A two-year battle to keep arts and theatre alive in Scotland’s newest city has begun.
Already stripped of its lauded director and with its operators staring into a financial black hole, the 114-year-old Perth Theatre will close its doors in January.
It will re-open renewed and reinvigorated in 2016, following a £14.5 million restoration but until then a vacuum requires to be filled.
Creativity and hard work will be required to protect the company’s hard-earned reputation during the theatre’s hiatus. To that end, an ambitious programme of events began to be outlined on Thursday, aimed at taking theatre to the masses.
Perth Theatre will be staging performances in venues across Perth and Kinross in the new year, with a mix of its regular shows and specially designed Out and About stage productions.
Horsecross Arts chief executive Colin McMahon said: “Perth Theatre is a busy place, not only with our regular theatre production seasons but with community groups, music and join-in sessions.
“While the venue is restored and redeveloped for future generations of theatre lovers, we are committed to bringing work to our audience.
“We will be making theatre happen in various alternative locations including pubs, village halls and community centres and relocating our popular community groups and music sessions to appropriate venues within easy reach of participants.
“We are grateful to Perth’s Greyfriars Bar, the Birnam Arts Centre and our other partner venues for welcoming us and our audiences into their performance spaces and we look forward to discovering new theatre and music lovers across Perthshire who will join us in the transformed Perth Theatre when the venue reopens.”
The first of the regular items to find a new stage are the popular monthly traditional music sessions, which found a new home in Perth’s most intimate venue the Greyfriars Bar.
The Horsecross Sessions will be held on the first Sunday of the month at 7.30pm, beginning on Sunday January 5 with Perthshire fiddler and singer Patsy Reid.
Artists such as Tim Edey, Jim Malcolm, Doris Rougvie, Ross Ainslie, Laura-Beth Salter and Laura Wilkie will follow.
The theatre’s Out and About drama season then opens at the Birnam Arts Centre on Saturday February 8 with the National Theatre of Scotland’s Rantin’.
It draws on storytelling, live music and the Scottish folk tradition to stitch together visions of Scotland’s romantic past and is described as part cosy living room gathering, part play and part gig.
April sees the return of the popular A Play, A Pie and A Pint series, which opens with Love with a Capital L by Tony Cox.
Staged at Birnam Arts from Monday April 7 until Friday April 11 it features Hilda Matheson, head of talks at the BBC in the 1920s, who takes a step too far when she commissions her lover and her homosexual husband to speak on the subject of Marriage.
The audience will be invited to take their seats for a heated and frequently funny editorial meeting between Hilda and director-general John Reith.
Further works in progress in the Out and About programme include new Perth Theatre commissions by playwrights Peter Arnott and Alan Bissett.
Community groups, including Perth Youth Theatre and Horsecross Little Stars Acting, Singing and Dancing workshops for under-fives, will be held in community campuses and other Perth venues throughout the closure.
Perth Theatre is one of Scotland’s oldest and most respected theatres with a key place in the history of Scottish theatre.
It has enjoyed something of a trailblazing reputation, becoming home to the nation’s first repertory theatre company founded 1935 and has led the way in staging, makeup and costumes.
During the closure, its B-listed Edwardian auditorium will be meticulously restored, while a new entrance, creative spaces, conference facilities and an extension will be created.
For tickets and information for all Out and About performances, call Horsecross Arts box office on 01738 621031 or visit www.horsecross.co.uk.