GUIR! Gaelic Arts Scratch Performance

GUIR!, Glasgow Life’s Gaelic Arts incubator programme, has been supporting artists to develop new Gaelic work across disciplines since 2018.  See new work from The 2026 cohort including Angus MacLeod, Màiri Morrison, Kit Rodman-Orr, Rommy Nic Mhicheal and Marie Trestrail.

On Thursday 23 April, the programme includes special guests Còisir Cuèir (Queer Choir) with their first ever public performance.  

This event is open to anyone. There will be Gaelic to English translation via headsets.

Aonghas MacLeòid’s project centres on the contested history of Glasgow’s first post-Reformation theatre, once located beside the Bishop’s Palace at the top of the High Street. Traditionally believed to have been burned down in 1753 by a mob incited by the Methodist minister George Whitefield, the theatre’s fate provides the basis for a new dramatic work that questions how art, religion, and power intersect.  The proposed piece focuses on two historical figures: Daniel Burrell, a local dancing master associated with the theatre and dance hall culture, and George Whitefield, a former actor turned revivalist preacher. Their opposition reflects a deeper paradox, as Whitefield’s itinerant, audience-dependent ministry closely mirrors the lives of the performers he sought to suppress. Burrell’s role in introducing early forms of Scottish country dancing is contrasted with the precarious status of popular performance, caught between official disapproval and public uncertainty.

Rommy Nic Mhicheal and Marie Trestrail will present a short, multi-medium film adapting a Gaelic folktale, provisionally titled Uair a bha siud: [name of folktale] or Once upon a time: [name of folktale]. Combining live-action footage of Scottish landscapes with original animated sequences, the project focuses specifically on folktales collected on Islay, reflecting Rommy’s personal connection to the island and its culture.  

Màiri Morrison's Common Health Aims is an incubation project that explores healing practices across time, encompassing medicinal, musical, and spiritual traditions rooted in Gaelic culture. Drawing inspiration from personal family history and the book Healing Threads by Mary Beith, the project examines traditional knowledge gathered in the Hebrides, particularly Gaelic herbal medicine and community-based healing practices. Central to the idea is the figure of the creator’s great-uncle, Tormod, a seventh son who possessed healing abilities, especially in relation to Tinneas an Rìgh (King’s Illness). His quiet, gentle nature provides a personal entry point into a wider exploration of how healing knowledge was understood, embodied, and passed down through generations. The project is especially interested in healing as a spiritual and physical connection to land, the social structures that allowed such practices to endure and the how the emotional resonance of music supports our physical wellbeing.

Bogadh (mus tilleadh am muir air a’ lìonadh) is an incubation project for a short piece of dance theatre that explores climate change, movement, language, and identity through a Gaelic lens. Set within the urban architecture of Glasgow, the work imagines rising sea levels carrying a dancer upward along the city’s walls, using vertical harness dance as both a physical and symbolic response to environmental and personal flux. Led by a non-binary transmasculine artist with a background in circus, physical performance, and Gaelic theatre, the project builds directly on their existing practice, combining movement, 

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