WOULD you travel 1500 miles to fight for a cause you believe in? Well, that’s what 549 Scots did in 1936 as they took it upon themselves to battle the rise of fascism in Spain.
The Scots joined more than 2000 of their comrades throughout the UK to form the anti-fascist International Brigade.
Now hit play 549: Scots Of The Spanish Civil War takes a closer look at four Prestonpans miners who made the epic journey and what that tells us about our modern life.
Robbie Gordon (below left) and Jack Nurse (right), the two creators of the play and founders of theatre company Wonder Fools, are preparing to take the show on a tour of Scotland.
The pair, who met as students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, told the Sunday National it was a tale of real working-class super-heroes – George Watters, Jimmy Kempton, Jock Gilmour and Bill Dickson – that inspired the play.
“My granddad told me a story about four guys from my hometown Prestonpans who went to fight in the Spanish Civil War,” said Gordon.
“A lot of these guys fundamentally believed if they could stop the fascists overthrowing the left-wing government in Spain, they could save the world and stop the Second World War from breaking out. It’s like one of these superhero films we’ve all been obsessed with watching for the last 20 years.
“We’d been a theatre company for a few years, and we’re really interested in real people’s stories.
“And that’s the way we do everything. We work with real people.”
The friends loved the story and wanted to write about it, but realised no-one was alive in Scotland who had fought in the Spanish Civil War. So they set out to find the families of the men who made that journey.
Nurse explained: “We got a phone book, and we looked for the surnames of the four family members. We rang the 50 or 60 names, and we asked if they were related.
“Most people didn’t know what we were talking about, but some got back to us, and that started a ripple effect.
“We spent 18 months on and off visiting Prestonpans, meeting family members of the men for cups of tea, lunch and even pints in the pub where the four guys used to drink.”
At that point, Gordon and Nurse crafted a first draft to perform at Prestonpans Labour Club. They had invited 20 family members who had helped them with the story and were shocked when more than 100 people turned up for the show.
“That was the first time for us that we realised how special a story it was and the significance of it to the local community,” he said. “It’s one thing to tell an interesting historical tale, but the other half of 549 is its relevance to modern life in the UK.”
The actors had initially planned for it to be a retelling of the epic journey but after each performance found the audience chatting about how it related to the state of the country today.
“It’s a happy accident,” Gordon said. “We wrote a historical play initially, but when we shared it to those family members in the pub and everyone chatted about the modern day, at the end, we distilled that into the play. Sadly, I don’t think this play has ever been more relevant, with major conflicts going on, a cost of living crisis, and unions fighting back against an ultra-right-wing government.”
The mainstage tour will be followed by a rural tour, going to local town halls across the country.
For Gordon and Nurse, it’s important their show is brought to places theatre companies might not often go to. That’s fuelled by their own experiences in rural towns – Nurse explained how his own path into the arts collapsed after his local Dumfries and Galloway theatre shut.
Both are on a mission to change that path from sliding any further back into the realms of exclusivity, as they’ve made accessibility to their shows a fundamental part of the Wonder Fools ethos.
With free school shows and performances in a variety of civic spaces alongside traditional theatres, Wonder Fools have stretched themselves the length and breadth of Scotland to reach as many people as possible.
For too long, theatre has been seen as something for a certain type of people, Nurse explained. That’s why Wonder Fools take their plays to such a large variety of places. From pubs to libraries, to schools and theatres, the pair say they will play on anything that’s got a floor.
“We want to tell stories that directly relate to people’s lived experience,” Nurse added.
