Alan Cumming: the actor-writer shares his ambitions for Pitlochry's Winter Words Festival
As the new artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre in the Scottish Highlands, Alan Cumming has begun to increase the breadth of the festival’s artistic scope.
Caroline is deputy features editor at The Bookseller and chair of the YA Book Prize, as well as being a co-host of children's book radio
...moreCaroline is deputy features editor at The Bookseller and chair of the YA Book Prize, as well as being a co-host of children's book radio
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"I’ve always found books a great solace and great comfort,” says actor, writer and presenter Alan Cumming, who has recently added another string to his bow as artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre in the Scottish Highlands. We are talking via Zoom shortly after the theatre’s 21st Winter Words Festival, for which Cumming curated the line-up. It was, he tells me, a “huge success”.
“There was a great atmosphere in the building, and we had some amazing authors and fun events. It was a triumph, if I say so myself.” The programme included Cumming in conversation with Booker Prize-winner Douglas Stuart, crime writer Val McDermid, author Andrew O’Hagan and broadcaster and journalist Kirsty Wark. “These are all friends of mine, but they are also fascinating people as well as amazing writers. It was great to allow my knowledge of them to provoke a discussion that you probably wouldn’t normally have at a book festival. It would normally be a little more focused on the titles they were promoting.”
He explains that he had to put the festival together “very quickly” after being appointed artistic director in September and officially starting the role in January. “Because it was the first thing that would be under my tenure, I felt I really had to put my stamp on it and make it mine… I just wanted it to be a microcosm of what I want the programme to be, which is to have big names and big titles, but also younger, more diverse people and ideas. Audiences will champion the people they know and love, but also come and find out about new work. That’s very much the ethos I want to carry on in my tenure as artistic director.”
The festival also included several special events, such as literary lunches, morning yoga sessions with Kilted Yoga author Finlay Wilson, performances from the Borders-based Firebrand Theatre and a 5km run with author Chris Carse Wilson. It culminated in a “joyous” party, which saw “hundreds of people in the foyer of the theatre dancing away all night” while Cumming was on the DJ decks. “We did events that were a little outside the box. I suppose the theatricality of the location – both the terrain of Pitlochry and the fact it was in a theatre building – amplified all that… It takes place in a performance space and so I think there was much more of a slant towards the performative nature of these writers. We put on a show each time, and I think that made it more exciting.”
When the festival programme was announced, Cumming said he wanted it to be “a literary celebration of the hugely rich Scottish heritage”. When I ask what sets Scottish literature apart, he answers: “For such a small country, we have so many great authors and so many different strands of writing. We’ve got these titans – Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott – and then the whole Tartan Noir thing, plus a great new, huge literary star in Douglas Stuart. It really punches above its weight as a country for writers and for the arts in general.” He adds: “I think it is because we’re a very emotional country. We get our feelings and pain out on the page, often… Maybe we should talk a bit more, but it means we’ve got some really good books.”
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When it comes to his own reading habits, he has a “very eclectic taste”. At the time of our chat, he was finishing Val McDermid’s latest Karen Pirie book, Silent Bones, with Dylan Mulvaney’s autobiography lined up next. Though he reads many plays as the theatre’s artistic director, he regards reading books as a distinctly purposeful, relaxing task. “I see books as something that’s very much not my usual work. It is for me.” Cumming is also an author himself, and states: “Some of the things that I’m most proud of in terms of my artistic output are things that I’ve written.” This includes two autobiographies with Canongate and, most recently, Victor and Barry’s Kelvinside Compendium, in which he reminisces with former collaborator Forbes Masson about their years as comedy alter-egos Victor and Barry, which was published by 404 Ink.
Working with Scottish publishers has been meaningful to him. “I was really happy to work with 404 Ink because they are new, and they’re young, and they’re women, and they represent a lot of queer and BIPOC people. I looked at their website, and I thought ‘Gosh, they seem like the most exciting young publishing house in Scotland.’” He was “flattered” to be published by Canongate as he wanted to be viewed as a writer “in a serious, non-celebrity way”. He expands: “When you’re famous and you do something else, there’s always a slight residue of snobbishness, or ‘you’re only getting to publish this book because of your fame’. If you are someone who does many different things, you have to deal with that ‘stay in your lane’ attitude.”
Reflecting on his experiences of being published, he says: “I’ve been with various publishers in the US and in Britain, and I think it is like anything – you have to find the personalities and the sensibility that works for you, and that doesn’t always come easy when it’s something so personal as writing. I’ve had great luck sometimes and terrible luck at other times. The general rule, I feel, is just to make sure that you are heard and seen by the people that are putting your work out into the world. And if you’re not, then you need to change. I have done that a couple of times because life is too short.”
While he wants to write more books in the future, he admits that he doesn’t know “quite what that will be yet” and that “it might be a couple of years before I get around to it”. For now, he is focused on his work with the theatre, which he came across last year while filming his travels through the Highlands for Channel 4 show Scotland’s Poshest Train. “I’ve got lots of ideas. I want to make lots of changes. I’m very passionate about both the area and the community, as well as what we can do in the theatre world there.”
The feedback Cumming received from this year’s Winter Words Festival was “encouraging”. “People really responded to the new things and to the range of things. It was very heartening about my core ideas for the theatre as well as for the festival. I came away from it thinking ‘Great, what can we do now? Where can we take this?’”
Although he has not started planning for next year, he says: “I think it’d be quite interesting to expand it and have more theatre writers, or screenwriters. It is a writers’ festival, not just a book festival, so I think we can keep changing it up and making it exciting.” He is also considering introducing writing workshops. “One of my big aims is to invite the community back into the building, and really make the actual theatre building, not just the performance spaces, a place where people want to come.”
One event is already definitely on the agenda – his DJ slot. He jokes: “My favourite thing [about this year’s festival] was that there was a flyer for me DJing in the Co-op and the chip shop.”
