Skraelings Theatre Company in "The Sea Between Us"

25th May 2013

Lyth Arts Centre
2n June 2013
Time: 15:00:00
Location: Lyth Arts Centre
Length: 60 mins
Age suitability : 14+

Talented young Thurso stage director Iain Macdonald brings us an interesting two-hander which explores a familiar dilemma - the father who wants to maintain an established rural life-style and the son who wants to leave and embrace the urban future. However this is a new play by Sólveig Jónsdóttir, set in her native Iceland. Iain has directed the piece and it is performed by Andrew Rothney and John McColl.

Morten, a young man, is packing in his room, preparing to move out of his childhood home where he was raised by his grandparents. He is not only leaving the house, he is also leaving his seaside village and heading to the capital, much to his grandfather, Ymir's, dismay. Morten sees no future in the little village. The factory has just been closed down and the village itself is in the course of gradually disappearing with the young people leaving and not returning. Ymir comes into Morten's room and asks him to stay.

It's an ideological struggle between the generations, personified in the two men - the struggle between your duties and responsibilities to those who have come before you. Wanting to make the most of your life and potentials and objecting being held back by what seems to be nothing more than hopeless tradition; not wanting to take part in dwelling in the past with all its pain and tragedies. Throughout the conversation, events from the past that have been left unresolved are brought up as a last resort of reasoning from both parties. What made you who you are? What are you going to become? In the hope of bringing someone closer to you, do you have to let them go?

"I don‘t want to stay here another winter. The snow finds us. The storm screams at us. I‘m not having it any longer. I can‘t move the mountains but I can move myself. So I will."

"The times didn‘t change in this place, in this country, for years, decades. Now...things happen too fast. I can‘t keep up. And it makes me feel old. Old and useless"

Skraelings Theatre Company
This play is made possible by Play Pieces 2013
http://www.playpieces.co.uk/index.html