Set in an isolated cottage, Isla Cowan’s new play To The Bone questions the relative values of money, memory and emotional attachment, writes Mark Fisher

In the space of a year, Isla Cowan has gone from urban to rural. Twelve months ago, the playwright was on stage in She Wolf, her own one-woman show on the Edinburgh Fringe. It was a howl of rage about a young city-based professional driven to animal extremes by a system weighed against her. In the face of corporate ruthlessness, the woman rejected the civilised world and answered the call of the wild.

This year, Cowan is changing the pace with To The Bone, the latest play to join the summer season at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. Responding to the theatre’s open-ended commission, the Edinburgh writer set her thoughts on the countryside.

“I’ll be able to ping-pong back and forth, because I’m based in Edinburgh, but I’ll be taking in the peace and quiet of Pitlochry,” says Cowan, pleased for an excuse to escape the festival crowds. “It’s reflected in the plays themselves. She Wolf was a bubbling rage of a play and To The Bone is a quieter, more subtle play, with strong emotions underneath. It’s reflected in that change of environment.”

To The Bone is set in an isolated cottage where Beth (Rachael McAllister) and her partner Alf (Joseph Tweedale) had once tried to make a fresh start, believing country life would fix their relationship problems. Things did not go according to plan and eight years later Beth returns with the intention of selling up, only to find a surprise waiting for her. Although her own feelings towards this property are ambivalent, she finds she is not the only one with an emotional stake in it.

Initially, Cowan researched local myths, folk tales and the history of highland Perthshire, but she put that aside as her attention was drawn to a more recent phenomenon. It was the fantasy shared by many city dwellers about getting away from it all. “I became interested in this modern myth of moving to the country,” says Cowan. “During the first lockdown after the pandemic, we saw this mass exodus from the cities, with people wanting space and nature. Even I get off the train when I arrive in Pitlochry, take a deep breath and go, ‘Fresh air! Isn’t this great!’ But that perfect idyllic life wasn’t quite what worked out for those people. I wanted to think about that rural setting and a mythology that’s broken down.”

In Sam Hardie’s studio production, which also stars Trudy Ward, this drama asks questions about property, belonging and the power of ownership. Who should have rights to a place that one person owns and another person cares about? Is there no place for emotional ties in a world defined by money? As we endure a combined housing and cost-of-living crisis, such questions are more acute than ever, especially for those of Cowan’s generation who are unable to buy.

“People have got into odd living arrangements; they’ve moved in together too soon and found themselves in flats they couldn’t leave and lots of people are living in houses of multiple occupancy for longer,” she says. “The power dynamics around places of living make the sense of shelter and home complicated and difficult.”

Cowan remains in the city, but has felt the pull of the countryside for herself. “It’s that sense of escape,” says the playwright who grew up in a single parent household in Edinburgh and studied English Literature at Cambridge, followed by a master’s degree in writing for performance at the University of St Andrews, graduating five years ago. “We tend to associate our emotional state with our environmental state. When things feel too much, I just want to run away to the country or the seaside. But our expectations of what a place and our lives will be like are often far removed from what transpires in reality.”

Her play is also informed by grief, guilt and dealing with the past. “It’s about how we go on,” she says. “As well as ownership of property, it’s about ownership of the past. How do we reconcile ourselves with others and with ourselves?”

The playwright describes her work as “ecofeminist” by which she means she is interested in ecology, environment and a female perspective. To The Bone, she says, does not have an explicit message or agenda, but in its focus on property ownership and female experience (“the personal is political”), it reflects her political worldview. With its setting indoors, traditionally assumed to be the domain of women, To The Bone questions the relative values of money, memory and emotional attachment.

“There is a difference between a play that is environmentalist and one that is interested in ecology,” she says. “I wouldn’t say this play is actively environmentalist – it’s not about the climate crisis – but it is as much about the house environment as it is about the human characters. There are non-human agents in this drama. It is about what happens to a house ecologically when you’ve got damp or rot or things that start to degrade and decay.”

The title suggests phrases such as stripped to the bone, chilled to the bone, sick to the bone and bone-tired. “It’s not only about the bones of the human body but also about the structure of a house, the foundation, the beams,” she says. “The play is interested in ecology in that sense. The phrase ‘to the bone’ is about an extremity, something stripped back to its fundamental parts. To The Bone encapsulates houses, bodies and the raw emotion that drives the play.”

To The Bone, Pitlochry Festival Theatre, 18 August until 29 September, www.pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com

Isla Cowan on her new play To The Bone: 'It’s about ownership of the past'