YOU can’t fault Pitlochry Festival theatre for industriousness. Under artistic director Elizabeth Newman, the company has channelled its energy into a prodigious online programme during the pandemic. Using the hashtag #PFTLightHopeJoy, it has been uploading as many as three YouTube videos a day. They come in bite-size chunks and range from actor Felicity Sparks singing about doing the washing-up to playwright May Sumbwanyambe talking about 18th-century slavery.
That’s in addition to Shades of Tay, a two-year project that, for the time being, has been moved online. The idea is to generate artistic responses to the Tay, the 120-mile river of which Pitlochry’s Tummel is a tributary. The first six poems, plays and stories are online, with more on the way from writers including Timberlake Wertenbaker, Jo Clifford and Daniel Bye. [READ MORE]
