WHILE there are clear indications that touring theatre productions is getting harder and harder as financial restrictions bite, the Northern Scottish Touring Fund will provide one ray of light amid the gloom for those companies who have been successful in their applications for the first round.

THE fund is jointly managed by the Highlands & Islands Theatre Network, the Promoters Arts Network, North East Arts Touring and Hi-Arts. The aim is to award production and touring grants to performing companies with particular relevance to the Highlands & Islands and North East, and to support those productions with marketing back-up.

A scene from Mull Theatre's Accidental Death of an Accordionist, an earlier collaboration with another Moray-based company, Right Lines

The tours are going under the North By North East banner, and the successful applicants in the first round of funding were Mull Theatre & Wildbird in a collaboration on The Mysterious Death of Netta Fornario, Open Book’s production of Macbeth, Puppet Lab’s Dark Matter, and Charioteer Theatre’s Get Me Out Of Here … I’m A Shakespearean Character.

The Mull/Wildbird and Charioteer productions are both scheduled to hit the road in late May, while Open Book will tour in July and Puppet Lab (now working under the name Vision Mechanics) in October. As part of the marketing support, and in accord with our remit to support the arts in the north, Northings will be carrying specific in-depth preview coverage of all of these productions.

The North By North East tour map for 2011

The second round of funding awards were announced in April, and have gone to Bright Night International, Cartoon Theatre, Dannsa and Reeling & Writhing. Details of the fund and of these shows can be found on the Northern Scottish Touring Fund website.

At a time when even large theatres like Eden Court are finding it more difficult to fill their schedules simply because less shows are touring, and a well-established company like Stellar Quines turned to trying to encourage car-sharing and local communal travel arrangements to Inverness and Banchory for The Age of Arousal as an alternative to a full tour of the smaller venues which they once visited regularly but now find prohibitively expensive to contemplate, the new initiative is to be welcomed, and we hope theatre goers around the region will support it when the productions come your way.

Kenny Mathieson

Editor