THEY are two of Scotland’s greatest cultural exports of the 20th century.
Alasdair Gray is one of the towering figures of Scottish letters, Billy Connolly is the nation’s greatest comic. Stature aside, they might seem like slightly unusual bedfellows, writer Alan Bissett told the Sunday National, but the two men had more in common than might first be assumed.
Bissett’s one-man play When Billy Met Alasdair at this year’s Fringe follows the lives of both men, culminating with their meeting at the launch of Gray’s magnum opus Lanark at the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow in 1981.
“In some ways, they’re a study in contrasts because they’re from completely different worlds: Billy’s an entertainer, worked in the shipyards; Alastair’s very highbrow and learned. It's like he absorbed the whole canon of Western literature,” said Bissett.
“Those contrasts are what drew me towards them. But actually, they are more similar than you think because Billy is also a very well-read person and he has a very keen eye for the arts – he’s a painter as well.
“He’s an incredibly articulate and intelligent man and cultured. And Alastair’s also very funny. So while they seem like they seem like two very contrasting figures, underneath it, they’ve got much more in common than you think.”
Bissett (above), the writer behind The Moira Monologues and novels such as Boyracers and Lazy Susan, was inspired to write the play when he found a photograph of Connolly having his book signed by Gray.
“Because the two of them have meant so much to me individually, to see a photograph of the two of them in the same in the same shot, to see Billy getting his book signed by Alastair at the launch for Lanark, I was just always really fascinated by what they might have talked about or how Billy ended up there – what that shot meant, basically,” he said.
Researching the script was the most time-consuming aspect of its writing says Bissett, digging into his friend Rodge Glass’s biography of Gray, informed by his work as the author’s secretary, as well as books by or about Connolly.
“You can feel the material to start to sing to you, it lifts out of the pages of research and the characters come with it and you might get some scenes that present themselves or lines of dialogue and that starts to gradually coalesce,” he said.
“It’s almost like the project telling you that you’ve been prepping long enough and now it’s time to give birth.”
Redrafting was done partly in rehearsals with the play’s director Kirstin McLean, who helped Bissett with his portrayal of both men.
Playing both parts, plus a third, unnamed character, poses its challenges: “If you forget your line and you’re the only person on stage – wow.
“You just need to jam for a bit until it comes back to you.”
Bissett’s passion for both men is evident, describing them as his heroes.
“Billy Connolly has been a part of my life since my childhood, watching his videos with my family, all of us pissing ourselves laughing – probably the same story everyone in Scotland can tell,” he said.
Meanwhile Gray loomed over him for some time as a young writer and Bissett described Lanark’s reputation as being like a “mountain that had to be scaled”.
“Then you get to the top of the mountain and there’s this incredible view,” he said.
Speaking about performing, Bissett takes on an almost religious edge.
“There’s a really interesting phenomenon when you’ve performed in front of an audience for long enough, you get to be able to read a silence,” he said.
“Even if there’s complete silence in front of you, you can tell the difference between a bored silence and an engaged silence. There’s something about the quality of that silence that transmits; either frustration on the audience’s part or willingness to go with you. You have to be able to react to tiny pressures in the room that are coming from the audience and that then feeds your performance.
“The audience gives you energy; if you’re getting absolutely nothing from them, it’s difficult to keep going. I mean, you do keep going but if you get the feeling the audience are warm and encouraging, it gives you so much power in your performance that it becomes a pleasure and that's why a performer does it, it’s for that feeling.”
Alan Bissett performs When Billy Met Alasdair at the Scottish Storytelling Centre at the Edinburgh Fringe from Thursday, July 31 to Saturday, August 23, with no shows on August 1, 6, 8, 13, 14, 20 or 21.
To find out more or buy tickets, go to https://scottishstorytellingcentre.online.red61.co.uk/event/913:6025/
