Stand & Deliver: Hannah Jarrett-Scott on Soundtrack, Solidarity, and the Lee Jeans Sit-In

“I really love the section from when we build the barricade onwards. It’s like you’re on a runaway train and it doesn’t really stop until the end.”

No, Hannah Jarrett-Scott hasn’t been drafted to wave a massive red flag in yet another revival of Les Misérables. The barricades she is talking about are distinctly more denim, and the revolution is a lot closer to home.

She is discussing Stand & Deliver: The Lee Jeans Sit-In, the National Theatre of Scotland and Tron Theatre co-production that crashes into Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre tonight. Written by Frances Poet and directed by Jemima Levick, the play offers a synthesiser-soaked retelling of the landmark 1981 industrial action in Greenock. Faced with a multinational corporation eager to liquidate their livelihoods, predominantly female factory workers locked the doors and held their ground for seven months to save 240 jobs.

The production relies heavily on the testimony of the women who executed the strike forty-five years ago. For Jarrett-Scott, who plays Cathie Wallace, the early performances at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre revealed just how deep the roots of this story run on the West Coast.

“I really love the section from when we build the barricade onwards. It’s like you’re on a runaway train and it doesn’t really stop until the end.”

“The audiences’ reactions have been phenomenal—really moving and empowering,” she says. “They’re very politically engaged, and there seems to be a lot of people who have either been through the experience or have been through a similar one. I think there’s a lot of knowing nods, vocal nods, a lot of the time.”

Meeting the “Dirty Dozen”

Growing up on the East Coast in the 1990s, the actor had zero prior knowledge of this specific chapter of Scottish labour history before the script landed on her desk. (As an older vintage son of Dundee, me neither – it was all Timex when I was a kid.)

“As soon as I read the script and found out what it was about, I was completely sold,” she recalls. “I think anything that tells true stories is something that I would want to do, because it’s rooted in some sort of authenticity. And obviously, we had their permission to tell it, so I think that’s a real privilege.”

During the development process, the production team facilitated meetings between the cast and the surviving strikers. This included members of the “Dirty Dozen”—a tight-knit group of friends including Cathie Wallace, Maggie Wallace, Helen Monaghan, and Catherine Robertson. These women were, according to Jarrett-Scott, “always up to no good” while relentlessly rallying support. For the cast, this face-to-face encounter snapped the historical text into sharp reality.

“That unlocked a whole lot of stuff for us as actors,” she notes. “It was very moving, very emotional, and it makes you realise how much of an honour and a privilege it is to be able to tell these stories.”

The irony of casting Jarrett-Scott as the pragmatic Cathie is not lost on the actor herself. Poet’s script splits the narrative between those who instinctively sought the limelight of the picket line and those who quietly kept the occupation functional.

“I liked the part of Cathie because she’s so heavily involved but still kind of on the outside,” Jarrett-Scott explains. “I think her sister, Maggie, very much wanted to put herself out there and do the rallies, the meetings, the speeches, and the marches, whereas Cathie was more of a behind-the-scenes kind of gal. She did a lot of the rotas and helped with the cooking, cleaning and stuff like that.”

Off-stage, Jarrett-Scott possesses a markedly different temperament.

“I think she’s actually quite different to me in personality,” she admits. “If I were in that setting, I’d be wanting to go out and do the marches, you know?”

However, the real Cathie Wallace’s wry comedic timing offered a solid bridge between performer and subject.

“She’s very funny, and Frances has captured her humour and her sort of show-off mentality, which really suits me well. I get a lot of funny one-liners and stuff like that, so it’s a real privilege to get to bring her character to life. And when I met her, I was like, ‘Yeah, you’re so funny.’ She’s such a funny person, so that was a really lovely moment. I thought, ‘Oh, I’ve not just made this up. This is actually what she’s like, you know.'”

Synthesising the Future (By Ear)

Levick drives the narrative with a live 1980s soundtrack, operating with a relentless actor-muso ensemble that tears through tracks like David Bowie’s Fashion and Duran Duran’s Girls on Film.

“I think it’s always a great way to tell a story and to make the audience feel instantly connected,” Jarrett-Scott notes. “It’s a real buzz every night, actually, when the first song we sing is Kids in America and we’re always like, ‘Come on, let’s go.’ So it’s a good way to start a show.”

The musical selections deliberately jump the gun on strict historical accuracy, pulling from the years immediately following the 1981 sit-in. Rather than a careless chronological blunder, this was a calculated thematic decision to reflect the fiercely forward-looking nature of the striking women.

“They were women who were always looking forward,” she explains. “They were always looking to strive for better, and for the future of themselves. So if we were singing songs from the ’70s, it would feel too reflective and too passive.”

