Pitlochry Festival Theatre reopens with outdoor summer season

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."