We are delighted to announce that Linda McLean has been awarded the prestigious Hector MacMillan Award for Best New Scottish Play 2023 for Castle Lennox, Lung Ha Theatre Company’s co-production with the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh which played on the Lyceum stage in Spring 2023.
The Hector MacMillan Award is voted on annually by members of the Scottish Society of Playwrights, with all new plays produced in Scotland in the previous calendar year eligible. Former winners include How Not To Drown by Nicola McCartney and Dritan Kastrati, James IV: Queen of the Fight by Rona Munro, and Mouthpiece by Kieran Hurley and Ulster American by David Ireland (joint winners in 2019).
The Award was presented to Linda at the SSP@50 Conference in Glasgow last Thursday, 28 November 2024.
In her inspiring acceptance speech, Linda said:
Castle Lennox could never have existed without Lung Ha Theatre Company, their director Maria Oller and David Greig of The Lyceum. In fact, EVERY person who worked on that show gave of their very best.
For me, working with the Lung Ha company of actors as they portrayed the inmates of a place like Castle Lennox – while being the very people who would have been sent there 30 years ago – was at once heart-breaking AND hopeful.
Our wider society has ways to go in creating a safe and nurturing environment for people with physical and learning challenges, but they’ve come that far at least.
Linda McLean
Castle Lennox was previously nominated for two Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland (Best Ensemble and Outstanding Performance for cast member Emma McCaffery), winning the award for Best Ensemble at last year’s CATS awards held at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in June 2023.
Castle Lennox saw possibly the most brilliantly diverse cast on any stage this year bring a complex play about a truly shameful element of Scotland’s social history to light. Lung Ha always create work which impresses but this production, which we have had to wait so many years to see, took their unique method of using an all-professional cast of people with and without learning disabilities to a new level with a production that was frequently funny as well as utterly heartbreaking.
THOM Dibdin, All Edinburgh Theatre