Overview
Jan Tait and the Bear is an animated comedic chamber opera based on a 15th-century folktale from the Shetlandic Isle of Fetlar, halfway between Scotland and Norway. Shetland then lay under Norwegian rule, and Shetlanders paid tax to the Norwegian king in the form of butter. When villager Jan Tait was accused of short-weighing his butter, a fatal argument with a tax collector ensued, and Tait was taken to Norway to be put to death. Rough and rugged, Tait appears before the Norwegian king, Harald, with bare feet with ugly bunions on them. When King Harald expresses disgust, Tait cuts the bunions off with an axe! Harald admires Tait’s foolish bravery and offers him a pardon if he will kill a bear who has been wreaking havoc in the mountain villages. Tait recognises in the bear a kindred spirit, and instead of killing it, laces some butter with a sleeping potion, captures it, and brings it back to Shetland. Mixing together rich historical detail with medieval humour and contemporary whimsy, this story will delight viewers of all ages, while celebrating the longstanding connections between Shetland and Norway.
Following successful live performances at the Sellafirth Community Hall in Shetland, the Center for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Made in Scotland Showcase, we aim to turn Jan Tait into a short stop-motion animated film enjoyable by audiences of all ages. Our collaborative team includes composer/librettist Emily Doolittle, producer/director Greenlight Creative (Victoria and Jason Brown), stop-motion animator and paper artist Eleanor Stewart, Shetland-based illustrator Meilo So, Glasgow/Aberdeen-based Ensemble Thing (directed by Tom Butler), and line producer Su Bainbridge. We are currently seeking funding and partnerships to enable us to complete our film.
See below for the history of our production of Jan Tait as well as details about where we are and where we are heading. An enormous thank you to everyone who has helped us to get to where we are now, including the Founders Fund for Creatives, the RCS Make it Work award, an RCS Athenaeum Award, Creative Scotland, the Centre for Contemporary Arts, an Opera America Discovery Grant, the Hinrichsen Foundation, the Hope Scott Trust, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Shetland
The idea for the Jan Tait opera took root in 2010 when composer Emily Doolittle visited Shetland for the first time, and met several Shetland musicians, including pianist, fiddler and illustrator Meilo So and baritone Andy Ross, who played together in an ensemble called ffancytunes, which was then the northernmost chamber ensemble in the UK! They invited her to write a piece for them, and she decided to explore some Shetlandic folklore in the form of a chamber opera. She wanted to write an accessible, humorous work that could be performed in a wide variety of spaces including community halls, pubs, and/or libraries as well as more traditional concert venues.
Emily composed Jan Tait on and off between 2012 and 2018, using a theatrical version of the story by Peter Guy as a a starting point. She made several research visits to Shetland with the support of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Ffancytunes (Meilo So, Brian Gregson, Janice Armstrong, Andy Ross, Ming Sanford, Finley Armstrong, Peter Dobbing, Clare Stiles, Veronica Cooper) performed an in-progress concert version of Jan Tait at the Sellafirth Community Hall in 2015.
Performances in Glasgow and Edinburgh
In 2016 Doolittle won an Opera America Discovery Grant which enabled her to bring Jan Tait and the Bear to Glasgow for a fully staged performance at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, with Stasi Schaeffer as director, Victoria Brown (of Greenlight Creative) as costume designer, Ensemble Thing (conducted by Tom Butler), mezzo-soprano Cath Backhouse as Jan Tait, Brian McBride as the bear, the king, the tax collector, and the guard, and Alan McHugh as narrator.
“[Jan Tait] delightfully reinvents opera as a casual form of community storytelling”
– Gregor Forbes, The Cusp
On the strength of these performances we received Made in Scotland funding from Creative Scotland, as well as funding from the Hope Scott Trust, the Hinrichsen Foundation, and a Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Athenaeum Award to bring the production to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018 for 6 acclaimed performances.
“I loved it!“
– Louise Rodgers, Three Weeks Edinburgh (5-star review)
Film Experiments and Trailer
Following the performances in Edinburgh, we started thinking about how to further develop Jan Tait, and realised it was perfectly suited to film. We wanted to mix 2D and 3D stop-motion paper cut-out and paper model animation with short sections of live action, enabling us to appeal to and reach wider audiences both in and out of Scotland.
We fell in love with the work of animator Eleanor Stewart/Clubhouse Animations and decided to trial a short project with her, to create the first two very short films of an eventual series called Animoceans. This includes music (as well as a crochet rock pool) by Doolittle, origami by Neil Banas, and production by Greenlight Creative.
Following the creation of these two Animoceans films, we received funding from RCS/Make it Work to trial some animation techniques and make preliminary trailer of Jan Tait. As it was during covid, we worked with Glasgow and Central Belt artists, including the fantastic illustrator Helen Wyllie, as well as the core members of the creative team.
Short Film
Having performed Jan Tait and the Bear live and trialled multiple illustration and animation techniques, we are now ready to bring our film-version of Jan Tait to fruition. We’re imagining a 22-minute film, but it could potentially be as short as 15 minutes or as long as 30. We have brought on board award-winning Shetland illustrator Meilo So, who is known for her sensitive and evocative portrayal of the natural world, as well as the warmth and vitality of the human and animal scenes she depicts.
We are now seeking the support and, crucially, the funding to enable us to complete Jan Tait. We are especially (though not exclusively) interested in finding partners in Norway and/or elsewhere in Scandinavia, because the story celebrates the long-standing ties between Scotland and Scandinavia. We are open to a variety of kinds of partnerships, collaborations, so please get in touch if you would like to help us turn Jan Tait into a reality!
emilydoolittle@gmail.com/+44 7494 787 661
