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Feminist Nationalism in Scotland: Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off

1992; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mdr.1992.0004

1712-5286

Ilona S. Koren-Deutsch,

Scottish History and National Identity

The folk memory surrounding Mary, Queen of Scots is so powerful in Scotland that probably everyone there knows the story in some form. For that reason, when Gerry Mulgrew, the artistic director of the Edinburgh-based Communicado Theatre Company, contacted Scottish playwright Liz Lochhead about writing a new play, she suggested one to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary, in 1987, of Mary's execution. Mulgrew liked Lochhead's idea for a play about Mary Stuart because it suited both Communicado's Scottish orientation and Brechtian techniques. Lochhead herself was drawn to the project for two main reasons: she finds it easy to care about characters from history in general and both Mary and Elizabeth I of England are the sort of "larger than life" women characters that she finds particularly appealing. Her version of the Mary Stuart story, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, premiered at the 1987 Edinburgh Festival, where it won an Edinburgh Festival Fringe First.