NTS director Vicky Featherstone quits for Royal Court

THE artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) has announced she is leaving the post after eight years.

Vicky Featherstone was the inaugural artistic director and the theatre’s chief executive, and is credited with steering the company to both critical and public success.

The 45-year-old is leaving to become the first female artistic director with the trail-blazing Royal Court Theatre in London.

Her appointment marks a return to the venue where she began her career as an assistant director before working on television shows including Silent Witness.

Ms Featherstone said that she felt a mixture of “real sadness and joy” at taking up her new post, but said that it had been “a privilege” to work with the NTS.

“It is an honour beyond words to have played a part in setting up something which is so great,” she said.

“It is a privilege to have seen the astonishing team at the National Theatre of Scotland grow into something fearless and dynamic. All I hope is that what we have created is something with enough importance, with enough care and with enough passion to last the future.”

NTS chairman Richard Findlay said: “Vicky has done a fantastic job during her time here with many a great success built around a strong team.

“She will be sorely missed, not just by us, but by the entire Scottish theatre community. We wish her well in her new job.”

Since its inauguration in 2006, NTS has played to more than 710,000 people, across three continents, with 160 productions in 125 different locations.

In the past five years, its total box office earnings have reached almost £6.4 million, while during the same period it has won 37 national and international awards, including four of the prestigious Olivier Awards, the top theatre prizes in Britain. Some of its most successful productions included the internationally-feted Black Watch, The Bacchae, which starred Alan Cumming, Roam, which was staged in Edinburgh Airport and, currently, Enquirer, which examines the state of the UK newspaper industry.

Describing the announcement as coming “completely out of the blue”, Scotsman theatre critic Joyce McMillan said Ms Featherstone’s departure was a “huge loss” for Scottish theatre.

“She has been a completely brilliant, inspirational founding director of a national theatre of Scotland.

“She’s been so bold, so strategically wise in the way that she has done it – the alliances she has formed, the companies that she’s worked with.

“The level of innovation has been absolutely brilliant. She’s really redefined the idea of a national theatre through her work in Scotland over the past eight years.”

Ms McMillan said that the artistic director had been an “assiduous cultivator of young talent” and that she would leave a strong legacy of upcoming talent.

Ms Featherstone will take up her new position in spring next year and will continue to lead the National Theatre of Scotland until the end of 2012.

She follows in the footsteps of the likes of Lindsay Anderson, who directed such influential films as O Lucky Man and If..., and Stephen Daldry, who directed such award-winning movies Billy Elliot, The Hours and The Reader.