Writer Alan acts up
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WITH his new book Pack Men following the manly story of a group of Rangers fans going to the 2008 UEFA cup final in Manchester, it’s good to see Alan Bissett balancing things up.
When he appears at the Black Isle Words Festival on Saturday, Alan will not only be reading from Pack Men, he’ll also be playing a woman with a taste for Peach schnapps and kestrel in a scene from his one-woman, yes, woman show The Moira Monologues.
Bissett came up with the character almost by accident.
"She’s based on a lot of women in our family. They’re great talkers and storytellers and wonderful performers in their own living-room.
"I found myself writing in that voice for a performance piece and I thought I’d get a woman to play her.
"But I tried it out myself at open mike nights and got a great response. I wanted her to feel 3D. And though I wanted there to be comedy, I wanted her to feel real and to have the same depth of emotion as a real person."
Though Alan says he is not a football fan himself, in Pack Men he taps into the importance it has, particularly in Scotland and with the sectarianism that goes hand in hand with supporting Rangers or Celtic.
"I think if you’re Scottish and male, football is impossible to avoid.
"For me there’s an attraction and a repulsion to the pack mentality."
With Alan now on the Pack Men promotion trail, he’s looking at working on two new plays and the next novel.
"In the new year there will be another novel project. But at the end of the promotion, there’s a completely blank page – and I haven’t ruined it yet and at the beginning you are still so full of hope.
"But I’d like to write about the English experience of living in Scotland."
Though he’s moved away from home town Falkirk, Alan still writes about it.
"I still write from that place – my most formative years were spent there and it’s a place I still ‘feel’. "
Though he’s written Death Of A Ladies Man set in Glasgow, Alan says he wouldn’t even attempt to write in a Castlemilk or Dundee dialect.
"I most naturally express myself in that Falkirk dialect," he said.
"And people who live in Falkirk have just as much drama in their lives as people do anywhere else.
"It’s easier for me than writing as a single mother growing up in Brooklyn!"
Highland Freetime sets him that task as a challenge.
And with Moira aka Alan about to unveil herself at the Black Isle Words Festival, with a mere change of sex and continent involved, you wouldn’t rule it out.
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Alan is at the festival in Cromarty Training Centre, Old Brewery at 7.30pm on Saturday. For more festival details go to www.blackislewords.co.uk and for more about Alan, go to his website www.alanbissett.com
