Quango’s £9,000 for a play tackling plight of the ginger
IT is a prejudice that sees people targeted si mply because of the colour of their hair.
But now a show designed to tackle the abuse suffered by those with ginger locks is to be staged in Scotland, which has the highest percentage of redheads in the world.
REaD is written and performed by an exclusively redheaded cast f r om Glasgow- based t heatre company Tidy Carnage and will have its premiere tonight at the city’s Mayfest festival.
Around one in ten Scots has red hair, including Karen Gillan, who starred as assistant Amy Pond in Doctor Who, and Rose Leslie, who played Ygritte in hit TV drama Game of Thrones.
REaD’s two-night run at the Tron received £8,885 funding from arts quango Creative Scotland. It is described as: ‘A show that’s part support group, part hair salon, part knitting circle, part catwalk and part political rally, REaD is a celebration of individuality, resilience – and the sheer joy of having red hair.
‘REaD is frank anecdotes, defiant battle cries, honesty, anger, music, dance, and laughter, lots of laugh- ter – all spiced up with cuttingedge performance poetry that sears to the heart of the redhead experience.’
Director Allie Butler wrote in her blog: ‘The REaD story began as simply an idea for a show about being a curly-haired redhead.
‘The [cast of] pre-Raphaelite women exchanged anecdotes and compared stories about their personal experiences as a redhead. These real-life tales ranged from t he hil ari ous to t he heartbreaking.’
Social worker Donna Strachan, who runs confidence- boosting workshops, called Ingingerness, in Scottish schools, praised the initiative.
She said: ‘I support anyone doing anything which helps to end the prejudice some redheads suffer. I want the next generation to see ginger as a cool thing, as a strength, rather than something you get teased for.
‘I don’t go into campaigning to make it as big an issue as racism, but I think it is on the spectrum. You shouldn’t be teased f or anything you are born with. It does have parallels.’
A s pokesman f or Creative Scotland said yesterday: ‘REaD is a joyful and unapologetic celebration of difference and a playful evocation of the politics of being a red-haired woman in contemporary Scotland.
‘Allie Butler and her team began to collate personal anecdotes, folklore surrounding red hair, traditional music, dance and performance poetry and used these as the foundation to explore notions of femininity, identity and sense of self.
‘Allie Butler’s application for support for REaD followed highly positive feedback.’
Experts believe that Scotland’s gloomy climate has led to red hair emerging as a genetic adaptation to help exploit rare sunny days and boost the body’s production of vitamin D.
In Scotland, an estimated 10 per cent of the population have red hair and approximately 35 per cent carry the recessive redhead gene.
In October 2010, former Labour equality minister Harriet Harman had to apologise after describing Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander as a ‘ginger rodent’.
A year earlier, supermarket giant Tesco was forced to withdraw a Christmas card which featured the image of a child with red hair sitting on Santa’s lap and the words: ‘Santa loves all kids. Even ginger ones.’
In September 2011, Cryos International, one of the world’s largest sperm banks, announced that it would no longer accept donations from red-haired men because of the low demand from women seeking artificial insemination.
‘Parallels with racism’