I owe a lot to Wick Players, says Glenna as she gives an insight into her acting career

Glenna Morrison has been recalling how her experiences with Wick Players from an early age helped her on the way to a career in acting.

She highlights the support and guidance she received from many stalwarts of the local amateur drama scene in a new recording for Wick Voices, the online oral history project of the Wick Society.

Glenna left Wick at 18 to train in London and has worked professionally in theatre, film and TV for more than 30 years.

When she was 16, Glenna appeared in a Wick production of Aladdin and she describes it in the recording as “a really crucial turning point”.

She explains: “It showed me that I could create a character from scratch, with the help of other people, and feel confident, and to see all these other people around me who were really unhampered by nerves.

“So it was a very freeing experience, and the Assembly Rooms would be packed full for every performance. I owe a lot to the Wick Players.

“It set me up with a passion to act and at that point I thought ‘that’s for me, that’s exactly what I want to do’. And a lot of teachers at the high school were integral in helping me gain access to drama school.”

Glenna (53) also talks fondly about her parents, David and Edna Morrison, who qualified as librarians and moved to Wick in 1965. David became Caithness county librarian and a leading figure in the cultural life of the town.

In the 1970s David and some friends launched the Wick Festival of Poetry, Folk and Jazz and Glenna points out: “It was all his fault that I got into acting!

“In the summer, when the festival was on, the house was a hive of activity. The festival really was something that just filled me with such joy and I think it gave a lot to the town.”

Her many TV credits have included two episodes of Taggart, the long-running detective series, in one of which she appeared as the victim of a deadly crime. “I was murdered on the top of a three-storey car park, strangled to death,” Glenna recalls.

She gives an insight into the differences between stage and film acting, and emphasises how anyone wishing to get into the profession must learn to deal with rejection.

Glenna now lives in Alloa, Clackmannanshire, and her mother Edna has moved there too.

In the autumn of 2022 Glenna attended an event in Wick commemorating the 10th anniversary of her father’s passing. A bench in his memory was installed at the Braehead.

Glenna acknowledges that her Wick links became weakened after her father died. But she says: “I have always felt that Wick is a big part of me.”

The 27-minute recording can be heard at www.wickvoices.co.uk.

Wick Voices began in 2016. There are now 434 recordings freely available to listen to, with more being added regularly. Collectively they have been listened to more than 523,000 times.

The interviews cover a wide range of topics with people from all walks of life, from the Wick area and other parts of Caithness.

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