Rendering №8

     The article named Ignition was published on the site http://www.telegraph.co.uk by Mark Brown on 22 of March. 
     Ignition is the latest show by the National Theatre of Scotland. Ignition (which takes as its starting point the complex relationship between the Shetlanders and the motor car), the show itself is merely the cherry on the cake.
     Director Wils Wilson set herself the immense task of making Ignition available to everyone living on the archipelago. For two months, Lowri Evans hitchhiked her way around the islands in the mythical character of north Shetland’s ghostly White Wife. She talked to people in cars, on buses, on ferries, in their houses and, even, in a care home for the elderly.
     The stories are combined with the Shetlanders’ performance skills, be they in storytelling, music-making or dancing. Fitting all of this into a two-hour show is a bit like trying to shoehorn an elephant into a Morris Minor.
     Ignition provides each audience member with a distinct experience. The author tells us about the moment when he found himself in the back of a derelict car with a storytelling merchant seaman whose painful life experiences are akin to those of his male forebears. He met a travelling garden gnome and its gregarious owner. He heard the poetic reminiscences of older Shetlanders, and saw them juxtaposed with the raucous movement of the local parkour boys.
     In conclusion the author says that what he had experienced was the often emotive culmination of a big-hearted project which has palpably tapped a nerve in its host community.