El Duglas Tour Reaches Selkirk on Nov 1
Added at 14:08 on 02 September 2024
Selkirk production company the HotTrod Theatre Company has announced dates for its latest production 'El Duglas' to tour the Borders.
El Duglas will be presented in Coldstream on Sept 13th and Smailholm on Sept 14th, with a special show at the Victoria Halls in Selkirk on Friday 1st November at 7:30pm.
Full details can be found here
El Duglas, written by Selkirk's own John Nichol and featuring himself and Iain Fraser, tells the story of Sir James Douglas - the ‘Good Sir James’ to the Scots, and the ‘Black Douglas’ to those south of the border. Why 'El Duglas'? Every year, in the Andalucian town of Teba, an event is held in honour of the heroic deeds of Sir James Douglas, who fought and died there in the Battle of Teba in 1330 whilst en route to the Holy Land with the embalmed heart of his friend, Robert the Bruce. Sir James was Bruce’s ablest lieutenant and the most professional soldier of his day, whose menacing resourcefulness and outright genius undoubtedly led to victory in the Scottish Wars of Independence.
HotTrod was formed back in 2001, originally with the then sole purpose of performing courtroom dramas based on real-life court cases presided over by Sir Walter Scott when he was Sheriff Depute of Selkirkshire. Over the last twenty years, the courtroom dramas, written mostly by John Nichol and performed in the original Selkirk Sheriff Court, have been enjoyed by many thousands of visitors to Selkirk. More recently, there has been a significant departure from truly historic cases and several dramas have sprung purely from John’s fertile imagination.
In 2016, John was commissioned to write a play based on the diaries of Selkirk doctor John Muir, painstakingly transcribed by the dedicated staff at the Heritage Hub in Hawick. The play was toured around the South of Scotland under the banner of HotTrod and received excellent reviews. HotTrod Theatre Company has since toured extensively with Wandering Willie’s Tale and are enjoying a great reaction to their current project El Duglas, which was premiered earlier in 2024 at the Duns Festival.
More details can be found at the HotTrod Theatre Company website Here
or on their FaceBook page here
