For most of “Common Tongue” it feels like nothing is at all “common” about language. As a young girl from the West Coast of Scotland, Bonnie (Olivia Caw) feels pride in her identity and culture, perceptions she loses rapidly in the prejudicial and discriminatory world of university as she grows up. Through microphones across the stage, everybody hears Bonnie, but as Olivia Caw so powerfully narrates in this one-woman show, nobody listens to her.
Poetry is woven throughout the performance, serving stark contrasts: the gentle beauty of her grandfather’s Scots poetry, to the ridiculous drawl of public-school boy Christopher reading Robert Burns in her English Literature seminar. Despite the inappropriateness of Christopher’s voice, his ability to insert himself into a place he doesn’t belong is something Bonnie can only really watch with envy. To her twee English flatmates, Bonnie’s accent appears “thick”, not just in its intonation, but carrying preconceptions of intellectual thickness too. Bonnie spends her years at university feeling uncouth and clumsy, alienated from her hometown, yet unable to assimilate in new environments, hostile towards her as soon as she opens her mouth.
The moment this changes for Bonnie is New Years Eve on her year abroad in America. Feeling more alone and isolated than ever, she finds incredible solace as the clocks strike midnight, as across world, voices of all kinds together sing Auld Lang Syne. This moment is powerful to watch, but Olivia Caw won’t let us observe it: under her instruction the audience links arms. When a tear falls down my cheek I can’t catch it, my hands hold those of strangers, and into the hushed quiet of the theatre, we sing together as one. Every year, barriers of language and identity are for this one moment bygone, broken down into the Common Tongue of one Scottish song.
Bonnie’s Pappa was born in 1946, the year the Scottish Education Department declared that Scots was not the language of “educated” people, and therefore not a medium of culture, or rather, a sign of “old times past”, indeed. Following her years away from home, Bonnie struggles not to absorb these warped ideas with shame. But with the passing of her grandfather at the end of the performance, Bonnie carries a much truer sense of who she is, and where she is from.
When Bonnie first stood up on the stage, she was ashamed of her voice and the way it sounded, but by the end she speaks with pride. When asked to state her name in a “YES” or “NO” question, she does not hesitate; with strength and depth moving the entire audience, Bonnie MacKay says “AYE”.
Image ‘Common Tongue_Olivia Caw_Credit Kris Kesiak’ provided via Edinburgh Storytelling Centre Press Release