Pitlochry's brand new studio theatre at PFT is the scene for Sister Radio

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Sister Radio is the very first play to take place in Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s exciting new studio. Enjoying the role of Shirin, actor Nâlan Burgess spoke to the PA about the PFT co-production with Edinburgh feminist theatre company, Stellar Quines.“Sister Radio is a beast of a new play, in a good way!” so said Nâlan, who plays Shirin, one of the two Iranian siblings making a new life in Scotland in this fresh piece written on the back of the COVID lockdown era by Egyptian playwright Sara Shaarawi.

Following a September run in Pitlochry, the production tours with dates in Perth, Aberdeen and Derby. “Both Lanna Joffrey (who plays the older sister Fatemeh) and myself have been deeply involved in what has been an evolving process.“It’s a production that stays within a space, a traditional Edinburgh flat, but we have to demonstrate that there are two distinct time periods -1970 and 2020 - which the action flashes between.“Obviously in the later period the sisters are forty years older than when we first meet them.

They are brought physically close together by a pandemic lockdown, but they avoid talking.“We didn’t want to caricature it, but a lot of that aging is shown through the way the women move around the space, much of it without words.“There’s a lot to express in that later slice of their lives that has to be done without words.“Sister Radio starts in 2020, the days we all remember when you didn’t want to turn on the news.“But the necessity of knowing, of tuning in, meant the pandemic was constantly present.

Terrifying facts forming everyday normality.“It has been very challenging, being involved in a brand new play staged in a new space too.“For the first two weeks of rehearsal we had lots of input from writer