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Heart of the Country

St Mungo's Square, Advanced Research Centre, University of Glasgow
Glasgow United Kingdom

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Heart of the Country

Part of the 2023 Alasdair Cameron Festival, Heart of the Country is a new work by Josh Dodds that blends storytelling, soap opera and campfire songs to chart a path from Lyndon B. Johnsons impoverished childhood in the Texas Hill Country to the lives of those riding the coattails of history.

The 36th President of the United States was a brash, divisive figure with a southern drawl and a pathological fear of humiliation. He didnt fit the usual mould of the progressive politician but through his mastery of negotiation and quid pro quo pragmatism he passed some of the most sweeping civil rights and anti-poverty legislation of the 20th century. Yet he was also responsible for the devastating escalation of the Vietnam War; two sides of the coin that make up his bifurcated legacy.

Re-interpreting Karen Finley and Jerry Hunts proposal for a television opera about Johnsons life, Heart of the County is less a biography of Johnson than a counter-mythology that plays on the gaps and imaginative leaps that make up the cultural consciousness of a political figure and their times. Gathered around the fire, campers share tall tales and songs about Johnson and the people who met him, swapping coins with voices and sounds etched into QR codes on the back.

If coins are a re-enactment of sovereign power, Heart of the Country explores how they can be reconfigured to affirm and extend our indebtedness to one another and how speculation can contribute to a process of reimagining value. Around the campfire, the currency of stories, songs and ad hoc coins starts to dismantle the absolute value of the minted coin and its economic certainties and opens onto a vision of democratic participation where value is negotiated and debt is fugitive.

Written and Directed by Josh Dodds with contributions from the cast: Liam Fair, Katie McPeake, Lily Carmen Smith, Lucy Stewart and Adam Streets.