To St Andrew Square Garden for ‘Butterfly Rammy’, a curated collection of responses to the Referendum and its aftermath, on an Edinburgh day which went from being fair driech to gey driech to fell driech in the space of an hour.
‘Butterfly Rammy’, both a book and a sort of ongoing dialogic cabaret, are a result of the many different visions of the future that the Referendum campaign brought to public consciousness, and which have changed the nature of public discourse in Scotland, possibly permanently. The title itself is drawn in part from the well-known notion that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings may cause a tsunami, and from the Scots word ‘rammy’ – usually meaning an altercation, but here suggesting a lively, no-holds barred public debate.
Taking eighteen Scots words (including rammy) and exploring their several meanings and significances in terms of the country’s recent experience, artists from various disciplines have used these words as inspirational starting points for their own personal journeys and declarations.
Introduced by actor Tam Dean Burn, who advised us that the word, if not the thought, for the day was ‘hoachin’, a word which musician Gavin Prentice, activist and writer Leela Soma and social artist Susan Petty defined and discussed in necessarily divergent and different ways.
It all made for an entertaining and sometimes stimulating hour, which might have been even livelier had the aforementioned driechness discouraged a larger number from venturing out.
Nonetheless, and on a better day, ‘Butterfly Rammy’ promises to offer audiences fresh and enlivening perspectives on Scotland’ ongoing discussion of the future.
Runs til 30 August (not 10, 17 or 24)