We Are In Time – Documentary

We Are In Time is a striking new theatrical production by Stewart Laing – founder and Artistic Director of Untitled Projects, and one of Scotland’s most forward- thinking theatre-makers. Through song, music and words, we are told the extraordinary story of a transplanted heart, written by Pamela Carter. Through the voices of both giver and receiver, the journey of the heart from one life to another is teased open, inviting the audience into a strange, intense world of complex emotion and unexpected metaphor.

The production features a bespoke new score by highly lauded Icelandic composer/producer Valgeir Sigurðsson. Creating music that swoops beneath the surface of our expectations, Sigurðsson melds contemporary classical and enigmatic electronica to create new soundworlds that are at once minimal and complex, beautiful and absorbing. Performing alongside two solo singers, our musicians become a living, breathing element of the on-stage world; at once soundtrack, chorus and curious witnesses to the unfolding drama.

While Pamela Carter was exploring these complex narratives of life and death on a knife edge, she was moved to reach out to surgical professionals at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, where she observed surgeon Nawwar Al-Attar and his team and immersed herself in the intricate and specialised choreography of cardiac surgery. In this film, she and the whole creative team discuss what it takes to create art out of challenging subjects – in this case both heart-wrenching and hopeful, creating life out of grief, the end of one life enabling the continuation of another.