Jackie Wylie on the National Theatre of Scotland's new season

It’s eight years now since Jackie Wylie was appointed artistic director and chief executive of the National Theatre of Scotland, and one aspect of her job that she still finds completely thrilling is the sheer range of experience it covers. “I can literally be on a bench in a school hall somewhere in the Highlands, watching the latest Theatre in Schools Scotland show on tour,” says Wylie, in her Glasgow office overlooking the Forth & Clyde Canal, “and then within a few hours I’m in a meeting, discussing the casting for the West End remount of our 2024 Edinburgh Festival show The Fifth Step.

“The job is unique, in that sense. There’s certainly nothing else like it in Scotland; and because of the NTS’s ‘theatre without walls’ model – with no theatre building of our own, and a commitment always to be working with and through other creative organisations in Scotland – it’s not much like running any other national theatre, either.”

Unlike other Scottish theatre companies, the NTS has largely escaped the crisis of funding uncertainty that has plagued the arts scene in recent years. In common with the other national companies, its annual funding of around £4 million comes straight from the Scottish Government, rather than from Creative Scotland.

Jackie Wylie | Kirsty Anderson

Of course, for any chief executive running an organisation that’s expected to both represent and serve the whole nation, there comes with the role both responsibility and expectation. From Wylie’s point of view, the NTS’s overall performance involves demands that few other theatres face; and she is clear that no arts organisation could be more rigorous in trying to ensure a positive balance between money spent on overheads, and money that goes straight into the creation of theatre work.

“In putting together our programmes,” she says, “we have to take a huge number of factors into account, and often act as a leader in working out the artistic implications of the standards that companies are now expected to meet.

“That involves everything from the transition to green and low carbon ways of operating, to the demand that the NTS tries to reach, and represent, all Scotland’s diverse communities, in geographical, cultural and class terms. And we also think it’s important to work hard on making theatre in Scotland more inclusive for traditionally excluded groups. We try to lead in this area; and that takes time, human resources, and a real investment in long-term artist development.”

It’s the moment when a show that reflects some or all of those values begins to come together in a really exciting form, though, that Wylie loves most. The upcoming season of NTS shows involves that London premiere, in May, of The Fifth Step, David Ireland’s 2024 play about the tempestuous relationship between a young Edinburgh man struggling with alcoholism and his AA sponsor, which will feature Jack Lowden as young Luka, and Martin Freeman as the sponsor, James.

Jack Lowden in The Fifth Step | Mihaela Bodlovic

There will be new Edinburgh International Festival play Make It Happen, about the 2008 Royal Bank of Scotland crash, written by leading UK playwright James Graham, and featuring Brian Cox, who first suggested a play on this theme. This spring, Glasgow-based writer, performer and poet Martin O’Connor will lead a small-scale touring company around Scotland in Through The Shortbread Tin, a show about the invention of Ossian, the largely fictional Gaelic bard whose myth helped shape 19th century Scottish culture. And from May, the NTS will tour Keli, a show with music that reflects on the 40th anniversary of the end of the miners’ strike through the experience of a teenage girl too young to remember the age of coal, but still in love with the brass band music that once represented the pride of mining communities.

Martin O’Connor in Through The Shortbread Tin | Eoin Carey

“There have been some tough moments in recent years,” says Wylie, looking back to the pandemic and beyond. “But I am particularly proud of the shows we create about working-class experience in Scotland that win a great response from audiences. Audiences loved our big stage version of the Peter Mullan film Orphans, for example, which appeared as we were coming out of lockdown; and we had a huge response last year to the stage version of Damian Barr’s autobiographical book Maggie & Me, about growing up gay in 1980s Lanarkshire.

“I believe that as Scotland’s national theatre, we can’t just continue to work within a system where too many people still see theatre as something that’s not for them. We have to look 15 or 20 years ahead, and try to build a thriving and inclusive theatre culture for both artists and audiences, on that kind of time-scale; and when we can produce work that seems to be taking us towards that – well, those are probably the best moments of all.”​

For details of the NTS’s 2025 season, see www.nationaltheatrescotland.com

Feature produced in association with the National Theatre of Scotland