This summer, one of Edinburgh’s leading theatres will embark on an innovative project aiming to make live theatre more real and accessible for audiences. The Royal Lyceum Theatre — a staple venue for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival — will be celebrating sixty years since the inception of the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company this year, and to mark the occasion have launched a new ‘Lyceum at Home’ project.
This campaign will see four leading Scottish writers create a series of thirty-minute plays — and rather than premiering onstage at the Lyceum, they will be initially staged inside people’s homes. The Royal Lyceum Theatre aims to stage these plays across all areas of the city and different types of homes such as care homes and prisons, as part of a wider aim to enable more people to experience the magic of live theatre. This initial campaign will take place from 15-20 June, and subsequently the plays will be performed at the Lyceum in a quadruple-bill from 18-20 June so that audiences can experience each piece together.
Four of Scotland’s most prolific writers have been commissioned for this campaign. Apphia Campbell — the writer of award-winning plays Black is the Color of My Voice and Woke (and its reimagined version, Through the Mud) — has previously been commissioned by the National Theatre of Scotland for her work, and is on the boards of both the Edinburgh Fringe Society and National Galleries. Alexander McCall Smith — the author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, The Sunday Philosophy Club and the 44 Scotland Street series, to name a few — will also contribute. In addition, the campaign will feature a piece by renowned playwright and director Isla Cowan, the writer of Alright Sunshine, Progress Review and She Wolf, and co-writer of musical To Save the Sea. Lastly, Stephen Greenhorn, the writer of The Salt Wound, Passing Places (which won him a nomination for Scottish Writer of the Year) and King Matt — as well as the musical Sunshine on Leith (and its 2013 film adaptation) — will complete the bill.
The titles and details of the four monologues have not yet been announced, but Edinburgh residents can apply to have the plays performed in their home (applications close on 16 March). This innovative campaign intends to create a collective experience — connecting audiences through shared experiences and stories by staging plays that will “reflect the lives, choices, and everyday moments that make this city what it is.”
Photo by Stuart Armitt, courtesy of the Royal Lyceum Theatre