QUARTZ

When I arrived in South West Scotland at the age of twelve, I had seldom if ever encountered anti Catholicism. Then I was plunged straight from the shelter of a girls' convent grammar school into the maelstrom of a mixed Catholic comprehensive in an area where "left footers" (presumably from the Catholic custom of genuflecting or bending the right knee!) were viewed with a certain amount of suspicion. Quartz is not just about that sense of bigotry however. It is about issues of magic and ways of seeing the world: but the insidious effects of anti-Catholicism and religious intolerance are part of the background of the play - part of what motivates the characters, particularly Teresa, who loves her son, and fears for him, and Michael who surely loves his mother, but is ultimately destroyed by her.

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