Elizabeth Newman on Genre-Spanning Festival Pitlochry Theatre Season

“We’re going to use everything at our disposal to tell stories, and that’s going to include music, puppets, dance…anything.” Pitlochry Festival Theatre Artistic Director Elizabeth Newman on a very personal season of genre spanning theatre in the hills.

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Well Elizabeth, it looks like quite the season ahead in Pitlochry. Did you have any particular philosophy in mind when helping put the season together?

Yeah, it’s really exciting. I approach programming in a particular way, beginning around a year and a half before we do it. I’m already thinking about 2024 now! It’s very much about thinking what you want to see, and piecing together different offerings which reach different audiences. You need to, our Summer season lasts a long time!

Plus, people typically come up to Pitlochry and see several things in one trip. So it’s a great imaginative task. You have to ask yourself what’s the drama that will really speak to people right now? What will make them interested in coming? Then you balance that out with new plays, and work that we commission or co-produce.

Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s Summer 2023 Ensemble: A Creative Meccano System

Where do you even begin?

Well first we have to think about what work we can get the rights to. I’ve already checked 30 titles for next year for example, and maybe 10 or 15 will come back as available. Then we have to think if these are works we will produce ourselves, or partnered with other organisations. From there we start to piece it together.

Obviously what’s brilliant about Pitlochry is that we have our Summer ensemble of actors, so when we’re thinking about which plays match with regards to casting, and who’s available to take parts in which plays, well it’s a bit like Meccano in a really fun way.

Now you’re beginning rehearsals now, how’s it going?

We’ve started rehearsing five shows of the coming season: Gypsy, Streetcar, Brief Encounter, Sherlock, which we’re making with OVO theatre in St.Albans, and also our musical theatre concerts.

It’s such a joy to work on such fantastic material. Just coming in today, knowing I’m going to be working with such fantastic actors doing Tennessee Williams. It’s just the most amazing privilege, really, because he is just one of the greatest playwrights of all time.

Bringing Together an Ensemble: The Key to Pitlochry’s Success

That ensemble is obviously a huge part of a Pitlochry Festival Theatre season, how do you bring it together?

It’s always so brilliant. You look for so long because you are looking for people who are just incredibly talented, and who can do lots of different things. We also need actor musicians in many parts, so you’re hunting people with an incredible, rare set of talents. So yeah, it’s a brilliant task which takes months. As well as hunting ourselves, we do hold open calls, and are always looking to receive submissions. So…we have lots of tapes that we watch, and this year two of the ensemble came through that process.

It’s a system that has been going for a number of decades. We’re going into our 73rd birthday year! It’s such a great system to bring lots of brilliant work to the town, but it really is based on the talent of the ensemble. If you’ve got an amazing group of artists – there’s 21 this year – who can come together to play so many different things. It’s a privilege to be so creative, in such creative company!

With the ensemble all having to take on multiple roles, do you ever have issues with one character bleeding into another?

I don’t think so! I think you are always trying to make sure that the characters are in parts the actor would relish doing and be brilliant at. We’re aim for actors to take on roles different to one another, with different relationships with other characters. But maybe I’ll ask the guys in rehearsals later, see what they say!

Since the season was announced has the response been positive?

It’s been really great. People are really excited about lots of different things as well. So they’re excited about the idea of Gypsy and the BIG musical but in a different way as Brief Counter, which has also actually got brilliant songs in it as well. There’s lots of excitement to see a legendary play like Streetcar, and also experiencing the open air theatre. We’re also definitely growing the audience for our new Studio Theatre, which is brilliant to see.

I suppose this is the way theatre was being made for a long time before the modern era…Shakespeare worked with the same players again and again.

Yeah, exactly. It was a Rep company. They did loads of different plays and just went, ‘Well that Midsummer Night’s Dream did well, we’ll take that off the shelf and do that again!

Adapting The Secret Garden: A Moving Experience for Elizabeth Newman

Now, you’ve adapted The Secret Garden yourself this season, how has that been?

It’s been really brilliant. I first read the novel a long time ago: I think I was 16. I still find it incredibly moving. I find the relationships powerful, the fact that it’s about recovering, about finding a way through grief. Then for me, Pitlochry is my Secret Garden – I feel that living in Pitlochry offers me the same gift that the garden does for Mary and Colin; I suppose my partner is a little bit like Dicken – he can make anything grow, and the ‘speak to animals’ sort of thing.

Thinking of the process of adapting, I have a young daughter who loves planting and growing things. She’s been helping me with my research. She listens to me read bits of the book, and we’ve even watched one of the film adaptations which she loved – the one with Maggie Smith. The story story has sort of been sitting beautifully within our family life, gently pulsating throughout our home.

