INVISIBLE ARMY | the show

Photo by Brian Hartley

Photo by Colin Hattersley

Robbie McGuire is becoming invisible. It’s not a big problem. It doesn’t affect his day to day life. Mrs Gillespie still gives him detention, Sarah Hargreaves still threatens to smash his face in, and Mr Bartnik the shopkeeper still won’t let him forget that he owes 10p for a bottle of milk he bought over a year ago. But Robbie has started noticing that people bump into him a lot in the street. That nobody ever really looks at him – they always look to the side of a metre behind as though they’re not quite sure exactly where he is. And this morning, the longer he looked in the mirror the less he could see of himself. And so begins Robbie’s journey on a very weird day…

Invisible Army tells the story of a fifteen-year old boy who falls further into his imagination as he tries to balance the highs and lows of teenage life with looking after his sick mum. Created as a documentation of the experiences and imaginations of a group of young carers at Glasgow South West Carers Centre, it combines text, movement and music to offer a funny, moving and imaginative insight into the life of a young carer. Workshops with young carers across Scotland ran alongside the professional production.

“Invisible Army’s short, sensitive and imaginative handling of an important and often forgotten issue surely reminds us all of the immense good that theatre can do.” ★★★★★ TV Bomb – Invisible Army

“Terra Incognita was set up to tell the ‘extraordinary stories of ordinary people’, and if this show makes even one young carer more visible in the world, it’s done its job.” ★★★★ THE LIST

This project was delivered with support from Creative Scotland, Young Start and Macrobert Arts Centre.