This deliberate anachronism threw up its own challenges in the rehearsal room.

“That was actually quite hard to navigate as an actor at first, because you’re like, ‘Wait, where am I? Am I from the future? Am I from the past?’ And I think the music does that too, because most of the music is from the near future—you know, 1983. So I think it totally works.”

For Jarrett-Scott, whose recent years have included heavy gigging with her harmony-based band The Other Theory, picking up the trumpet for this job felt like a natural extension of her skill set. The rigours of a touring theatrical production inevitably bleed into her own songwriting.

“I think all the experiences you have in a job fill you with life, and that informs future writing,” she says. “You form these brilliant friendships and relationships, and that brings a richness to your life.”

Yet, despite her obvious musical chops, she remains remarkably blunt about her formal training.

“I’m an actor first, and I honestly wouldn’t even call myself a professional musician,” she laughs. “I like to say I’m a jack of all trades, master of absolutely none, and that is the truth! I love playing instruments, but I’ve never really studied an instrument past doing my grade 5 trumpet. After that, I found I preferred to learn by ear, so I stopped doing the grades.”

She is quick to credit much of the show’s audio virtues to performing musical director Shonagh Murray and a highly skilled technical team who spent half a day simply tweaking the levels before technical rehearsals even began. A crucial, often overlooked element of that success is the onstage foldback monitors, which prevent the actor-musos from screaming themselves hoarse.

“You have to be able to hear yourself, otherwise you bust your voice,” she points out. “A huge part of the reason we sound great is that we’ve got a brilliant sound team. Chris is mixing it, and he’s phenomenal, and we have an amazing sound tech called Archie who’s doing a lot of the pedal work backstage. So we’re playing the chords, and he’s pressing all the different pedals to make everything sound great.”

The Athletics of Ensemble Theatre

The demanding reality of mounting a hybrid musical-drama in a compressed timeframe forged a strong camaraderie among the cast, earning them a CATS Award nomination for Best Ensemble.

“It was really hard work getting the piece together; we didn’t have too long, and there was a lot to cover,” she recalls. “The first three weeks were really full-on, and we were learning lines during our breaks and stuff. But once we got up and running, we were able to all get to know each other a bit more, and we’ve actually been a really tight team.”

**Chiara Sparkes – Photo credit – Mihaela Bodlovic**

Jarrett-Scott views this theatrical collaboration through the lens of a sports team. A keen footballer when safely off the clock, she has had to swap the pitch for the pavement to avoid injury while on tour, forming a cast running club. Tour life also requires navigating unexpected variables—like arriving in Aberdeen expecting a freeze, only to find glorious sunshine.

“We all packed loads of warm clothes after being told it was freezing,” she laughs, admitting that despite the free time in the North East, a trip on the famously rickety roller coaster at Codona’s Amusement Park was probably off the cards. “Give myself whiplash just before the show? I’m sure Jemima will be happy!”

Back in the relative safety of the theatre, the chaotic nature of an actor-muso ensemble means the cast rarely gets to see the whole picture, nor do they often play the same show twice.

“It’s always really interesting hearing the running times at the end of the night, because you’re like, ‘Oh, that was a minute faster tonight. I wonder why.’ It’s just different every night,” she says. “Unfortunately, a lot of the time you miss a lot of other people’s performances because you’re running around backstage doing something else. Aron Dochard and I were having a chat the other day about things we do in certain scenes, and he was telling me about this thing he does. I was like, ‘I’ve never seen you do that because my back’s turned!'”

Taking the Barricades to the Capital

As the production settles into the Traverse tonight, adapting to the venue’s subterranean configuration is just another part of the job. The set remains the same; it is the Edinburgh crowd that will dictate the energy in the room.

“I love playing instruments, but I’ve never really studied an instrument past doing my grade 5 trumpet. After that, I found I preferred to learn by ear, so I stopped doing the grades.”

“What is different is the reception, and you have to be alert and ready for that because every city has a different sense of humour and different lived experiences,” Jarrett-Scott says. “You have to just be alert and alive to change, and that can sometimes be a strange feeling at first, but it’s usually really fun.”

The women of the Lee Jeans factory fought for their community and won. Now, forty-five years later, their defiance is tearing up stages across the country. It is a story of grit and solidarity that clearly requires relentless physical commitment from its cast, especially during the “runaway train” momentum of the first act’s barricade build. Yet, for Jarrett-Scott, the appeal of the play goes deeper than the adrenaline of belting out Girls on Film or riding the physical intensity of the performance.

“I mean, it’s such a universal message of hope, so I really do think that the Scottish public are going to absolutely love it.”

Featured Image: Stand & Deliver – Production Photography – Photo credit Mihaela Bodlovic