Vicky Featherstone is the artistic director and chief executive of the National Theatre for Scotland. She was up against extremely stiff competition for this prize post but her track record as artistic director of London’s innovative Paines Plough theatre was irresistible. Her vision is that the National will tour work to venues large and small all around Scotland, from Shetland in the north to Dumfries and Galloway in the south. It will produce its own work and collaborate with other companies and individual artists, creating large-scale productions through to theatre specifically made for the smallest venues and the remotest communities. It will also tour work internationally and will work in collaboration with the best international companies.

If Vicky Featherstone could get her hands on Alan Cumming and David Tennant for the same production… who knows what fantastical world could be conjured up. But the National is keen to invite ideas from all creative thinkers and artists within Scotland or who have a connection with Scotland. It is keen to create projects that challenge notions of what theatre is and to encourage collaborations between artists of different disciplines, not necessarily those traditionally associated with theatre. To this end it has established the NTS Workshop. Steered by Workshop Director Caroline Newall this is the innovative heart of the National Theatre of Scotland and exists to invigorate its notion of theatre. The Workshop is the first port of call for any theatre maker who has a brilliant idea they’d like to investigate. It can offer development support and already it is working with playwrights, designers, directors, youth theatres and many other artists to help further develop the pool of talent in Scotland. So, it could be you who’s next in one of the most exciting saddles of creation.

The National Theatre for Scotland has already wowed audiences across the lengths and breadths of the land with its ambitous opening gambit – ten specially commisioned pieces on the theme of 'Home’ presented in unusual locations from East Lothian to Shetland. It’s also staged Arthur Miller’s great classic 'The Crucible’ and with Grid Iron theatre co-produced a spectacular piece staged within the lounges and gates of Edinburgh International Airport. There’s plenty in the pipeline too, including a project called Diaspora that is partnering eight international directors, from Sweden, Egypt, Canada, Romania, Greece, India, Phillipines and Russia, with eight Scottish-based directors to create new work that investigates today’s huge global community of people in transit.

Since the launch of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 Scotland, of course, has become a stage for some of the most exciting theatre from every continent in the world. The Festival has spawned other festivals both in Edinburgh and other cities across Scotland but most significantly it has encouraged Scotland to become a laboratory of theatre experimentation. It has helped to shape the international outlook of Scotland’s artists and has brought huge talent and influences to bear on Scotland’s collective creative imagination. So a theatre without walls is thoroughly appropriate for Scotland today.

The lifeblood of theatre is the living playwright. Here again Scotland is blessed with a plethora of powerful contemporary voices including Liz Lochhead, Mike Cullen, Simon Donald, Sue Glover, Duncan Maclean, Chris Hannan, David Harrower, David Greig, Iain Heggie, John Byrne, Gregory Burke, Stephen Greenhorn, John Clifford, Rona Munro, Janet Paisley, Henry Adam, Douglas Maxwell, Stuart Paterson and Jules Horne. A long list! The plays range from Sue Glover’s 'Bondagers’, a pastoral evocation of 19th rural Scotland to Iain Heggie’s outrageous and challenging 'Wiping My Mother’s Arse’. As theatre critic Mark Fisher has said, unlike the Irish, there is no one Scottish style, no compelling Scottish repertoire. But then that’s its strength: diversity, individuality and flair. A strength that has been nurtured these last fifty years by innovative theatres like the Traverse, the Citizens, the Tron, the Tramway and the Arches amongst many others. A strength that now the National Theatre for Scotland looks set into making an international powerhouse of unlimited imagination. With all this in the wings it remains true: you must visit Scotland for its scenery.

Further Information:

Courtesy of Scottish Government - Scotland.org .

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