Perth Theatre and Pitlochry Festival Theatre are both celebrating their original content winning at the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland (CATS).
I Am Tiger, a co-commission between Perth Theatre and Imaginate has been named Best Production for Children and Young People at the CATS.
The show premiered at Perth Theatre in May 2022 before enjoying a run at the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival.
It triumphed at the CATS awards in a hotly contested category which also included The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, Perth Theatre’s co-production with Helen Milne Productions and The Roald Dahl Story Company.
Written by Oliver Emanuel, I Am Tiger was inspired by the fact that the number one killer of men in the UK under 40 is suicide – and that there are now more tigers kept as pets than live in the wild.
Created for young people aged 12 and above, told through the eyes of Laura who has lost her older brother to suicide, I Am Tiger is a heart-breaking, comic and thought-provoking story about living with loss.
Freelance journalist and theatre critic Thom Dibdin, who presented the award at the CATS ceremony at Tron Theatre on Sunday, September 11, said: “I Am Tiger is an immense and important play that dares to speak frankly about a big issue - the suicide of an older sibling. This award is for the whole Tiger Team.”
Lu Kemp, Perth Theatre’s artistic director who directed said: “I couldn’t be more proud of this show. Creating a piece of theatre which delivered a physical, visceral experience of the chaos of grief was a powerful and exciting journey.
“The conversations it engendered with the young audiences who saw it changed me.”
Meanwhile another Perthshire theatre has been praised for new creative work.
Pitlochry Festival Theatre (PFT) was awarded Best New Play by CATS judges for Adventures with the Painted People by David Greig.
The play was directed by PFT artistic director Elizabeth Newman and was commissioned by the theatre as part of its Shades of Tay project.
The play pictures a Roman soldier and Celtic tribal leader from the Loch Tay area getting to grips with their opposing cultures.
It was performed by two extraordinary Scottish talents, Nicholas Karimi in the role of Lucius, and Kirsty Stuart, star of PFT’s 2019 production of ‘Faith Healer’ and BBC One’s ‘Call the Midwife’ series, as Eithne.
The atmospheric two-hander premiered last summer in PFT’s amphitheatre.
An earlier version of it went out just as an audioplay on BBC R3.
@PITLOCHRYft tweeted over David Greig’s triumph: “It was a huge team effort and we couldn’t be happier.”
