Dumfries and Galloway performers back in Japan with theatre show

Tom Pow and traditional music quartet The Galloway Agreement are on a three week tour of the Land of the Rising Sun

A group of five Dumfries and Galloway performers are back in Japan with their acclaimed theatre show.

Dumfries-based poet Tom Pow and traditional music quartet The Galloway Agreement arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun on Saturday for a three-week tour.

They are performing Tom’s The Village and The Road, which earned rave reviews under its Made in Scotland banner at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe two years ago.

The show draws on Tom’s experiences travelling to villages throughout Europe impacted by rural depopulation.

Accompanied by screened subtitles in Japanese, the performance features Tom as narrator with The Galloway Agreement’s Ruth Morris (nyckelharpa), Gavin Marwick (fiddle), Wendy Stewart (clarsach) and Stuart Macpherson (double bass) providing the musical backdrop.

Ruth said: “As the performers have worked on the piece, it has, over time, accrued even greater relevance.

“At a time when some refugees’ aspiration and desperation are often greeted with cruelty, where millions of others are displaced by climate change and war and where the effects of Covid have depressed birthrates even more.”

Bird Theatre, based in Tottori, the most depopulated prefecture in Japan, came across the show in the Made in Scotland showcase.

An astonishing 93 per cent of Japan’s population live in the great cities – including 38 million in the greater metropolitan area of Tokyo.

Ruth said: “Our first invitation to Japan was a surprise – the second one no less so.

“Bird Theatre was looking for material gained during our Japanese experience in 2023 to be incorporated into the show.

“It also wanted Tom Pow to produce a book of poems as an aid to communication and conversation.”

The poems gathered in Ghosts at Play – Poems from Rural Japan, with translations by Nao Miyauchi – will be launched during the tour.

All were written with the support of Bird Theatre as a response to rural depopulation in Japan.

Ruth, who is producing the show, added: “The Village and the Road will have a fresh script, new music, and new direction by Matthew Zajac.

“The aim of all is to present a show that speaks across cultures and to continue the conversations we began last year in Tottori.”

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