Do you feel possessive over the show’s casting and direction?

What’s great is whilst I’ve adapted it, I’m not directing it – Ben’s (Occhipinti) is the director. I obviously oversee the casting of the full ensemble, but otherwise it’s his province. He really loves the book too, so the whole process has been really nourishing and uplifting.

The ensemble this year are just so warm, kind, generous, funny and thoughtful. I’m really excited about every aspect of The Secret Garden. It’s sort of suitable for all ages, and we’re actually bringing three generations of our family on an outing to see it, from 70-year-olds to my 13 and 14-year-old nieces.

Looking at the programme it struck me as having a strongly female energy to it. Is this part of the plan, or a happy accident?

I’ll be honest: it was a happy accident. I mean, if you’re gonna start with something like Gypsy, with these three amazing women at the centre, and Streetcar with these powerful couples, well…You start piecing that puzzle together, and looking at the ensemble, and all of a sudden you see it!

There’s no getting away from the fact that I commission a lot of women to write plays. I’m interested in making sure our canon is progressing towards voices which reflect the world. Historically, and this isn’t just in Scottish theatre, but the wider British context, bluntly men have dominated commissions.

I can’t say this has necessarily been at the forefront of my mind this season, but we’re moving towards trying to make sure everyone’s represented.

Diverse Offerings at Pitlochry Festival Theatre this Summer

Beyond Gypsy and Streetcar, you certainly have a season spanning the gamut of genres and subject matters!

Definitely! We certainly see women being placed in stressful situation, say in To The Bone, or Forever Home. You’re exploring lived experiences in tough situations, and I think men and women tend to experience these differently, and certainly have have traditionally speaking.

I hope this diversity of experience is found within all of the plays. If you take something like Forever Home, being written by Pauline Lockhart and Alan Penman. That’s a shared experience of adopting together, and it’s autobiographical so that’s really great.

Would you say then than much of the season is concerned with family drama?

Yes. I don’t think you can get away from it in drama can you? Some of the most brilliant drama speaks to your everyday lives. Sometimes that life is extraordinary moment on a huge stage, other times if’s just like Streetcar in someone’s kitchen or bedroom.

Then there’s Brief Encounter…I feel it’s almost mandatory to have a Noel Coward offering in a Pitlochry season.

Well, I’m a massive fan of Coward, and I think Brief Encounter is his finest, but quite often the one he doesn’t get any credit for. Weird isn’t it? It’s this amazing, iconic film, but there’s life still in this beautiful play. Emma Rice has done a really wonderful adaptation with amazing songs & music. It’s full of brilliant moments of theatricality.

At the heart it remains Coward, and his astute observations about how we have to perform, and self-amputate parts of ourselves in order to make the bargain that leads to a stable life. He articulates it with such tenderness and pain.

Now, of course there’s an on going discussion in theatre circles as to whether ‘the musical’ is being appended to too many shows. What do you think?

Where to start? Well first, I don’t think this is something the current generation of theatre-makers can take the credit for. I feel like we’re actually just going back to how it used to be done. Pre-20th century playwriting, we lived in a time of music hall. Go even further back to look at Shakespeare, well he had plenty of music, a lot was actually set to music. Earlier still and the Greeks certainly used music, you know, rhythmic speaking , instrumentation, movement.

But then we had the period of one-room centred action, the sort of ‘Look Back in Anger’ era – which I love. Now I’m a huge fan of these brilliant plays, and we certainly want more, but…Simultaneously I think we are calling to to the present from the past in asking how do we make theatre that really connects with everybody in many different ways?

Well we’re going to use everything at our disposal to tell stories, and that’s going to include music, puppets, dance…anything.

This year you are co-producing a number of your shows, is that indicative of the state of the industry in any way?

I think it just makes sense to give the work more life and to see more audiences, and it helps us to make the work as well. Historically Pitlochry hasn’t done a lot of co-producing, it’s really only in the last few years we’re started. If, however, you go way back to when the company was first set up in Kenny Ireland’s time, there were theatrical troops that went around sharing their work and resources. I think it all makes sense, making sure that those writers, their words and songs were shared with as many people as possible.

So would you say preparations for this season are where you want them to be?

Definitely. We we’re just really looking forward to inviting the audiences in really. It’s just great to have audiences piling in and having such a nice time by the river watching theatre.

It looks like a great season to me, something for everything in line with what you’ve been saying, but without feeling like a check-box exercise

That’s very kind. I think that’s true. I don’t think you can programme by category. People are people, and audiences like what they like: you want to create a space where everyone feels welcome.

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For tickets and more information on the season ahead at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, click here.

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