ANGUS MCPHEE - Weaver of Grass


ANGUS MCPHEE or MACPHEE was a crofter from Uist who spent almost 50 years in a Highland psychiatric hospital. During this time he chose not to speak - instead he wove a series of incredible costumes out of grass. These he hung on trees in the hospital grounds.

This blog follows the progress of HORSE + BAMBOO THEATRE as they develop and tour a show about Angus....

Wednesday 18 April 2012

More grass boots and a cat



The upper photograph (courtesy of Joanne B Kaar) is the contents of the package Joanne sent me two blogs ago. The lower one, also by Joanne, is a replica of Angus MacPhee's boots made for exhibition at the Art Extraordinary Gallery in Pittenweem.  Joanne will be making similar boots to go on show at the Morven Gallery on the island of Lewis. Both these exhibitions will coincide with our visit with the Horse + Bamboo production of Angus MacPhee; Weaver of Grass.

Today Joanne agreed to make yet another replica for the show - of Angus's cat. In a rewrite of the puppet scenes we decided to change some of the emphasis in our script and represent Joyce Laing, the art therapist who 'discovered' Angus and his work at Craig Dunain in the 1970s, as a masked character. Scripts go back and forth in this way - a masked Joyce was my original idea; then it changed to representing her as a table-top puppet; now we're back to the mask idea. In the course of this we felt the grass cat, made by Angus to represent a cat he adopted at the hospital, should make an appearance.


2 comments:

  1. This blog is amazing, what a great story! I look forward to following the progress.

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