In Time O Strife (Modern Plays)

There's nae power on earth can crush the men
who can sing on a day like this.

A powerful re-imagining of Joe Corrie's neglected classic about a Fife mining community during the General Strike.

To raise funds for the soup kitchens feeding the miners and their starving families, Corrie wrote In Time O' Strife in 1926 whilst on strike himself, exposing the brutal lives of a family staring hunger and defeat in the face. Some 87 years later, Graham McLaren has adapted, designed and directed this rarely performed classic play.

Created by Graham McLaren (Men Should Weep, A Christmas Carol), the production uses fragments of Corrie's other plays, poems and songs, celebrating his ability as a writer and his contribution to Scottish culture.

This edition pairs Corrie's original text with the script created by McLaren's adaptation process.

Joe Corrie (1894–1968) was a poet, miner and playwright. 'The greatest Scots poet since Burns', according to T.S Eliot, his poems were inspired by the mining communities of West Fife. His drama was compared in some quarters to that of Zola and O'Casey, while rejected on political and stylistic grounds in others. He died in Edinburgh in 1968.

Graham McLaren is currently an associate director at the National Theatre of Scotland. A director and designer, he founded Theatre Babel in 1999, a company dedicated to finding new meaning and vision in myth and classic plays.