The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Spectacular outdoor shows on horizon
Lunan Bay is set to host a series of spectacular outdoor shows next month as part of the celebrations for Arbroath 2020+1. Jennifer McLaren discovers how the production has come together
As soon as Angus Farquhar saw Lunan Bay for the first time, he was immediately under its spell. “I arrived at Lunan and completely fell in love with it. And that led to a year of really extraordinary research,” he reflects. “The rocky landscape north of Arbroath is world-class – amazing geology and amazing relationship between landscape and sea scape. That’s been one of the joys for me; just getting to know this neck of the woods.”
Framed by low cliffs to the north and south, Lunan Bay is located near Inverkeilor, between Arbroath and Montrose.
The stunning Angus beach and dunes will play host to large-scale outdoor performance Over Lunan between September 9 and 19 as part of the delayed Arbroath 2020+1 Festival celebrations.
Angus is creative director of Aproxima Arts – the team behind the production, which has already been postponed three times due to the pandemic.
Now, he says, finally it’s the right time for Over Lunan to happen. And the public certainly agrees. Tickets for the atmospheric sound and light show went on sale at the end of June and the entire run is now sold out.
Angus explains: “It’s two years in total. I think it’s three times we’ve had to delay it. It’s the right moment… it feels like a safe time to do something outside.”
Over Lunan was commissioned by Hospitalfield and Arbroath 2020 as part of the 700th celebrations of the Declaration of Arbroath.
Angus explains: “We’ve taken quite a careful line. We’re doing 50 tickets, and it’s one of the biggest dune areas in the UK. We’re very confident people will feel relaxed and have plenty space to move around.”
Angus grew up in Aberdeenshire before moving south of Edinburgh with his family. While his work has taken him to many landscapes, he had never visited Lunan Bay before.
“I think Angus keeps its secrets hidden sometimes,” he says.
He has spent three decades working in performance, environmental installation
IT’S ALL ABOUT COMING WITH AN OPEN MIND AND FINDING OUT WHAT WE HAVE DISCOVERED
– often set in remote locations – and music production.
Along with Cameron Sinclair, he formed the band and experimental sound collective Second Citizen in 2018. He’s also an honorary fellow at Glasgow University.
Angus was founder and creative director of Glasgow-based arts charity NVA organisation, from its inception in 1992 until it closed in 2018. NVA became known for producing unusual, dynamic events, festivals and arts installations in unusual locations.
Over the years, commissions have included monumental landscape animations such as The Path, in Glen Lyon, The Storr on the Isle of Skye and Speed of Light in Edinburgh.
He also re-initiated the Beltane Fire Festival in Edinburgh in 1988, which is held every April 30 to celebrate the coming of spring.
Describing what audiences can expect, Angus says: “It’s an unusual piece. If you know NVA’s work, which was really visual and very large-scale, this work is a little bit more intimate and there’s quite a strong narrative thread running through it, which is new for me.
“I’ve been working with an amazing director and writer based in Belgium called Purni Morell.”
Over Lunan has taken Angus and his team on a 3,000-year journey from the shores of Lunan Bay to the ancient world of Mesopotamia.
The perfect crescent of the bay will soon become the sonic arena for the powerful environmental artwork uncovering ancient stories running deep in the history and mythology of both cultures.
Exploring tales that are all connected in some way by the sea, it takes in subjects such as local history, ancient myths, floods and a catastrophic mega-tsunami, right up to modern-day stories of people who continue to flee war in Syria.
Thousands of years ago, the UK’s coastlines were shaped by cataclysmic events. In Mesopotamia too, mythical floods gave rise to creation stories of the Apkallu – half-fish, half-human sages who emerged from the sea to bring knowledge to those living on land.
Thousands of years later, those same lands lie decimated by war while the world’s oceans rise. What might the Apkallu say if they returned?
The Over Lunan team includes Angus Farquhar’s long-term collaborator designer James Johnson and filmmaker Michael Hunter.
The cast features Scottish actor Robin Laing, whose credits include the Spielberg and Hanks-created Band of Brothers series.
Soundscape is also a key element of the production and musicians and composers also form part of the creative team.
Andrew Knight-Hill has written and composed choral sketches, written in Akkadian and performed by the St Salvator’s Chapel Choir based at St Andrews University.
The concept and script for Over Lunan have been informed by two experts: Professor Martin Worthington, head of Assyriology at University of Cambridge and Professor Nathan Wasserman who specialises in flood mythology studies at Berlin and Jerusalem Universities.
Angus says: “I look at locations and I begin to find out what their story is. What I found out has become the story of this piece.
“The first thing I did was to look at the name Lunan and Luna, the moon goddess from Roman times, and we went back further in time and discovered the name Lu-Nanna appears in ancient Mesopotamian culture.”
During his research, Angus also spoke to Scottish author Duncan Lunan, known for specialising in science fiction and astronomy: “He says the name comes from a very ancient line going back through ancient times to this amazing character called Lu-Nanna who was basically a sage (half-man, half-fish) who walked out of the sea.
“You’ve got to imagine this was a time in pre-Bible days and it’s the very first creation myths that were at the start of what we would call Western civilisation.
“The idea was these amazing sage figures walked out of the sea and brought the knowledge of architecture, astrology, astronomy, law – all of what we would think of as the basis of civilised society.
“I was completely fascinated by the idea that these came from the sea. This is a very different way of thinking about the sea.
“One of the strongest mythologies running through Mesopotamian culture was that of floods and rising water and from that I found out about the Storegga Slide tsunami.
“It was the largest tidal wave to hit Britain in 50,000 years. Basically, this huge landmass fell off the cliff face of the western seaboard of Norway and set a wave going 80-feet high. When it hit Shetland, it was travelling at 60mph.
“When it hit the north-east coast of Scotland, it drove some of the contents of the shore up to 18 to 20km inland. It’s unimaginable how much force it came with. It decimated everything.
“So we’re beginning to weave together different elements linked to this coastline.
The third element we looked at was that, of course, flooding today means climate change. The fragility of the world now.
“And this romantic story I am weaving of ancient Mesopotamian myths and the birth of magic from that time, now it’s people fleeing Syria and war.
“Travel across the sea, rather than being something magical, is people on tiny rubber boats trying to survive.”
A radio piece has also been created as part of the project. This will be released to coincide with the performances, airing on Radio North Angus and Resonance FM.
“We’re going to use sound and spread sound in a really unusual way throughout the dunes, so there will be very strong sound elements,” Angus goes on.
“We are weaving different historic and mythical elements linked to the coastline. It’s all about coming with an open mind and finding out what we have discovered.”
Those lucky enough to have tickets should dress for the weather as they will mostly be “on the move”.
Angus adds: “It’s a very different feel at night. When you start to use sound you lose that sense of distance.
“It’s the beauty of the dunes being very enclosed and you walk out and the seascape is very open and you get a wonderful contrast
between the two of them.”