A NEW exhibition is to pay homage to Scotland’s untold Black history and a forgotten connection to William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Aiming to shine a light on Black and Black LGBTQ excellence in Scottish performance, it will be shown at the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) in Edinburgh from this weekend until October 2.
The art and moving image exhibition has been filmed at Puck’s Glen in Dunoon, named after Shakespeare’s mischievous fairy, and Stirling Castle because of a performance staged there for King James VI of Scotland and his family in 1594.
Part of the performance was to include a lion pulling a chariot through the Great Hall but the plan was abandoned and the lion removed after organisers became concerned it would scare the audience.
An unnamed Black man pulled the chariot instead, one of a number of Black people who featured in performances at the Scottish court.
One year later, and possibly inspired by this event, William Shakespeare included a joke about royals being scared by a performance featuring a lion in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The new exhibition, called OMOS, aims to celebrate Black performers and has been created collaboratively by a group of award-winning Black artists, with performance styles ranging from the drag art scene to mezzo-soprano singing.
Throughout the moving image artwork, they perform in Puck’s Glen and Stirling Castle but instead of replicating the past, they make their own choices.
Project lead artist Rhys Hollis said they hoped it would widen understanding of Black people’s role in performance history in the UK.
“The event where a Black person replaced a lion highlights the derogatory treatment of Black bodies historically,” they said. “This is paralleled in the way in which Black actors are often cast in the theatre and the media today, presented as bestial or just through tokenism.
“I see this project as a form of taking back power by highlighting the Black excellence of performers in Scotland. The performers take up space on their own terms, celebrating the lineage of Black people in the UK and our brilliance and creativity.”
OMOS also features opera singer Andrea Baker, dancer Divine Tasinda and pole artist Kheanna Walker. Each artist brings their unique skills and perspective to create a solo performance for the film, a work that both draws from the past and looks to the future.
“Projects that tell Black, Scotland-based stories are still too much a rarity,” said Creative Scotland’s head of theatre, Laura Mackenzie Stuart.
“OMOS combines the opportunity to reveal aspects of this history and to shine a light on a little known Scottish connection with one of Shakespeare’s best known plays.”
Produced by Scottish art and theatre makers Pollyanna, the exhibition features the new artwork on a looped projection on a large screen, with viewers able to experience it throughout each of the galleries’ opening hours.
The exhibition will be accompanied by workshops and talks about the project themes of cabaret and performance, and Scottish Black history and identity.
It moves to Stirling Castle at the beginning of October and will run there until December 7.
