YOU wouldn't expect him to have Highland roots with a name like Zajac.

But Matthew Zajac's family, from a small Polish town, settled in

Scotland at the end of the war and, the way he tells them, their wartime

stories would make a fair novel. So it's no surprise to learn that the

play Zajac is directing at the festival has at its centre the healing

power of story-telling.

Born and bred in Inverness -- though he's now London-based -- he has

appeared as an actor with most of the major reps down south, as well as

the Edinburgh Lyceum and Glasgow Citizens, and is due to turn up in a

new low-budget Scottish film about the Jacobite rebellion, Chasing the

Deer, which has its premiere during the Film Festival.

He recently made his directorial debut with a 75-strong cast in a

community play, The Great Bunillidh Volcano, for a small Sutherland

village. But it was about his role as director of Wolf (no connection

with the current Jack Nicholson/Michelle Pfeiffer release) that we

talked.

Part of this year's Traverse programme, Michael Bosworth's allegorical

new play certainly looks set to offer something for audiences to think

about.

An imaginative response to recent events in former Yugoslavia, it is

set in the Balkans and tells how a prisoner and story-teller is used by

a victorious commanding officer to try to re-instil a sense of humanity

to his people, particularly to his daughter -- psychologically damaged

by what she has been through. The prisoner invents a story for her in

which he pretends he is descended from a wolf.

Presented by Plain Clothes Productions, of which Zajac is a founder

member, the play touches on issues to do with guilt, survival, killer

instincts and the brutalising effects of war, and could hardly make a

stronger contrast to the company's sell-out success last year, a dark

comedy, Blue Night in the Heart of the West when their ensemble work was

likened to ''the palmy days of Joan Littlewood''.

Zajac says Wolf will certainly follow a similar non-naturalistic mould

-- ''we always try to find the sensual in our work''. The fact that the

young, high-profile choreographer Emily Claid is part of the creative

team speaks for itself.

Willingly describing Wolf as a ''tragedy'', Zajac says unrepentantly:

''It can't be avoided when you're trying to tackle a subject like this.

It will certainly leave the audience with questions about what they can

do about it, how do you avoid it.''

But he adds with a drole flippancy: ''I also think it makes a good

antidote to the overwhelming presence of comedy at this year's

festival.''

WOLF, with Richard Albrecht -- pictured below -- plays at the Traverse

Theatre, August 23 to September 3.