Out in the Hills Festival
Festival report
Pitlochry Festival Theatre: Fri 16 – Sun 18 January 2026
by Rebecca Mahar
This month saw Pitlochry Festival Theatre launch Out in the Hills, a brand new festival celebrating all those LGBTQIA+, that “invites everyone to find new ways to look at the world, and each other.”
Rebecca Mahar was able to get along on the Saturday and here reports from her day out at the Theatre in the Hills – where the weather couldn’t dampen the events indoors.
Ian McKellen performing in Equinox. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
Over three days packed with theatre, music, film, dancing and conversation, Out in the Hills brings together world-famous stars and up-and-coming artists; researchers and musicians; young and old and in between. In the darkness of January, Pitlochry Festival Theatre blazes as a beacon of light and joy, with the festival representing Artistic Director Alan Cumming’s first piece of new programming, curated by Lewis Hetherington.
Having begun on Friday, with events as diverse as the Resol String Quartet with Rainbow Classics, Lewis Hetherington’s film: who will be remembered here, readings from Slum Boy by memoirist Juano Diaz with accompaniment from percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and a conversation between Russell T Davies and Jackie Kay, capped off by a big gay ceilidh, Queer as Folk, the festival was already in full swing by the time I left Edinburgh on Saturday morning in the dreichest of conditions.
extraordinary beauty
Would it really be a visit — a winter one, no less — to Pitlochry without a bit of rain, though? Crossing the Iron Suspension Bridge on my way from the station to Port-na-Craig, I was stunned, as I always am, by the extraordinary beauty of the place, and how lucky we are to have Pitlochry Festival Theatre as part of this landscape.
I arrived just after the conclusion of the second event of the day, In Conversation: Match of the Gay, LGBTQIA+ Voices in Football, following on from Kilted Yoga with Finlay Wilson, to a warm and welcoming theatre, alive with festival-goers.
Ashley Douglas and Catherine McPhee. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
In the lull before the first event on my docket, I was able to have a nosey at those parts of the festival taking place all weekend in the theatres front of house areas: Football v. Homophobia Scotland’s Oral History Archive, which aims to “record, preserve, and share the personal stories of Scottish football’s LGBTQI+ players, fans and officials at all levels;” Camp Trans Scotland, an exhibition curated by Jules Lacave-Fontourcy and Tam Omond including photographs and the film The River and the Glen; and Portraits of an LGBTI+ Generation, an exhibition celebrating the lives and stories of queer elders across Scotland.
Before I know it though, it’s time to head into the Studio, for:
In Conversation: A Queer Look at History
Moderated by Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s Head of Producing, Jeremy Woodhouse, this panel featuring Dr. Ashley Douglas and Catherine McPhee diving into archives, research, and queer stories of past, present, and future. Dr. Douglas is an Edinburgh-based historian, translator, and author focused on LGBTQ+ history, while McPhee is a Sgiathanach (“from the isle of Skye”) Archivist at the Skye and Lochalsh Archive Centre of the Highland Archive Service.
Douglas’s current work centres around a text conventionally known as The Maitland Quarto, which she calls “Marie’s Manuscript”: a book written (with her name prominently, twice, on the title page) by Marie Maitland, who in the 16th century inserted her poems of explicitly sapphic love into this collection primarily composed of poetry by her father and others, including King James VI and I. Marie’s poetry, previously ignored or attributed to an anonymous male poet embodying the voice of a lesbian woman, has been brought to light by Douglas for the first time, illuminating a 400 year old queer story that has always been there.
McPhee, meanwhile, is tasked not only with overseeing her entire archive, preserving and cataloguing its extant material, and making that material available for public use, but with deciding what new material comes into the archive. This monumental task involves not only seeing what is recorded, but also what isn’t, and seeking to fill the gaps.
share a passion
History is often a record of the voices of the “winners”; for instance, queer history being present only explicitly in police records, or in the privileging of elite narratives, whose lives may be recorded in hard-copy, while those of the working class may not. McPhee shares an example of her archival work during the COVID-19 pandemic, where she sought out records of local activity and experiences, to archive those stories, and not let governmental records be the only narrative of those times.
Together, McPhee and Douglas share a passion that highlights the importance of their work: looking into the what is, the what is not, the what has been suppressed; to unearth, explore, and shine a light on queer lives and stories that have never not been part of the fabric of Scotland. For more on Marie Maitland, keep your eyes open for Dr. Douglas’s new book With My Own Hand (which, she says with cheerful chagrin, “we didn’t necessarily think through the implications of the title”), publishing this summer on 16 July.
The Hebridean Baker with Tony Kearney (left). Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
After, the foyer is full of conversation about this panel, but there’s only time for a quick coffee before heading into the Main House to see a conversation with one of my favourite social media stars.
