Fringe First award for Inverness playwright at the Edinburgh Festival
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An Inverness playwright has won a Fringe First for his play Everything Under The Sun, performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Jack MacGregor picked up the award when the play Everything Under the Sun – focused on Mali, the country's search for a future, peace and the role of the UN there – was announced as a winner. Last year he made his debut at the Fringe when Highland-based Dogstar Theatre Company presented his earlier play Nightlands.
Jack said this week: "It was a complete surprise and came as a real shock! But last Wednesday we found out that we had won it.
"It is a big moment and it is exciting.
"I’m a young guy from Inverness, I went to Culloden Academy and UHI, it’s the kind of thing that happens to other people!"
Asked if winning a Fringe First is a life-changing award to win for a young playwright, the 26-year-old said: “It’s a really beautiful thing to have happen because at university, everyone tells you how tough it is going to be out there and when you go out into the real world, it is actually tougher!
"You are knocking on every door in the country and around the world and you are applying for everything and you get ‘No’ so many times.
"For me last year a breakthrough was doing my play Nightlands at the Fringe with the Dogstar Theatre Company from the Highlands and it picked up an award."
Returning to how it felt to win this year, Jack said: "I felt a strong sense of artistic survivor’s guilt because I am surrounded by people in my generation out of university in the past few years and after the pandemic who are incredibly talented, who work so hard and whose work I admire immensely and there are not opportunities, let alone awards, so everyone can be gainfully employed .
"Of my class at university, I am the only one still in the industry. It’s just the way it is.
“And I’d like to say that it’s an award I got, but it’s not fair to say that I got it.
"When I was up there getting the award, I made sure I thanked everyone who was involved, it is a team thing.
"There is a really nice quote within the play, a saying from Mali – It takes more than one finger to lift a stone. That's is very true of life and the theatre.
“And I wouldn’t be here if my drama teacher at Culloden Academy Miss Van Exan hadn't told me I could do anything and inspired me to be a writer! And Miss Wallace too."
The play was commissioned by Army @ The Fringe's Drill Hall, Hepburn House, an army reserve centre in Edinburgh which was turned into a theatre for the festival. It is normally the home of 6SCOTS, an army reserve battalion that is part of the Royal Regiment of Scotland.
The Army also helped Jack during his research process, arranging interviews with soldiers involved in planning and delivering peacekeeping operations. Jack also visited 7SCOTS C Company HQ in Gordonville Road Inverness to chat to some soldiers with operational experience there as part of his research for the play.
In 2019, Jack completed a BA(Hons) in drama and performance at the University of the Highlands & Islands and in 2021, Jack graduated with an MRes in creative practice (playwriting), the first drama-specific postgraduate degree at UHI.
In the past, Jack has created work for Scottish Youth Theatre, British Council, and Highland Youth Arts Hub and he was a shortlisted finalist for the St Andrews Playwright Award (2022).
He also produced new work for the COP26 climate summit (Amnesty, CCA Glasgow).
And Jack has worked with Highland-based Dogstar Theatre Company before. He wrote and directed Nightlands – a play about Russia – for the Edinburgh Fringe at Summerhall produced by the company last year.
Everything Under the Sun was produced by O’Neill/Ross which produces Army@The Fringe, and are based in the Northeast, working between Dornoch and Aberdeen.
Talking about being commissioned by Army @The Fringe with his latest play and being critical of military operations in Mali, Jack told The Skinny magazine in an interview before the run of the play: "The play doesn’t pull any punches. Army@TheFringe allowed me to interview service members, some served in Mali, or were involved in the United Nations more broadly. The shadow of Iraq and Afghanistan frames British understanding of the deployment in Mali, that’s a big part of the story."
Last year with Nightlands Jack won the venue Summerhall's Lustrum Award.
A theatre in Zurich is now putting on a production of Nightlands which will see the playwright there in September for his first international work.
The Scotsman's Fringe First awards are the oldest at the Fringe, it's the 50th anniversary this year. Launched in 1973, the awards are given to recognise new writing making its debut at the Fringe, and giving audiences a heads up on must-see writing.
On Wednesday, the Scottish Arts Club named Everything Under The Sun as best Scottish production at the Fringe with the Leading Light Award which Jack accepted with the play's producers.
