Jake Mace
Leaping off the train at Pitlochry station, you’re struck by the awe of the surrounds immediately. With a snow-capped Ben Vrackie peaking over the church spire, I looked to my left and right and saw a few familiar faces who’d left Scotland’s cities behind at the invitation of freshly appointed Artistic Director of the Pitlochry Festival Theatre Alan Cumming to join for a weekend celebrating all things queer at Out in the Hills Festival.
The programme, curated by Glasgow-based playwright Lewis Hetherington, is striking in its breadth exploring civil society. From football to baking, folklore to sci-fi, live readings meditating on resilience through the adoption process, the oral tradition on the Isle of Skye, a performance of a new play from Ian McKellen, and conversations between Cumming and Graham Norton. It feels that most corners of queerness in life, and life in queerness, has been captured in this back-to-back schedule.
Slickly delivered at the level you’d hope from a weekend packing this much star power and diversity, Cumming, Hetherington and the team behind them have transformed spaces within Pitlochry Festival Theatre into a breathing and hearty expression of queer community from within Scotland and beyond. The professional unfolding of it all gave way to something communal and lively – folk from all ends of the LGBTQIA+ spectrum packed into conversations, introductions, discussions and frivolity in the building’s foyers and hallways.
One quote from a talk between Scots Makar Jackie Kay and Screenwriter extraordinaire Russell T Davies seemed to sum it up, with Davies remarking on how often comedy and tragedy collide –
“It feels like life doesn’t have a genre.”
– and neither do LGBTQIA+ lives, as this magnetic weekend has set out to prove deftly, and against a global backdrop of growing restrictions, rhetoric and violence targeting queer people, inclusive and accessible spaces like these grow infinitely more valuable.
My weekend was marked by an interest in delving into the personal and civil lives of both prominent and emerging queer creatives. My Binge Fringe colleague Elisabeth dove into events highlighting queer contributions to folklore, music, history and more – read about their weekend in a separate article coming soon.
Friday 16th January –
Adoption, Transformation, and Reclamation
Juano Diaz’s live reading of his autobiographical memoir Slum Boy was the first order of my weekend – delivered tenderly in collaboration with acclaimed percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie. Exploring Diaz’s turbulent upbringing in the Glasgow slum of South Nitshill and eventual adoption, the piece was first delivered by a young boy revealed to be Diaz’s own adopted son. Glennie provided an exceptional and intuitive improvised percussion backdrop through a range of unconventional instruments, and Diaz delivered a powerful ending to the piece meditating on his journey from abuse and neglect to finding his creative voice.
This was followed by a lively conversation between acclaimed screenwriter and showrunner Russell T. Davies and Jackie Kay – where the duo reflected on their shared adopted home of Manchester, growing into queerness, and delved into Davies’ creative process and how his queer identity shines within it. Kay skilfully unpacked the theme of transformation that recurs across Davies work, alongside the transformations queer people go through in their own lives. A spirited Q&A section followed, addressing Davies’ expansive body of work against the backdrop of political turbulence and rising rhetoric against LGBTQIA+ people.
To cap off what was a contemplative and thoughtful afternoon, as we headed into the evening the foyer of the theatre was transformed into a vibrant communal space as the Malin Lewis Trio provided exceptional music for an inclusive queer Ceilidh. Our ringmaster Chris Wilson delivered a liberating reimagining of the Ceilidh space as inclusive, un-gendered and accessible for all, with infectious joy as we swung one another around late into the evening, joined by Cumming himself on the dance floor.
Saturday 17th January –
Football, Cakes, and Arthurian Legends
Opening up the second day’s proceedings, Scotland’s first openly gay footballer Zander Murray sat down with former Scotland National Team player Amy McDonald, and football official-turned-Hebridean Baker Coinneach MacLeod for an open, earnest set of conversations and anecdotes exploring queerness, coming out, and online abuse. The panel shone a light on how far the sport still has to go with acceptance of queer identities, whilst also deftly highlighting the bountiful grassroots work from LGBTQIA+ supporters groups and allies in the industry to create safer spaces for queer players, officials, supporters and everyone in between.
Coinneach then entered conversation with BBC Radio Scotland presenter Tony Kearney in the afternoon in The Hebridean Baker, delving into his expansive professional life moving from sports journalist in Moscow in the 90s through to football official in Scotland and later creating online content about baking and his identity growing up on the Isle of Lewis. Representation of rural queer life in Scotland felt pertinent to the festival’s setting, and soulfully explored by both in discussion.
It felt high time for me to catch some theatre and Elisabeth and I were treated to a performance of The Green Knight (but gay), which we gave a five star review to back at Edinburgh Festival Fringe last August. The show, from non-binary neurodiverse Scottish-Indian storyteller Niall Moorjani, queering Arthurian legend and celebrating those who help us feel comfortable and safe on our coming out journeys, and those who nurture our nascent queer identities into something tangible, through the lens of self-acceptance too. Accompanied by a fantastical soundtrack performed live, and engaging the whole room to give a fringe feel to the festival.
Saturday evening’s festivities were DJed by Glasgow-based DJ, artist, and photographer Junglehussi, with a lively dance floor given a genre-shifting, beat-heavy soundtrack in between conversations with newfound friends and plenty of fantastic craft beer from local brewery Wasted Degrees.
Sunday 18th January –
Politics, Family and Cowboys
Dusting off last night’s cobwebs we headed into a conversation between SNP politician-turned-Comedian Mhairi Black and BBC presenter Gemma Cairney. Black delivered insightful intersectional anecdotes about her experiences as a neurodiverse queer person thrust into the deep end of party politics and Westminster alongside some hilarious stories from her time in parliament and beyond. Cairney seemed a little underprepared to give her interviewee enough depth of questioning to get below the surface, however.
In what proved to be one of the most affecting sessions over the weekend, we saw acclaimed and prolific playwright Jo Clifford in conversation with her daughter, journalist Catriona Innes, discussing Clifford’s life coming out as a trans woman in her fifties, and exploring their family dynamics. Both Clifford and Innes presented their intertwined stories with candour and vulnerability, and at the end opened up the floor in what became a touching discussion about the gender binary, parenthood, and how to make sense of one’s identity in a turbulent world.
Finishing off my weekend was Glasgow-based comedian Kim Blythe, who delivered her comedy set Cowboy with plenty of gusto and charm. The set centres around bravery (apparently an inherent trait of the Cowboy) and overcoming your fears, which for Blythe range from having your eyebrows done in a shopping centre through to confronting your hairdresser about their gaslighting behaviour. Blythe’s outlandish anecdotes are filled with belly laughs, and her storytelling was an exceptional way to end this remarkable festival celebrating all things queer.
Image Credit: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
Lucy Best
Lamesha Ruddock
