Highland Games season is upon us, and this year I am all in.
Not as a caber tosser, Highland dancer, or tug of war titan – although, the way things are going, I may well have a go at all three before the season’s out.
Some are born into Highland Games greatness, some achieve it, and some have it thrust upon them in the form of an acting role as a Backhold Wrestling expert.
For the last few weeks, I have been rehearsing Thrown – a new National Theatre Scotland show, written by Nat McCleary, about a diverse group of women who form a Backhold Wrestling team and compete in Scotland’s Highland Games season.
The show itself will follow the season proper, touring Highland Games towns from Dunoon to the Isle of Skye via Dunblane, Dunkeld, Oban, Glenlivet, Helensburgh, Ballater and Mull.
For those of you unfamiliar with the ancient martial art of Backhold Wrestling – one of the oldest Highland Games events – it involves two similarly weighted opponents hugging and trying to trip each other up at the same time.
Whoever touches the ground first with anything other than their feet, loses – unless their opponent breaks the hug first. And the hug is called a ‘hold’.
That’s about as technical as I can get at this point.
I haven’t quite reached ‘expert’ standard yet – or even fully grasped the rules. But I’m not worried.
Actors become ‘experts’ in record time
I have a whole fortnight to get there, and goodness knows I’ve acquired ‘expertise’ quicker than that for acting jobs.
Actual police, surgeons, cartographers, mountaineers, and pastry chefs spend years in training, but I’ve had to ‘master’ these skills in a fraction of the time. Which would be truly amazing if it wasn’t just pretending.
Convincing an audience I can make a map, use a taser, amputate a limb, fold a croissant, or climb Everest for an hour or two is one thing, but you’d be mad to let me do these things for real – even if I am sometimes mad enough to try them.
There’s something about the Highland Games atmosphere, and ‘have a go’ vibe, that I find so infectious.
‘I couldn’t sign up quick enough’
One year at the Braemar Games I entered the hill race on a total whim, half cut, in a pair of borrowed trainers. It was one of the hardest, wildest, most exhilarating things I’d ever done.
As part of our research for Thrown, we went to Bearsden and Milngavie Highland Games last weekend to watch the Backhold Wrestling.
I was sorely tempted to enter, but was reminded in time that, unlike me, those wrestlers are highly skilled, and I probably can’t do the show with a broken neck or dislocated limbs.
Haggis Hurling, on the other hand, was something I could do without ending up in hospital. And, readers, I couldn’t sign up quick enough.
What a buzz, standing on a barrel, my pals from the Thrown company behind me, cheering me on as I launched that haggis into the air and…
…right out of the park, smashing the competition, winning the world title, and sending the crowd wild. Which, in ‘Haggis Hurling’, the play or movie, I’m sure I could pretend to do.
But, in reality, not coming last or ending up in hospital was a Highland Games win for me.
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