you to reopen the
10:57sits next year is that it's a kind of statement of intent from how you how you see this that's
11:02gone into the future? Yeah I think I think what it says is that um we are a theatre that isn't
11:10afraid of of of putting on large-scale bold imaginative pieces of of important drama it's not
11:18just uh revivals of Shakespeare plays but actually that we we are and maybe even more so with the new
11:25sits that that we are committed to working with writers and and creating new work uh and and big
11:34work and and important work so it feels important that that that it really reflects the ambition of
11:39the new building I think and this is a big Scottish story an important Scottish story
11:45um and and and it's exciting that and feels right that that it's the first show in the new building.
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