WHEN Jonathan Mills took over as director of the Edinburgh International Festival last year, the contrast between him and his predecessor, Sir Brian McMaster, was immediately striking. McMaster is a shy, intensely private man who regarded all public appearances as necessary evils. Mills, by contrast, is flamboyant and endlessly talkative, and seems to relish the spotlight. "It's really important to get out and about to let people have a look at you," he said shortly after starting th
He talks for fun too though. At the launch of his second festival this week, he joked that, being so loquacious, he was delighted finally to be able to wax lyrical about his programme instead of having to keep it to himself. And then he spoke, eloque
ntly, passionately and without notes, for nearly 45 minutes.
Mills seems to be on a mission to make his audiences as chatty as he is. While McMaster was evangelistic about reaching out to new audiences, ultimately he was content to let the quality of each festival performance speak for itself. Mills, though, believes festivals should be "about ideas". "If I have a role as festival director it's in thinking about the shape of the journey," he says. "Festivals are intrinsically integrated experiences, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts."
If last year's big idea was purely artistic and mildly esoteric – the 400th anniversary of Monteverdi's landmark opera L'Orfeo – this year's theme, Artists Without Borders, is one that anybody can easily grasp, and potentially opens up this celebration of high art to a wider audience than ever before. It's certainly a timely theme in a country one year into a Nationalist administration, and still getting to grips with what this means in terms of its political and cultural identity. "There's a completely different kind of national conversation going on here," the Australian director says. "I wanted to convey something of the surprise and excitement I felt as a newcomer, in all that contested space."
What is really striking about Mills's second festival, though, is how far it reaches out across the globe in exploring its big idea, and how convincingly it makes its case to be a truly international festival. There is work from both Israel and Palestine, and from Iran, Bosnia, Lebanon and Russia – all countries, as Mills points out, whose recent histories have given them a profound understanding of how unstable borders can be. "I'm hoping to engage people in a broader conversation that's not just about one show," he explains. But he bristles slightly when I suggest that his easy to grasp theme makes the festival more accessible. "I think it gives people a sense that they're buying into a narrative and maybe in that sense it's more accessible, but there's some quite experimental, edgy work there that's not for everyone and I'm not pulling my punches on that. I'm not dumbing it down or softening it."
Indeed, Mills's programme sets out to challenge its audience as much as draw them in. The majority of the theatre programme, for example, is in languages other than English (although with theatre in Polish, Arabic, German, and Farsi it may be Mills is banking on drawing an immigrant audience for whom these shows will be more accessible).
Of course, he points out, you don't have to spend all your time at the EIF pondering the meaning of borders. "What I'm not trying to do is shove this down people's throats and say this is the only way to experience the festival. I hope there's enough room for interpretation between all of this for people to make their own conclusions. What was really satisfying last year was when people said, 'I understand what you were trying to say, and it made me think, but I don't agree with you'." However, he acknowledges: "I think you can take it too far and I hope I haven't been pedantic in prosecuting it."
Arguably he has, a little. He had previously suggested, for example, that the National Theatre of Scotland's children in care drama 365: One Night To Learn A Lifetime was about the "border" between childhood and adulthood, which seemed mildly reductive, shoehorning someone else's idea into a themed festival in which it doesn't quite fit. He then nearly forgot to mention this major production at the launch (carried away by his own big idea, perhaps?). That said, he readily acknowledges that "there are things in this year's festival that have nothing to do with the theme".
So how important is it to have a theme in the first place, really? "I think it makes something a festival," he says. "Without it, it's much more difficult to have what I would consider a festival, because the journey one is encouraging other people to take up is more palpable, so they actually feel there's something larger going on than just an individual event."
A cynic might argue that leading audiences by the hand in this way is faintly condescending. Can't audiences decide for themselves what a piece of art is about? Isn't it enough for Mills just to present first class work, as McMaster did, without having to show off how clever he is too? Mills doesn't see it like that, obviously, flatteringly suggesting that a festival pointedly tackling big ideas is perfect for a city with such a proud intellectual and cultural history. "Even if one was less committed to this kind of approach I think it works in Edinburgh, the place that harboured the Scottish Enlightenment." An admirable attempt to inspire debate or grandiose posturing? You decide.
THREE TO SEE365: ONE NIGHT TO LEARN A LIFETIMETHE National Theatre of Scotland presents a new drama inspired by the shortcomings of the British childcare system, directed by NTS boss Vicky Featherstone, written by David Harrower (Blackbird) and, most intriguingly, featuring songs by Paul Buchanan of the Blue Nile.
• Playhouse, 22-25 August
STEVE REICH EVENINGChoreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is a big Steve Reich fan, and launched her international dance career back in 1982 with Fase, a piece set to the minimalist composer's music. She's been revisiting his work ever since, and here brings a whole evening of her Reich repertoire, above, to the festival. I can't wait.
• Festival Theatre, 15-17 August
WOLPE!IT'S nice to see The Hub, home of the EIF's offices, becoming a late-night festival club this year, with piano music, gypsy song and, most enticingly, two nights of musical agitprop from Kurt Weill's contemporary Stefan Wolpe.
• The Hub, 29-30 August
The full article contains 1103 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