In Conversation: Hebridean Baker
In a discussion hosted by Tony Kearney of BBC Radio Scotland Sunday Morning, Coinneach MacLeod, best known to many as The Hebridean Baker, shares stories of his life growing up gay on the Isle of Lewis, his career, finding himself and his tribe, and his viral baking success.
From a traditional Lewis family with a fisherman father (who once gave the late Queen Elizabeth II crabs — no, not that kind!) and brothers, MacLeod followed a different path, first working at a school in Moscow, and then fibbing his way into a job as the Sports Editor for the Moscow Times. This led to covering Eurovision, singing backup vocals, refereeing football, and eventually to television, where he met his partner Peter by a stroke of fate.
MacLeod reflects on the challenges of growing up different in a rural, traditional environments, where “the bullies know before you do,” and the expectations of masculinity that cause him to stifle himself even before he had the words or awareness to articulate what was happening. Then, when working as a referee, he says that similar occurrences happened with players, leading to him wondering what it was about him that they were seeing and disliking. But MacLeod also shares an anecdote where a manager came to him to ask if he would speak to an incoming player who was having trouble with his squad due to being gay, to make him feel welcome and not alone.
He shares the compulsion he felt to leave his island, knowing it was not an environment where he could fully be himself as a young person, and the immense pride he now feels in being an islander, and representing island culture and Gàidhlig language on the world stage.
part of the texture
The Hebridean Baker wasn’t a tactical choice, MacLeod reveals: he learned to bake from his aunt Bellag, and after realising that these recipes and the stories that went with them were simply being allowed to disappear, he woke up one day and said “I am the Hebridean Baker.” In figuring out what that meant, beginning to make the videos that have now made him world-famous and led to best-selling cookbooks, MacLeod set out to make his identity and relationship not the central focus of his work, but a simple fact of life.
MacLeod’s partner, Peter, is part of the texture of the Hebridean Baker’s world, featuring in videos and along with Coinneach quietly representing gay life and joy in the Hebrides. For those of us who first met MacLeod on TikTok in his early days, Peter (and the late, great, Seòras, in whose pawprints has followed wee Flòraidh) has always been part of what makes MacLeod’s content so charming and comforting.
You can find MacLeod across social media @hebrideanbaker, but for longer form content, have a watch of Hebridean Baker: Nordic Islands on BBC iPlayer, which takes him across oceans and borders, and is presented entirely in Gàidhlig and the languages of the people MacLeod visits in the Faroes, Bornholm, Lofoten, and Gotland.
Laurie Slade and Ian McKellen in Equinox. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
Heading out of the theatre after this conversation, the foyer is packed and buzzing with excitement in anticipation of the next event. The only drawback to the festival so far is that the Festival Theatre’s front of house spaces simply aren’t big enough to contain the number of people it has drawn, making it difficult to move about, and to find a place to eat one’s dinner — which, credit where credit is due, was still produced with remarkable speed by the staff of the Café Bar. One crispy cod sandwich later, it’s time to head back in for what I think it’s safe to say is the most hotly anticipated event of the day.
Equinox: Ian McKellen rehearsed reading of a one man play
Sir Ian McKellen takes the stage in a reading of Equinox, a new play by Laurie Slade, which Slade co-directs with André Agius. This rare event is not a fully produced production, but a rehearsed reading of a new work, in which McKellen portrays Ed, and elderly man who finds himself in a strange “large, freestanding box of a room,” of indeterminate location, but possibly a care home.
He is clearly not entirely stable, despite still being sharp and irascible (repeatedly describing an offstage female character as “the termagant”), and this ninety minute journey of Ed in his room swings wildly on the emotional scale— as one might expect from someone nearing the end of life, both in and out of control.
Near its end the script veers sharply into Ed’s past, or possibly his fantasy, of queer desire, describing an encounter with his Midnight Man, inspired by the leather Hell’s Angels jacket Ed discovers in his room, apparently left by its former occupant. This episode is frank, raw, and delves into elements of BDSM culture, just one of the many ways in which Equinox defies expectations: both of what a play about an elderly person should be about, and of the man performing it.
electric
McKellen is electric from the moment he walks onstage as himself and doffs his cap to take in the cheering crowd of the festival theatre, to his visible, physical and emotional transformation from himself in Ed as the stage directions at the beginning of the play are read, through the script’s hills and valleys and into its final, ambiguous fade.
While this is a rehearsed reading and McKellen remains in his chair throughout, it is a fully committed performance, accompanied by judiciously designed lighting and atmospherics that add just the right level of visual drama. With any luck, after such a cracking debut and high-profile endorsement, Equinox will return for a full outing in the near future.
Niall Moorjani The Green Knight (but it’s gay) credit Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
Another quick turnaround after the extended ovation of Equinox meant just enough time to grab a coffee before the next event, so while I’m standing in the crowded queue, let’s pause for an interlude.
