International Festival Programme
MILLS ON THE INTERNATIONAL
Jonathan Mills, director of the Edinburgh International Festival, explains the reasoning behind his choices for this year's enlightening International Festival programme.
ST KILDA: ISLAND OF BIRDMEN - "We are not just focussing on the Enlightenment, we are also focussing on a number of unsung heroes and unsung ideas that reflect Scottish culture. For instance this weekend you can go and see St Kilda: Island of the Birdmen, an opera about an island that was so environmentally depleted that it would no longer have human habitation, the island of St Kilda, the most westerly part of Scotland.
DIASPORA - "Ong Keng Sen's terrific docu-drama about what it means to be from another culture. I think this is a fundamental question that we can ask in Singapore, where he is from, about Chinese culture that is his background - and we can equally ask it of ourselves - of Scottish culture.
"I am of Scottish origins, I was born in Australia. My diaspora started here but ended up 17,000km away in Sydney. These are stories, these are images which are powerful enough for everyone to share them and be connected by them."
FAUST - "Two of the most important ways we are reflecting the values of the Enlightenment are through our theatre programme. This huge production of Silviu Purcarete's Faust has 120 people on stage. It is a story about a man whose thirst for knowledge is so insatiable he will make a pact with anyone just to get knowledge, including the devil. And that is a great enlightenment conversation. It is a conversation that starts in the 18th century and it is a conversation about a world that is no longer about belief but about knowledge.”
"No longer about what you feel to be the case but what you can prove to be the case. It is a conversation about science, of rational being and it is very much a conversation about the Enlightenment.”
THE LAST WITCH - "Where there is an enlightenment there is often what I would call an "endarkenment". So Rona Munro's play the Last Witch is a story of deep tragedy about the last woman to burnt as witch in Scotland.
"That particular and dubious honour befell Janet Horne in 1727 in Dornoch, a suspicious community who had a vendetta against someone who was more feisty, more up for a conversation about her own existence, her own sense of purpose. So Janet Horne, the witch as portrayed by Rona Munro is not a victim but rather a kind of prequel to Suffragettes or women's liberation.
"So it is a really interesting take on the idea of a witch and the way women were not only victimised because people had a vendetta against them, they were victimised because they were strong people. How wonderful it is to be able to represent that today and to show how far Scotland has come in the feistiness and robustness of all parts of Scottish society and particularly some of our leading women."
BRIAN FRIEL - "Talking about wonderful and fantastic singular views of the world. Let's not forget about Brian Friel - that wonderful Irish playwright, well-known in Scotland. We have got three plays, a residency if you like, from the Gate Theatre of Dublin, one of the theatre companies most associated with Brian Friel. He turned 80 this year.”
“Come and see Faith Healer, the Yalta Game and Afterplay. Come and see a great master playwright in some of the most moving and beautiful poetic staging you will see in a long time."
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