The Scottish theatre company 7:84 bring their work on a tour of Ireland.

The left-wing theatre company 7:84 takes its name from a statistic published in The Economist in 1966 indicating that seven per cent of the population of the United Kingdom own 84 per cent of the wealth.

They have a basically socialist attitude towards society.

The company is touring a production of 'The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black Black Oil', written by Liverpool born director and playwright John McGrath. While presented as entertainment, it also questions what is happening to society and the quality of Scottish life. The play presents a message of exploitation in song and features the return of a descendant of Scottish immigrants as a Texas oil man attracted by North Sea oil.

The company 7:84 is run as a collective by its members. Their philosophy of producing popular theatre means that they spend most of their time touring the remote areas of Scotland and playing to audiences drawn from the more depressed urban areas.

Financially, at least, there apparently no stars.

Playwright John McGrath, who now lives in Scotland, explains why the company is now taking to the roads of provincial Ireland. The representations of Scotland abroad have been dominated by English ideas of what is good and bad culture or by an international middle class idea of culture.

What we want to do is to show the way people in Scotland really enjoy themselves.

He warns that there is a very close parallel between the capital exploitation that has happened in Scotland and the potential for it to happen in Ireland.

Not just ecological and environmental disasters, social disasters, whole communities, whole cultures being wiped out by the decision, very capricious decisions of multinational oil corporations or big construction companies and of people who generally want to exploit the land.

'The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black Black Oil' is delivered in the form of song, dance, jokes, entertainment, stories and comment about local issues. As the final curtain is drawn, chairs in the hall are cleared and the audience is invited to participate in a céilí.

An RTÉ News report broadcast on 24 June 1974. The reporter is Dermot Mullane.