US performer remembers Lockerbie bombing victims in Edinburgh
- Published
Pan Am 103 was blown up over Lockerbie
The lingering effects of the Lockerbie bombing are to be explored in a new show at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Impact is the work of US singer and actress Amy Engelhardt.
She was a student at Syracuse University in New York State in 1988 when 35 of her classmates were murdered.
They were travelling home for Christmas on board Pan Am flight 103 when it was blown up over Lockerbie.
The plane, named Clipper Maid of the Seas, was blown up while flying from London to New York on 21 December, 1988. A total of 270 people died, 259 on board the Boeing 747 and 11 on the ground.
It remains the worst terrorist attack in UK history and prompted a 13-year-long investigation leading to the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, on 270 counts of murder.
Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, a Libyan man accused of making the bomb which destroyed the plane, was taken into US custody last year. He has since pleaded not guilty to two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and one count of destruction of a vehicle resulting in death.
Amy lost five friends in the bombing and always meant to visit the town to pay tribute to them and to visit the memorial there.
She eventually made it to Scotland in 2019.
Speaking to BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme, she said: "I'd always wanted to go but I assumed that when I went that it would be a total grief parade. It would just be me paying my respects and I would leave and that's actually not what happened".
Renee Boulanger, Kim Wickham and Amy Engelhardt in Lockerbie.
Amy arrived at the same time as two other women. One was Renee Boulanger, whose sister Nicole was a 21-year-old theatre student at Syracuse when she was killed in the bombing.
The other was Kim Wickham, who had been on the Syracuse trip to Europe. She had stayed on, missing the fatal flight home. She was close friends with Nicole Boulanger.
Amy said: "I ended up going with these two women who were even more connected to it than I was. Two women for whom this was possibly the most important experience of their lives".
The trip led to her developing the show Impact. She describes it as a "love letter" to the people she met in Lockerbie.
"I was completely bowled over by the spirit, the generosity, the kindness and the industrial grade showing-up that the people of Lockerbie did, under the absolute worst of circumstances. Going though trauma themselves.
"They were the kindest people I have ever met in my life".
Impact is a mixture of songs, film, and monologues
Amy describes the show as a story-telling piece, mixing video with monologues and five songs. It is a big step away from her usual work, which is more comedic.
"I never expected if I went to the Edinburgh Fringe that I would be here with such a serious show," she said "The piece obviously is not a comedy but there are moments of levity in it and ultimately it is extremely inspiring."
Impact is on at The Gilded Balloon, Teviot, at 13:00 every day except 15 August.