The Green Knight (But It’s Gay)
A timetable clash meant I wasn’t able to see The Green Knight (But It’s Gay), written and performed by Scottish Indian storyteller Niall Moorjani, an irreverent, queer, sharply funny retelling of the 14th century poem. But I was able to catch up with Moorjani to ask about the show and their experience bringing it to Pitlochry after past success at Edinburgh Fringe and other venues such as Camden People’s Theatre.
“It means a lot,” says Moorjani. “I grew up in Dundee, my mum used to take us up to Pitlochry on walks and we would often have lunch at the Moulin and I was a tour guide for years so came here all the time with tourists (sorry ’bout that), so I really love the place. The Scotland I grew up with didn’t have much positive queer representation, so to be part of a queer festival that is so big and so Out (in the hills), an hour down the road from where I grew up, it feels very special.”
silly and delightful
On the Green Knight and why they chose it for a starting point and source material, Moorjani says, “It’s an amazing poem and story, and actually already contains a lot of queer stuff and commentary on toxic chivalry— the lad culture to the day.”
Gay Green Knight is silly and delightful, but not without deeper meaning, embedding its themes of joy, hope, and kindness into an ancient myth redefined. “Important stuff can be done in a stupid way,” Moorjani says of the show’s key takeaway, “and toxic lad culture makes no sense.” It’s a lot packaged up into a single hour of laughter, reflection, and new ways of looking at old stories— perhaps for things that were always there.
Alan Cumming and Graham Norton. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
The queue defeated and coffee in hand, I stream with the rest back into the Main House one last time.
Graham Norton in conversation with Alan Cumming
The final conversation of the day features chat show legend Graham Norton in the hot seat for once, having a blether with Pitlochry Festival Theatre Artistic Director Alan Cumming.
Cumming enters (five minutes late, with a meaningful glance at his watch as the audience’s cheering threatens to delay the start further) in a shirt emblazoned with “Ae Fond Pish,” to introduce Norton, effervescent in a zebra-striped jacket (which someone later used an audience question to ask where he got it— “Somewhere in New York! But I think it’s French!”), kicking off the conversation with irreverence, wit, and energetic bonhomie.
“How does it feel, Graham, to be about to be probed by me?” Cumming questions slyly, and they’re off. It’s a wide-ranging chat, covering Norton’s career trajectory and the opportunities that there weren’t in Ireland in the 1970s, with Fiona Shaw (apparently known as Fifi Wilson by Norton and others in their UCC days) blazing the trail or aspirant Irish actors to head to drama school in London— and, in Norton’s words, “go where the gays are.”
the good fortune of tolerance
Amidst anecdotes of the restaurant work and the Mother Theresa sketch that launched Norton on the path to stand-up comedy and eventually TV presenting, he reflects on, as Cumming questions, “ageing in the gay of it all,” and how there’s a sense of having run away from the fight for gay rights in Ireland, which he now gets to enjoy in a more tolerant age. And yet, Norton shares, just by existing in the career he managed to build and the good fortune of tolerance he’s tended to encounter, he has been able to empower people into confidence of coming out, and opening conversations with their families.
In the question-and-answer portion of events, the questions range wildly, from those about Norton’s fashion choices, to whether Norton and Cumming believe that a ban on conversion therapy in Scotland would go far in increasing the general level of acceptance and quality of life for queer people, young people in particular. Both answer with a resounding “Yes!” – and fervent disbelief that we haven’t got one yet. “Get John Swinney on the phone,” Cumming cries, to general applause. On Celebrity Traitors, and whether he’d be interested in appearing, Norton says, “I’d love to do the round table, but I don’t want to carry shit up a hill,” so we may be waiting in vain for that.
Ian McKellen Alan Cumming and Graham Norton, Out in the Hills… Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
In the final question before I have to run for my train, the conversation having gone quite over time (which I’m not complaining about— this is entirely ScotRail’s fault), Norton is asked what his advice would be to young queer people who might be wanting to follow in his footsteps. “Make your own work,” he says, wryly acknowledging both the current challenges of traditional media and the opportunities presented by social media, “there’s access now,” that didn’t exist before. And on doing that work as a queer person, in an age where rights and recognition that have been fought for are coming under increasing threat, “Be vigilant. Don’t take anything for granted.”
Home from the Hills
And so I dash away from Pitlochry Festival Theatre in the rain to catch my train as the night’s Disco with DJ Junglehussi begins, but not without pausing on the bridge to take in the ethereal view of the theatre over Port-na-Craig from the centre of the Tummel. At the start of his conversation with Cumming, Norton described his awe upon seeing the Festival Theatre for the first time, not the “corrugated tin hut” he’d held a picture of in his head after failing, along with the rest of his class, to secure a job in the rep here after drama school, but something “like the National Theatre.” Out in the hills, Pitlochry Festival Theatre glitters in the mist, of jewel of Scottish drama, culture, and perseverance.
If the success of this weekend is anything to judge by, Out in the Hills is tipped to become a set piece of the Pitlochry season, a queer festival that is truly for everyone.
ENDS
