THE BURNS PROJECT Unveils January Dates, Including Culloden Battlefield and More
Clements moves through the framework of Burns’ life and relationships to join the past with the present in a moving and provocative documentary theatre experience.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Nov. 28, 2025
Rabbie Burns. A national hero and cultural icon for the global Scottish diaspora. Loved for his beautiful songs, ballads, and legendary epistles to friends, Scotland’s most famous romantic poet and lyricist is theatrically unearthed in a specially commissioned theatre work this Autumn - The Burns Project, written and performed by James Clements (The Diana Tapes at the Edinburgh Fringe and Stockwell Playhouse (London), Guac at the Public (New York), At the Barricades at MITU580 (New York)), with accompaniments of music from the acclaimed instrumentalist Lisa Rigby.
Premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025 at the National Trust for Scotland’s Georgian House, Edinburgh and directed by the multi-award-winning Cora Bissett (June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music, and Me; Orphans; What Girls Are Made Of), The Burns Project was created in collaboration with the Trust and sees Clements piece together rarely-before-seen writings and recently digitised archival material belonging to The Bard to conjure a complex, irreverent, and honest portrait of a seminal Scottish literary figure. Seeking to refresh and expand on existing personifications and representations of the poet, The Burns Project vividly brings to life the image of a man full of complexities and contradictions, capable of both deep love and callousness, of great progressiveness and political inconsistencies. It is a story of a man with high ideals, who sometimes fell short of them, with layers of intrigue and mystery - it is the story of an icon, and the story of us all.
Interactive and staged in-the-round in the style of a traditional Burns Supper within in a number of the Trust’s historic places - Brodie Castle, Drum Castle, the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, Culloden Battlefield, and Haddo House - Clements moves through the framework of Burns’ life and relationships to join the past with the present in a moving and provocative documentary theatre experience.
Considered and bold and with very limited tickets, The Burns Project makes the National Trust for Scotland’s fascinating archives crackle with new life as Clements delves deep into Burns’ personal history and kaleidoscopic personality. Accompanied by traditional and original music from acclaimed Edinburgh-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Lisa Rigby, Robert Burns lives and breathes on the stage - in all his charm and his flaws.
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