Needle Room
Hit’s no the ayebidin damnation A’m wirried aboot. Hit’s the needle. Pittin hit intae ma airm. A micht be needin a haund tae dae hit.
Lanark, June 1934. Despite her brutal upbringing, Rebecca McCrea has always believed in doing what’s right. Now everything is going wrong. As housekeeper of Castlepark, home of the wealthy Galbraith family, Rebecca
has learned to manage the whims of her employers. She cooks, cleans and tries to make peace between matriarch Jessie and her bitterly estranged son, Duncan.
But when Clydesdale is gripped by a vicious heatwave and Jessie’s health suddenly declines, terrible secrets erupt - and even Rebecca has something to hide. The bleak future she’s worked so hard to escape is suddenly on the doorstep, and she must make an unthinkable choice.
This edition was published to coincide with Braw Clan’s tour of Clydesdale in September 2025.
Martin Travers is an award-winning playwright based in Lanark, Scotland. He is a founding member of Braw Clan, the Scots Language Theatre Company. His play Secret Wrapped in Lead, inspired by Dorothy Wordsworth’s visit to Leadhills in South Lanarkshire in 1803, was Braw Clan’s first professional production and toured venues throughout Clydesdale in July 2023. His award-winning play Scarfed for Life is studied in all Glasgow secondary schools and his play The Kids Are Alt Right about teenagers becoming radicalised online was launched as a national secondary schools’ resource by the Scottish Government and Education Scotland in autumn 2023. Martin’s punk play, written for the WAC Ensemble (Scotland’s first professionally supported Care Experienced theatre group) won the Writer’s Guild Award for Best Play for Young Audiences in 2022.