The artistic team at Fablevision spent six weeks to research the history of Castle Toward. It then allowed us to compare significant historical events; such as The Highland Clearances with events happening in Europe today. The performers had gained a great deal from this thought process whilst devising the performance.

After the research period we entered into a work shopping period with our cast of professional performers where we tried and tested the short stories that we had written, this was followed by a site visit to Castle Toward. Many of our actors had just completed award winning productions at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Edinburgh International Film Festival and were looking forward to working on such a high profile site-specific performance.

When we were happy with the text we began rehearsing -initially in The Fablevision rehearsal space and then in residence at Castle Toward. The director worked hard to make the links between the characters and the forward leaps in time in the piece. We covered a history of over 400 years in less than two hours! When we arrived in Argyll we began the youth workshops with over sixty local youngsters aged from 7 - 18. This was a rewarding process for both Fablevision and the participants as there is little provision of arts projects for young people in such rural areas like Toward. Some of the young people performed with the professional cast in the performance.

Further artistic partnerships were established when involved Dragonfire and our lighting design team. The finale of the performance was a celebration of the history and the movements of different people through the lands of Castle Toward and an optimistic vision of its future. We have had very positive feedback from participants, professional actors, local people and audience members. This was a very special night for the people of Argyll. It breathed fresh life into a place that had been forgotten about by its own neighbours .

The People

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