Catching up with the soft-spoken Matthew Zajac at Tramway, on Glasgow’s Southside, is a relaxing experience. Writer and performer of the multi-award winning Tailor of Inverness, Zajac seems mildly surprised by the critical and commercial success of what he calls “a personal and confessional” work.

Dogstar were founded in the late 1990s, partially in response to the lack of theatre in the Highlands, but also to mine the rich heritage of music that is scattered across the north of Scotland. Tailor, despite its use of technology and an approach that finds an echo in the work of the RSAMD’s Contemporary Performance young teams, retains that link: Zajic’s only on-stage company is a violinist.

Zajac became involved in the company in their early years as a performer, although the inspiration for this play reaches further back into his past. Having recorded his father’s memories years before – the beginning of Tailor relies heavily on almost verbatim transcriptions of these tapes – he visited his paternal homeland to discover that some of these memories were fabricated.

One of the central themes of Tailor is the tussle between truth and reinvention: his father had come through the Second World War, experiencing catastrophe in his native Poland, before arriving in Scotland. From this foundation, Zajic weaves a magical story that considers issues of cultural identity – he acknowledges that part of the creative process was about establishing his own identity as a Scottish Pole, or Polish Scot.

Since devolution, Scottish theatre has been increasingly preoccupied by issues of national identity: Tailor is an intensely personal take on the conflicts. Following the influx of Poles in the past decade, the questions asked by Zajac’s father have taken on a new relevance.

On stage, Zajac captures the agitation and hopes of a man who has experienced the horrors of war: in person, he is charming, generous and thoughtful. Modest about his achievements, he sees his work clearly in the context of both modernity and tradition.