Kora is well known in Whitfield. Her house is bursting at the seams with children, the neighbour's taken to throwing his electrical goods out of the window and another one is keeping a horse in his house.
Premiered at the Traverse in 1986 and set in the Skarne flats in Dundee's Whitfield area, Kora is a funny, sometimes tragic and always poetic play about what happens when people are pushed too far. Developed from a drama-documentary Tom McGrath planned for the BBC but never made, at the play's heart is the enchanting, beautiful, almost mythical Kora - part Earth-mother, part Tiger-mother.
Kora was a co-production between Magnetic North and Dundee Rep and was performed in a specially created performance space at the Bonar Hall, Dundee.
Production
| Writer | Tom McGrath |
| Director | Nicholas Bone |
| Designer | Becky Minto |
| Sound | Philip Pinsky |
| Lighting | Simon Wilkinson |
Cast
| Kora | Emily Winter | Bill/ Turpin | Martin McBride |
| Ina | Vari Sylvester | Peter | Cameron Mowat |
| Florence | Molly Vevers | Jean | Natalie Wallace |
| Julie | Irene Macdougall | David | John Buik |
REVIEWS
"Played in the round inside Becky Minto's wonderful living room pod that encloses both cast and audience with a display of disembodied furniture, Bone's production is a multi-faceted affair pulsed by a gloriously matter-of-fact earthiness. Much of this is led by Emily Winter, who plays Welsh emigre Kora as a lusty back-street earth mother who lives in the moment."
The Herald
"At its centre, Emily Winter gives a glorious performance as Kora. And if the play’s sharp political insight sometimes jostles uncomfortably against its passionate hymn to fertility and to the force of life itself, both have something vital and radical to say about deep flaws and scars in Scottish life; and perhaps in the lives of poor women everywhere"
The Scotsman