The McLellan Arts Festival 2016 is already in full swing and festival-goers can now look forward to the next batch of exciting events. These begin tonight (Friday) with Ricardo Curbelo’s benefit performance for the Music Society in the community theatre where he will take the audience on a colourful and energetic journey through different Latin American countries on harp, cuatro, maracas and vocals.
Then on Saturday (August 20), Arran pays its homage to the bard’s 400 birthday anniversary two shortened Shakespeare plays performed in the community theatre. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a tale of mixed up lovers, wicked spirits and comic bungling amateur thespians and The Tempest, Shakespeare’s last play, a tale of banishment, magic, power and colonisation.
For anyone into writing, whether as a reader or a practitioner, the absolute highlight this year has to be the visit by David Constantine. A multi-award winning poet, translator, novelist and short-story writer, his visit is a major coup for the festival organisers. David worked for 30 years as a university teacher of German language and literature.