Andy McLintock, memories of the experimental theatre at the Whitehills Farm


Andy McLintock.

“Gerry Hodgson was an architect and owned the Whitehills Farm, with his wife Jill, and he was also a member of the East Kilbride Light Opera Club. He had a passion for madrigals and traditional singing and use to put on performances in his living room.
Then he planned to convert a cowshed into a theatre and put on performances off his own bat.

There were maybe a group of about twelve people got together, Kate his colleague at work, who was also a singer in the SNO, and others who were into drama and folk singing. It was a wee bit like the East Kilbride Arts Centre is today.

The theatre was cold and very difficult to heat so a lot of performances were put on in his living room. We put on a lot of performances, things like Five Finger Exercise, by Peter Schaffer, The Stranger by Strinberg, excerpts for Equs and A Day in the life of Joe Egg.

It was very much experimental music and performance, but a high standard of performance. The farm buildings were a great resource to the town because they provided places for people to go and perform. At that time there were no theatres in the town

I remember there was one Indian student who came in and he was singing away traditional Indian music and we had a gaelic singer in singing in gaelic and there were a lot of parallels to the language and the singing.

The only thing against it was that it was up a dark lane and safety became an aspect”.