A SCOTTISH quern stone made from 400-million-year-old rock is the focus of a new show by award-winning musician Mairi Campbell whose voice was featured in the hit film Sex And The City.
Found on her great-gran’s croft on Lismore, the quern or millstone weighs 25 kilos but looks as though its edges were deliberately chipped – probably as part of a 17th-century move to force poor crofters to use their landlords’ mills.
For Campbell, the stone is symbolic of how humans’ relationship with nature has been chipped away over the centuries, leading to today’s environmental crisis.
It is why the stone is the focus of her new show, which explores healing and self-discovery. Running at the Scottish Storytelling Centre for the duration of the Fringe, it is already receiving rave audience reviews.
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An exhibition of Campbell’s stone paintings will run concurrently at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, offering a visual exploration of the themes presented in the show. Each painting captures the intricate details and textures of the stone, symbolising the connection between past and present.
While the stone is the focus of the work, it is not the first time it has been on stage as it featured in Campbell’s previous solo theatre shows, Pulse and Auld Lang Syne.
A version of the song by Campbell and her husband David Francis was on the soundtrack of the 2008 movie Sex And The City, and they have performed it at the Presidential Awards in Washington in front of president Bill Clinton and Sean Connery (below).
Like the shows Pulse and Auld Lang Syne, Campbell’s new show Living Stone is also autobiographical and tracks her move from Edinburgh to Lismore where she now lives six months of the year, runs an island dance band and teaches violin at the primary school.
“My journey is one of going from darkness into the light and how I connected to my geographical community on Lismore,” she told the Sunday National.
“It’s about letting go of life in Edinburgh, being stuck and being in a bit of a hole and then gradually coming out of that so it is most definitely a message of hope.
“Folk say we are all connected and we need to understand we are not the only thing on this earth. We need to look after the land and my story is a direct experience of trying to figure out what that feels like and means – it is not just plain sailing.
“How did we manage to get so far away from the land, how come we feel so separate from it? Whatever the reasons are, we have been separated from it.”
As with her first two solo shows, Living Stone is directed by Kath Burlinson and has been described as “brilliantly devised”.
It is part of the Scottish Storytelling Centre’s Fringe programme, specially curated to showcase the best live storytelling from Scotland and beyond.
As well as Living Stone, highlights include long-time Fringe favourite Rick Conte with An American Love Letter to Edinburgh, which tells the tale of his fellow American Benjamin Franklin’s Scottish enlightenment, echoing his own experiences of the city that took him in 35 years ago and has yet “to spit him out”.
Joyfully Grimm: Reimagining A Queer Adolescence is James Stedman’s story of growing up in myth and magic, unaware that Section 28, prohibiting the “promotion of homosexuality”, is moving to silence his tale and those of anyone like him.
The programme also includes four children’s storytelling events, including a new version of the 2023 sell-out smash-hit Grow by Niall Moorjani, which offers plenty of stories and clowning around to celebrate nature and things that grow.
Music and spoken word are also strongly represented with two musical Made in Scotland showcase events in STUMPED and The Other, and a short run of Stupid Sexy Poem Show, the subversive and powerful debut hour from RJ Hunter, Loud Poets Grand Slam Champion 2023.
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“Our Fringe programme offers a platform for storytellers and creatives to share amazing stories, and to create a space of calm energy for audiences to listen and enjoy,” said Scottish Storytelling Centre’s head of programming, Daniel Abercrombie.
“There are wonderful stories here with messages of hope, enthusiasm and activism, exploring the light and the dark of the worlds we inhabit.”
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