Mayday is a collective stand against the far right and a call for hope and solidarity.
Mayday is an international distress signal used in life-threatening emergencies, while May Day, the first day of May, carries another history: a festival of summer, a day of labour, and a day of protest. Those meanings meet powerfully in Mayday, the rapid response theatre project co-curated and directed by Cora Bissett and Hannah Lavery, and commissioned by the National Theatre of Scotland: an emergency call against the far right, but also a declaration of hope, solidarity, collective movement, and belief in the power of the people.
The one-night-only event did not simply gather anti-far-right performances together. It built a chorus. From the opening force of ‘Nazi Boys’ by Declan Welsh, the night moved through song, testimony, satire, dance, poetry, film, and memory, with each piece speaking to a different wound in the present political climate. ‘Stonewall’, performed by Loud and Proud Choir, carried the sound of queer resistance into the room, while a short documentary about Gina, the Gaza Infant Nutrition Alliance, extended the evening’s politics beyond Scotland.
That sense of resistance was sharpened by Women Against the Far Right, whose dance piece responded to the weaponisation of women’s rights, refusing the far right’s attempt to use feminist language against vulnerable communities. In Becoming Tia, Glaswegian-Arab trans storyteller Tia Boyd brought stand-up into this same terrain, turning personal experience into political satire. The Correct Version, meanwhile, used satire to answer Nigel Farage’s not-so-shocking-by-his-standards call for Welsh museums to be told what to show and teach, exposing the absurdity and danger of controlling culture through nationalist grievance.
The evening also made space for grief, masculinity, memory, and belonging. Harvest, a poem about toxic masculinity in British culture, sat alongside Being Navid, in which Sanjeev Kohli reflected on his role as shopkeeper Navid Harrid in the BBC sitcom Still Game, and on what that role has meant for representing communities in Scotland. These moments mattered because they showed the fight against the far right done by the creation of spaces, the force of collective power, and the stories that allow a community to see itself.
As the night continued, the atmosphere became increasingly collective. ‘It’s Not a Wean’s Choice’, a song from the musical Glasgow Girls, performed with Mothers Against Genocide, responded to the hostile far-right climate in UK politics. ‘Dala’, a song remembering Sheku Bayoh, who died after being restrained by police in Kirkcaldy, brought another register of mourning and anger into the room.
What emerged from the curation was a constellation of Scottish talent, and a portrait of the diversity that nourishes their perspectives. These voices came from women, from the LGBTQIA+ community, from generations of immigrants, and from people whose lives carry the complexity of belonging to a society. Mayday created a space for these perspectives to meet, speak, and respond to one another. It showed the necessity of understanding rather than hatred, of accepting difference rather than producing division. The power of the night lay in the way these voices stood beside one another. Together, they became the collective voice we urgently need to hear.
Of course, one might sometimes wonder what one night can do to change society. It is easy to become cynical about the role art can play, especially in a political climate so often distorted by far-right noise, online hostility, and bot-fed outrage. Yet there is something powerful in simply being reminded that you are not alone. Without that reminder, it becomes much easier to feel discouraged, isolated, and overwhelmed by the climate that the far right has helped to create.
As it happened, Mayday took place only six days before the election in Holyrood, at a moment when Scotland was being asked to decide its future. By the time the night ended with Patti Smith’s ‘People Have the Power’, performed with rewritten lyrics responding to our dark political moment, the event had become more than an anti-far-right statement. It becomes a promise: that community, solidarity, progress, and hope remain possible because people are still willing to stand together