National Theatre of Scotland sells 1m tickets

The National Theatre of Scotland has been celebrating the sale of its one millionth ticket.

Siobhan Redmond presented Stephen Will with his ticket. Picture: Ian Rutherford

The company was launched in February 2006 with a production called HOME which was staged on a bus in Aberdeen and was one of 10 site-specific theatre productions across the country.

Since then performances have also taken place in London, the rest of the UK and around the world including Los Angeles and Beijing.

The company, funded by the Scottish Government, has no permanent building and since 2006 has been involved in 200 productions at 174 locations including airports, tower blocks, community halls and drill halls, ferries and forests.

Stephen Will, 17, became the millionth audience member by booking to see the National Theatre of Scotland and Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Dunsinane, which is touring the UK and opened at His Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen last night.

Milestone

The teenager, a pupil at Alford Academy in Aberdeenshire, is a member of Aberdeen Performing Arts (APA) Youth Theatre and is part of a group booking to see the performance.

He was presented with a special ticket to mark the milestone sale at the HMT box office in Aberdeen yesterday by actor Siobhan Redmond, who is playing Gruach in Dunsinane

Laurie Sansom, artistic director for the company, said: “We are delighted to celebrate our millionth member. Audiences are the life-blood of what we do as a company.

“I am currently enjoying the challenge of developing and producing a programme of new work for the Scottish stage, to excite and enthral our existing audience base whilst hoping to reach a new one.

“It is testament to the world-class artists we have the privilege of working with that our work has proved as popular, beyond Scottish borders, in the UK and internationally, as it has at home.”

To mark the sale of the millionth ticket, one member of APA Youth Theatre will be selected at random to see the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Let The Right One In at the Royal Court Theatre in London with their parents in December.