Dogs don’t lie: do we value our artistic triumphs enough?

Invernesian theatre company Dogstar Theatre will be celebrating today after being selected to appear in this year’s Brits off Broadway festival in New York, thanks to £11,457 through the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund.

Brits off Broadway Executive producer Peter Tear said: “We have waited a few years to introduce the remarkable, inspiring story of The Tailor of Inverness to New Yorkers, and this year happily the stars aligned. Dogstar’s Matthew Zajac, Aidan O’Rourke and Grid Iron’s director Ben Harrison will be with us for the first time for Brits Off Broadway at the close of Scotland Week.”

I saw Zajac perform The Tailor of Inverness a few years ago. It was a deeply personal show about his own father, who grew up in Galicia (Eastern Poland, now Western Ukraine) and ended up a tailor in the Highlands. It was incredibly moving, and deserves to be seen by audiences across the world. Tear, who is an ex-pat Scot himself, clearly recognised the universal power of Zajac’s story. The play has also been seen in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Ireland, Wales and Australia.

If international producers can recognise the value of a one-man show from the Highlands of Scotland, you have to wonder why our own arts quango can’t. After all, it was only in November when Creative Scotland refused to provide regular funding to the company.

Dogstar have applied three times to Creative Scotland for support to enable their reputation and touring capacity to grow, and three times they’ve been given the rubber ear. Zajac tells me the company had been approached by potential collaborators in both Sweden and Denmark, but had to turn down the offers because they could not match their funding.

Joint Artistic Director Hamish MacDonald resigned due to the continuing funding insecurity just last week.

But Dogstar shouldn’t take this personally. There has been a long tradition of Scots-based artists being ignored at the expense of the ‘big names’. Last year’s TV programme Shetland was cast in London, for example, using actors who have had to leave Scotland to be taken seriously.

The cultural debate during the independence referendum revealed a sector keen to display a bit more confidence in our home-grown talent, regardless of the result. Perhaps it’s time we started doing that.