Since taking over at Pitlochry Festival Theatre Elizabeth Newman has delivered some really exciting work as their Artistic Director, as well as working round a multi-million pounds refurbishment of the Perthshire venue.
The new look theatre now has a main auditorium, a studio space where they can try out new work and even an outdoor amphitheatre where customers take a punt on the Scottish weather. They’ve recruited a 20 strong ensemble of actors for their new season, which includes a world premiere of a new Peter Arnott play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter and a long awaited revival of Broadway classic Gypsy in May.
Our Features Editor Paul Clarke spoke to Elizabeth Newman ahead of the new season.
Astonishingly it’s been 20 years since there’s been a production of Gypsy in Scotland, and apart from that ludicrous oversight why pick this show for the main stage in your new season?
I think it’s just one of the greatest musicals ever written. People will absolutely love it as It’s got brilliant, strong women at the centre of it, it’s a family drama as well as being about Vaudeville. The songs are amazing, there’s loads of opportunity for great dance routines and I think it’s just a fantastic night out, or matinee experience, for an audience really.
How is your Associate Director Ben Occhipinti staging it?
It’s a brilliant actor muso production, so there’s loads of people playing musical instruments as well as doing amazing dance routines, fantastic costumes and a brilliant moving set. It’s a proper big West End Show really.
Unusually in these tough financial times for theatres you’ve recruited an ensemble of 20 actors this season which is a bit of a risk.
It’s really important because it’s those actors that make all of the shows because we produce such a diverse programme, and we’ve 10 pieces of work this year. Having that amount of people to do lots of different things just makes it all possible, and really exciting to the audience.
And you’re got a world premiere of Peter Arnott’s new play Group Portrait In A Summer Landscape.
It comes off the back of the fact that we did another Peter play a few years ago called Monarch of the Glen that was hugely successful. This play is set in a house just up the road in Kinloch Rannoch, it’s a bit like Succession onstage, it’s a family drama with loads of secrets. Big characters having passionate conversations and arguments, and it’s just kind of riveting, brilliant family drama set in an amazing place.
It’s set around the time of the independence vote which many of your regular patrons will have cast their ballot in.
That’s the backdrop although the play is about a lot of different things including the breakdown of marriage, about children growing up and growing old. It’s set in 2014, so around the backdrop of Scotland’s first referendum. We programmed it from it before the decision that was made in the Supreme Court at the end of last year, and obviously recent changes to our Scottish Government.
Given the recent political ructions in Scotland it’s really timely?
I guess what’s really important to me that I don’t want people to think it’s a news broadcast. It’s a drama, and within that it has a context and within that context it’s an allegory for people trying to make sense of the world, and how best to go about living our lives. Peter has drawn amazing characters that were part of these kinds of big debates and conversations and as part of that there is politics. But there is also religion, there is also science and it’s often very funny as well. I think it’s just about knowing that it’s about the big things in life and, of course, politics is within that.
You’re also got another brand-new piece, To The Bone, in your studio space.
It’s by an amazing playwright called Isla Cowan, she’s one of Scottish theatre’s great talents. She’s written a really powerful play that’s about a couple, and then that relationship breaking down, and this other couple. It’s a bit of a thriller in some ways, and unexpected events happen within this play that really bring home what it means to grieve, and what it means to let go. She does that in a very personal way within these relationships, but she’s also looking at what that means for the world like all great plays do.
How important is it for a big producing theatre like yours to have a studio?
I think it’s really important because it creates a different environment for audiences to experience work, the studio is far more intimate, it offers us different opportunities to have different conversations with the audience. For artists, I think we are now able to have very different conversations with writers. We have the main auditorium where Peter’s Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape is going to be produced, we’ve got the studio where To The Bones is going to be. We also have our amphitheatre, our space outside, and that creates a very different provocation to writers as well.
And as well keeping all the artistic plates spinning you’ve adapted Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic children’s story The Secret Garden in the amphitheatre. Is this something from your childhood, or is it just a great story?
It’s a book I read when I was a child, I loved the character of Mary, and I love growing things. We have a six-acre Botanical Garden in Pitlochry, which is part of our 11-acre campus, and we grow amazing botanical plants in it and people come and visit. That’s where the amphitheatre sits inside our very own secret garden.
Do you think it can reach a new audience in this fast-moving digital age?
It felt like the best possible story we could tell there. I think right now as everyone struggles to make sense of bigger world events there is this deep desire among so many people to grow things, to nurture things, to find peace in nature. And I think that started in the pandemic as a lot of people saw that the outside could be a haven and respite for them. I think The Secret Garden articulates that beautifully, and what’s great about doing it in the garden it means that people of all ages are going to come into our garden experience, whilst they enjoy the play.
Box Office and group bookings: 01796 484626
Email boxoffice@pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com
Website: www.pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com