Fergus Linehan faces the challenge of re-programming Edinburgh International Festival, mindful of the tide of criticism and anti-festival feeling rising in repsonse to the hyper-tourism that feeds its success.
The Edinburgh International Festival’s director, Fergus Linehan, is of course a very different character from either of his remarkable parents; his father, also Fergus, was arts editor of the Irish Times, and a well-known co-writer of witty satirical revues. Yet while Linehan has been a Festival director and administrator for more than 20 years now – he was appointed to run the Dublin International Theatre Festival at the age of 30, back in 1999 – and currently spends his life “surrounded by spreadsheet after spreadsheet,” it’s still possible to detect, within the careful and diplomatic arts manager, something of the sheer creative resilience and wicked wit that is his family inheritance.
In day-to-day terms, Linehan describes himself as still being at the “dealing with practicalities” stage of the cancellation of the Edinburgh International Festival, which was announced on 1 April.
“It’s the phone calls and the spreadsheets, and trying to get the measure of what may and may not be possible,” says Linehan, who is working from his home in Edinburgh, with interruptions from his two young children... Keep reading on Edinburgh Evening News
The Edinburgh International Festival’s director, Fergus Linehan, is of course a very different character from either of his remarkable parents; his father, also Fergus, was arts editor of the Irish Times, and a well-known co-writer of witty satirical revues. Yet while Linehan has been a Festival director and administrator for more than 20 years now – he was appointed to run the Dublin International Theatre Festival at the age of 30, back in 1999 – and currently spends his life “surrounded by spreadsheet after spreadsheet,” it’s still possible to detect, within the careful and diplomatic arts manager, something of the sheer creative resilience and wicked wit that is his family inheritance.
In day-to-day terms, Linehan describes himself as still being at the “dealing with practicalities” stage of the cancellation of the Edinburgh International Festival, which was announced on 1 April.
“It’s the phone calls and the spreadsheets, and trying to get the measure of what may and may not be possible,” says Linehan, who is working from his home in Edinburgh, with interruptions from his two young children... Keep reading on Edinburgh Evening News