New musical play YES! YES! UCS! to play at Stephen Joseph Theatre next month
Photo credit: Robert McFadzean
Townsend Theatre Productions’ Yes! Yes! UCS! will be performed at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre on 21 February, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the event.
It will combine powerful theatrical storytelling with live rock and folk music from the early 70s and graphic art animated projection to bring a meaningful message of hope, social justice and the fight for the right to work.
Based on verbatim interviews with shipyard workers, Yes! Yes! UCS! is the story of two women workers in an industry facing imminent closure, drawn into the monumental, heroic battle to save thousands of jobs across Glasgow and the West of Scotland. At the time, women in pivotal roles made up little more than 5% of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ workforce, and their history is far less well known.
Townsend’s trademark gritty drama depicts the traditions and skills of Scottish shipbuilding, while shining a light on the role women played in the fight for the right to work, the power of community solidarity, collective resistance and workers’ control.
With the incumbent Tory government refusing in 1971 to invest in what they called ‘lame-duck’ industries, the massive Glasgow and Clydebank shipyards that made up the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) faced closure. Shop stewards – including well-known activists Jimmy Reid and Jimmy Airlie – tried a new tactic from the usual union strikes and sit-ins, resulting in the now famous UCS ‘work-in’, designed to show that workers were not just willing to work, but that demand for their work existed. They argued that unemployment was a political choice made by a government more interested in maintaining the profits of corporate capitalism and breaking up a semi-nationalised industry, than in protecting the interests of their citizens.
Louise Townsend directs and produces, alongside writer and performer Neil Gore, both of whom have collaborated across all of Townsend Theatre Productions’ past projects. The cast are young actor/musicians Janie Thomson and Heather Gourdie, with musical direction provided by well-known cellist Beth Porter of the Bookshop Band and Eliza Carthy’s Wayward Band.
Daniella Beattie returns as lighting designer, with recent RCS graduate Ruth Darling as set and costume designer.
For more information and to book tickets, please click here.