Theatre in Victorian Inverness

Stories of Scotland

Annie and Jenny

History, Places & Travel, Society & Culture

4.8 • 728 Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2019

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode brings a guest host, Sara Boussaikouk, who talks to us about Victorian theatres in Inverness. We read original documents found in the Highland Archive Centre which describe the venues and performers of the Northern Scottish theatre scene. We dip our toes into romanticisation of the Scottish Highlands through the Sir Walter Scott effect. This episode also looks into the life of a powerhouse of Scottish Theatre: actress and theatre manager Jessie Fraser. Get bonus content on Patreon

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Stories of Scotland, a podcast that looks at weird and wonderful stories of Scottish heritage and tries to figure out what they could mean in the modern day.
0:09.8	I'm Annie. I'm Jenny and I'm Sarah. Oh, hello, you're new. Yeah, I'm joining the podcast this week.
0:15.5	Excellent, welcome to the fort. So what stories are we looking at this week? So this week we'll be looking at Victorian
0:21.1	theatres in Inverness. Ooh fun. So I grew up in Inverness and I've always been really
0:25.8	interested in the arts and culture scene, but it feels like something that's always just been
0:29.4	emerging here, like we're trying to break new ground. But when we look into the archives, we see
0:34.0	that performers have been breaking new ground in Inverness throughout time.
0:49.3	All right, so this week we're going to take a trip back to the theatres of the 1840s and have a look at how the Highland stages reflect Highland life.
0:52.4	Marvelous. And I guess the theatre is a good lens for how we view the multiple identities
0:57.1	of Inverness, which has always been a mix of both the urban and the rural highlands, being one of
1:03.0	the centres for the industries and trade here. But I also find that the theatre shows us a wee
1:07.4	fantasy of the place as well. It's a kind of make-believe.
1:13.2	Aye. And Victorian Inverness has become a picture book for Romantic Scotland, but not all for happy reasons. So Victorian Inverness is
1:19.3	kind of a paradox for Scottish identity. We're seeing the emergence of the tourist industry that will
1:23.9	become the lifeblood at the town. However, we're also seeing the Highland people being forcibly removed from their land and their
1:29.4	communities torn apart.
1:30.6	Yeah, so the time that we're looking at, this is the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rising
1:35.7	and their final defeat at the Battle of Collodon.
1:38.4	The government's response to these uprisings was to ensure that Scotland would not rebel
1:42.4	again and they stamped down hard on Highland and clan culture,
1:46.0	banning the Gallic language and highland traditions.
1:49.0	On top of this, we see rural and agricultural communities of the Highlands
	...

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