Theatre-maker Jenna Watt’s first book was released last year and has been longlisted for the Highland Book Prize. Here she speaks about the process of creating Hindsight.
In 2019, Jenna Watt travelled to the Highland estate of Corrour to take part in the stalking of a hind.
She was carrying out research into the divisive subject of rewilding for a theatre project.
The award-winning stage writer, performer and director had initially envisaged the culmination of her work as a live production for audiences, but when the pandemic struck, she found herself on a new path.
Covid intervened
Jenna says: “I was working towards going into production in 2021 but due to Covid it had to stop.
“That’s when I was approached to write a book about the project instead. It was really lovely to be asked – and also slightly terrifying as long-form writing is not something I had done before.”
Hindsight: In Search of Lost Wilderness was written during lockdown and published in August 2022.
In it, Jenna unravels the story of the day she spent hunting the hind, interlaced with her discovery that her ancestors were deer stalkers, game keepers and ghillies on a Highland estate.
This exploration leads her to try to understand the complex world of the rewilding movement.
Rewilding is a conservation effort aimed at restoring and protecting natural processes and wilderness areas.
Putting something back
“The way I often describe it is it’s the process of re-establishing an ecological process that’s missing within a habitat,” Jenna explains.
“A really simple example is planting trees alongside rivers so those trees can enact a process where there’s shade on the river, which helps to keep it cooler.
“This then impacts the microspecies and fish, then dead wood falls in and that provides nutrients and minerals for all those species. Without the trees there, that process is missing.”
Jenna, who is based in Glasgow and originally from Inverness, says there are many – often complex – reasons why habitats might have ecological processes missing. Some may be historical, whereas others more contemporary.
She goes on: “I certainly used to have this attitude that nature will just bounce back regardless of what we do, and more and more we are getting a better understanding of how that’s not possible.
“If you don’t have a tree within a certain radius of an area then it’s not necessarily true that a tree will just happen to grow. There’s got to be other processes around like birds and other species that can carry seeds.”
A back-up plan
Despite having success in her theatrical career with productions such as Faslane and Flâneurs, Jenna decided in 2016 to return to studying and gained an MSc in Sustainable Rural Development.
“The arts situation is pretty dire just now with cuts being announced across our sector and that was happening at that time too,” she says. “I realised I needed to have a back-up plan and I had to think what I would do if I wasn’t working in theatre.”
She discovered she was equally passionate about subjects such as deer management and land management and that’s when she discovered the course.
Things came full circle when Jenna began researching a theatre piece that could fuse both her passions.
She hopes a production can still make it to the stage one day, but for now she is focussed on taking Hindsight round the book festival circuit as well working on two new theatre commissions.
Jenna writes candidly about the process of participating in a stalk, which she found unsettling and well beyond her comfort zone.
“I didn’t go into it for pleasure – it wasn’t a fun thing to do at the weekend. It very much felt as if it was part of a process. It was work, and I was going to find out something and go through whatever happened on the day and accept it without having preconceptions,” she explains.
“I was having to repress a lot of my own anxieties and insecurities.”
Challenging yourself
Jenna goes on: “In a way, this was also about challenging my own belief system. When you choose to put yourself in situations you wouldn’t normally, you’ve got to be resilient, open and brave enough to challenge your belief system.”
She adds: “I’m finding in the conversation around conservation and other approaches to land management that quite often people will have different belief systems and sometimes those can be a barrier to you doing something that’s better for the environment.”
Hindsight: In Search of Lost Wilderness is published by Birlinn. The winner of the Highland Book Prize will be announced in May 2023.
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