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The Scotsman 3 February 2022

Jemima Levick is enjoying life in the fast lane. In her last job as artistic director of Stellar Quines, she was responsible for perhaps a handful of shows each year. Now, as the guiding force behind Glasgow’ s lunchtime theatre, A Play, A Pie And A Pint, she has 20 productions on her plate. That’s in the spring season alone. There’ll be another batch in the autumn.

“The sheer volume is madness,” she says, looking like she is enjoying every minute. “It’s silly doing this many plays. But the moment you say, ‘This is silly. We can’t do this. It’s impossible. We’ve got to slow it down,’ the spirit of [founder] David MacLennan appears and you go, ‘It’s not silly. It’s exactly what it is should be. It’s fantastic.’ It’s 32 new plays a year. That’s barmy. And of course you’re going to get some hits and some misses, but that is the joy of the place.” [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).