The Village and The Road

“All human life is here, and if we cannot easily express what has been lost in the decline of rural places, we surely know it’s gone.” Patrick Laurie, author of Native – Life in a Vanishing Landscape The Village and The Road is a collaboration of words from celebrated writer Tom Pow with music from The Galloway Agreement, a quartet of well-known traditional musicians. Tom Pow draws on his travels for this emotive journey exploring abandonment of the countryside, refugee crises and the ‘great thinning’ of the natural world. The Galloway Agreement respond sonically with their wide experiences of the musical traditions of Europe, adding drama and poignancy to the narrative. The Village and The Road is an invitation to experience a world of great beauty, but also one that carries contemporary imprints of separation, emigration and rootlessness. The play is inspired by ‘the great thinning’, a term coined by environmental journalist Michael McCarthy, to describe the loss of so many birds and other species which once delighted visitors to the British countryside. The Village and The Road is in turn a response to another ‘great thinning’: for the first time in human history there are more people living in cities than in the countryside. Many, especially the young, are taking the road out of their villages, often facing hardship and danger as they do so. The show is a portrait of the tensions that exist between the village and the road at this time of crucial change; a time ‘when the village girls have no eyes/for the village boys’

Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Venue 30. Part of the Made in Scotland showcase 2022.