Free
The Storm Watchers
Film Duration: 40 mins
Director Gerda Stevenson
Film Editor James Alcock
Sound Designer Rob MacNeacail
Music Alasdair Nicolson
Additional filming
Fionn McArthur [Startpoint Media]
Cast Ann McTaggart
Iona MacLeod
Holly Sonabend
Vera Butler
Cally Bevan
Lorraine Giles
Dawn Copland
Eleanor Dean
Jane Partridge
Phyllis McLaughlin
Mike Partridge
Michael McLaughlin
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The play The Storm Watchers was originally written as a short piece to be part of a pageant in the late Sixites in Stromness. The work was later performed in its own right with some additions. A powerful and poetic piece, the drama presents the lives, anxieties, regrets, fears and memories of women as they they deal with the waiting and the aftermath of a storm with all their men at sea. Filmed in lockdown in Orkney this project has involved technology, remote rehearsal, mobile phone cameras and much more besides. In this year of Mackay Brown's 100th birthday, it brings to life one of his early but also most powerful pieces of theatre.
The creation of this film has been a triumph over difficult times with complex methods where the usual way would be simplicity itself. Filming has been done personally by many performers or by their partners and homes, garages and beaches have become film sets. Many have contributed to the end product and the Festival would like to pay tribute and thank all those named and un-named in the success of this project.