Funding the Big Picture

The Stage reports that the largest ever production grant has been awarded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland to the award-winning play, Scenes From the Big Picture, written by Belfast playwright Owen McCafferty.

The sprawling 40-scene play requiring a cast of 21, which paints a panoramic portrait of a hot summer’s day in Belfast, was first seen at the National Theatre in 2003. It won McCafferty the John Whiting Award, the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for New Playwriting and the Meyer Whitworth Award and has since been staged in America, Australia, Germany and Macedonia.

Now Prime Cut Productions are to stage the play in Belfast in September after securing a grant of £79,000 from the Arts Council-administered Lottery Projects fund. The award follows substantial support for the project from Belfast City Council, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and the Foyle Foundation, and gives a green light to what Edel Magill, Prime Cut's co-executive producer, says will be "one of the largest and most ambitious productions by a local theatre company in Northern Ireland in the last ten years".