Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre turns 25 this year and is celebrating its silver anniversary with a night of variety, 25 Live: The Big Birthday Show.
Hosted by Jamie MacDougall (BBC Proms in the Park, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra) and Saskia Ashdown (BBC, Red Productions, The Attic Collective), 25 Live will premiere a number of new works and celebrate some of the leading creative collaborations of the past year. Amongst the performances will be Spinning Songs, a new inter-generational singing and song-writing collaboration between Scottish Opera and Edinburgh schools and community groups. There will also be new work from Dance Ihayami and WHALE Arts, celebrating 25 years of the Festival Theatre and 50 years of Wester Hailes.
Among the works being revisited will be the films made with LBGT Youth Scotland and Janice Parker Projects, and performances that the theatre helped make possible including work by Janis Claxton and Rosie Kay Dance Company.
Explaining the choice of performances for the anniversary night, Chief Executive Duncan Hendry said: “As we opened on 18 June 1994 with a gala variety performance that paid tribute to the many theatre venues, circuses and performance halls that had previously stood at 18-22 Nicolson Street, it seemed only fitting that we mark our silver anniversary with a variety show that celebrates creative collaboration.”
25 Live: The Big Birthday Show is @ Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, on Sat 1 Jun 2019