Theatre du Pif Cattle Depot Theatre Mar 23-27, 8pm; Mar 27 and 28, 4pm
Knives in Hens is the first play by Scottish playwright David Harrow and his second to be staged by local company Theatre du Pif, after Blackbird in 2007. Set in a God-fearing, pre-industrial community, the 1995 script revolves around a young woman, her husband and another man who turns their lives around.
The guest director, Canadian Marjorie Chan, says the work can be read at two levels - it's a drama of a woman who, through knowledge and language, changes her entire view of the world around her, and a metaphor of a society undergoing changes and the costs that come with such developments.
'In order to move forward, to advance and to evolve, does it require some kind of loss and costs on a personal level?' Chan asks. 'If so, what must be sacrificed to be able to reach a different or higher level of expression? That is, for me, the central question of the play.'
She also describes the production - which will feature Theatre du Pif's artistic director Sean Curran (above left) and locally based actors James Gitsham and Charlotte Blandford (above right) - as lusty.
'At its core,' she says, 'this is a drama about three people. It is set in an agrarian and rural society and these people have a very physical relationship with the land and with each other ... at the time, that was the way they lived.'