Scotland on Sunday 24 April 2025
Whappens when a composer becomes a playwright? Take the case of Martin Green. He is the accordionist best known for his work with Lau, the nu-folk band he plays in with Kris Drever and Aidan O’Rourke.
He is also something of a multi-hyphenate. In the 2016 Edinburgh International Festival, he brought together musicians and stop-motion animators to share stories of migration in Flit. During lockdown, he released The Portal, a richly crafted podcast for which he wrote and narrated a time-spanning detective story. Later, for BBC Radio 4, he made Dancers At Dawn, which made unexpected connections between Morris dancing and rave culture.
Now, for the National Theatre of Scotland and his own Lepus Productions, he is writer and composer of Keli, a play about a tenor horn player from a fictional Central Belt mining village who heads to London for a brass band competition. According to Liberty Black, who plays the title role, one thing you get with a musician for a playwright is extraordinarily precise feedback. [READ MORE]