Scott Herrett and Emer Morris share the story of A Play for Torry, a bold, community-led theatre event co-created with residents, artists and campaigners in Torry, Aberdeen.
Torry is a community and a land that has been fighting for its right to exist unimpeded for centuries. Sitting on the edge of Europe’s ‘Oil Capital’ Aberdeen, Torry has been consistently wracked by industrial land grabs over the years. The swell and assertion of a supposed ‘right’ to development, repeatedly thrust upon the land and people of Torry by the powers that be, has had a huge impact over time — on the architecture of the place, and just as profoundly on its emotional landscape. As Lesleyanne from Torry says, we are always objecting to something. It’s true. It has been one battle after another.
The people of Torry have been burdened with the fossil fuel industry impacting their lives for decades. They carry the environmental burden for the wealthier parts of society which are consuming and polluting more. The community was cleared from Old Torry to make way for the fishing and oil industries. Torry’s Bay of Nigg is now a concrete industrial harbour. St Fittick’s Park, the biodiverse, regenerated wetland and Torry’s only green space, is surrounded by the city’s landfill and waste incinerator. All the unrecyclable waste produced in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray, ends up in Torry, to be burnt in a giant waste incinerator, just yards from a primary school full of the communities’ kids. The Tullos Death Star as it’s aptly referred to in the playground.
And today, Ian Wood – the godfather of North Sea Oil – wants to bulldoze the park to make way for an ‘Energy Transition Zone’. Aberdeen City Council have recently capitulated to corporate interests, ‘re-zoning’ the park and opening it to industrial development, directly contradicting the community’s demands. The community are now mounting a legal challenge, and Climate Camp Scotland is heading to the park for the third time, as A Play For Torry opens in local theatres.
Lifting Up the Battles
We conceived the idea for the play in 2023. As an organiser for Friends of the Earth, and a playwright who specialises in community-led verbatim theatre, we were both deeply inspired by the powerful play The Cheviot, The Stag and The Black, Black Oil. We believe that there is something particular about how we experience stories in a theatre space — how different it is from hearing them told as facts. We feel them, often in ways that are hard to put into words, and in ways that reading about something, or watching a video, simply can’t replicate. Live theatre and music has the power to move and shape people in ways that can have consequences long after the event.
A Play For Torry has been developed over several years, initially through consultations with community groups, local organisations and individuals across Torry to discuss the idea for the play. With a mandate from the community, we successfully applied for Creative Scotland funding to support initial development, a phase which involved many workshops with local residents and young people, alongside one-to-one interviews with a wide range of people. The co-writing team comprised Mae Diansangu, a Black, queer, Doric-writing poet from Aberdeen and co-founder of feminist arts platform Hysteria; Shane Strachan, a Fraserburgh-born playwright and lecturer who is nationally recognised for his contributions to Scots and Doric literature; and Emer Morris, a critically acclaimed and award-winning writer and director. The team were present throughout, developing a script from this wealth of lived experience. A soundtrack was created in collaboration with local kids from Big Noise Torry, under the oversight of Coralie Usmani, Simon Gall, Jakcill and Ben Vardi, a composing team who meld trad and contemporary music.
Making this play has been a process of stepping back to reflect, both collectively as a community, and as individuals. That has created distance, space, and also a kind of elevation: a way of lifting the battles up and looking at them anew. Many of those battles have sadly been lost, but we are interested not only in winning or losing. We are getting to the meat of the act of fighting itself. What gives people the drive to do it? How do you keep going through the tough times? These are questions drawn out in the play.
There have been many tough times for people in Torry. The last few years have seen an escalation, around the park, and through the situation since RAAC was found in Torry’s social housing. So why make a play about these hard moments? To quote Bertolt Brecht: “Will there be singing in the dark times? Yes, there will be singing about the dark times.”
Torry’s Bigger Story
The impact on people of making art out of real-life hardship shouldn’t be underestimated. There can be catharsis in playing with what is normally invisible — the violent bureaucracy of moneyed power and behind-closed-doors decision-making — to make it visible and even comical through song and character. And there is the power of witnessing: stepping back and seeing other people affected by your story, your words, your resilience.
Creating theatre projects, made by the people they are about, grows the social and climate justice movement. Meeting spaces within the current movement can be alienating for people not accustomed to the language and practices used in those spaces. This is not always the fault of those leading those spaces, but sometimes we can forget that many people have never seen themselves as agents of political change, other than, say, casting a vote every so often. Providing alternatives for people to meet and organise, like a community theatre project, can provide people with ways to work, learn and make decisions together, which is not ‘work’ or part of some other hierarchical structure, such as a sports team.
This co-authored project was built to bring out the joy we all need right now and to celebrate the resilience of the people, even when it’s been tough. People of Torry have been part of this every step of the way, and this is an example of professional artists and community collaborating to tell a story about experiences in North East Scotland.
This story is significant because what happens and has happened here resonates far beyond Torry and Aberdeen. It has real resonance for what unfolds across Scotland and all of these isles. Rooted in Torry, the show echoes the stories of coastal and industrial communities across Scotland. Funny, moving and defiant, A Play for Torry fuses verbatim storytelling with original music to create a rich, multi-sensory night out — part ceilidh, part protest, part love-letter to a community that refuses to be quiet. With live music, ensemble performance and special appearances from local guest artists, A Play for Torry invites audiences to celebrate, reflect, and to ask together: who is the ‘Just Transition’ really for? What does it cost when decisions about climate and land are made without the people who live there?
Preview – Saturday 31st January 2026, 7pm (2.5 hours with interval), Aberdeen Arts Centre Children’s Theatre
Premiere – Sunday 1st February 2026, 5pm (2.5 hours with interval), Nigg Bay Golf Club, Torry
Buy Tickets for ‘A Play For Torry’ Here: https://www.aplayfortorry.com/
Join Climate Camp Scotland’s Solidarity Action Weekend 9-11th January: https://climatecamp.scot/
Scott Herrett lives in Torry, Aberdeen and is an active member of the Friends of St Fittick’s Park. He also works for Friends of the Earth Scotland as a Just Transition organiser.
Emer Morris is a critically acclaimed and award-winning writer and director whose work blends bold theatricality with deeply rooted community collaboration.