Theatre News

Pitlochry Festival Theatre reopens with outdoor summer season

Highlights include stage premiere of David Greig’s ”Adventures with the Painted People”

Pitlochry Festival Theatre has announced it will reopen this summer with a season of outdoor performances.

Running from June til September in the theatre's newly built 80-seat amphitheatre and riverside bandstand, the season will open with the stage premiere of David Greig's Adventures with the Painted People (10 June to 4 July).

The play was originally commissioned by Pitlochry as part of its 2020 season, and subsequently became a BBC Radio 3 play later in the year. Set on the River Tay 2000 years ago it centres on a Roman poet and a Pictish witch who escape together downriver.

Other highlights include Hannah Lavery's new one-person adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Jekyll and Hyde (18 August to 8 September) and Jo Clifford and Lesley Orr's new promenade production Requiem (September), which will see Clifford and Orr devise a ceremony that "will mourn and celebrate the lives of those lost during the pandemic and support the process of our collective grief.

Family productions include a new adaptation performed on the riverbanks of the River Tummel of Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows (2 July to 12 September), and a promenade experience of Alice in Wonderland produced in both Gaelic and English.

Elizabeth Newman, Pitlochry Festival Theatre's artistic director, said: "We have said, as soon as possible, we would be back in person and, although we couldn't produce the Summer Season as previously planned, I feel extraordinarily excited to share this outdoor summer season with audiences, especially for our big birthday. I hope it channels the same unstoppable spirit that first made Pitlochry Festival Theatre extraordinary 70 years ago when John Stewart first put up the Theatre-tent."