Expansion is part of unfinished business of director’s evolving vision

NEXT year was due to be Fergus Linehan’s last at the Edinburgh International Festival as artistic director.

But, he says, he realised that he had unfinished business. And, perhaps, he did not want to exit in the year of Brexit, when so much about the festival will be cast in a new light: its formation in the aftermath of the last world war, its roots in a desire for a celebration of culture and peace.

Or leave, when, as he admitted this week in conversation, so much will be unknown: the financial, cultural and practical “hit” of Brexit has yet to be fully calibrated at Scotland’s great annual cultural celebration.

So Mr Linehan will now not leave until September 2022. In that time, we will see, one suspects, more of what he is presenting in this 2018 programme: an expanded geographic footprint, and an expanded artistic rubric.

He said the extensive use of the Leith Theatre this year, for a series of folk, electronic and alternative music concerts – of which we will find out about in May – is both an experiment and possibly more: a chance to find out whether a new – for modern times – new venue for the Festival can be used to re-shape the programme itself.

He said he is keen to find a space in the programme for the new and the experimental, the boundary-pushing shows which are neither huge in scale or, perhaps, can be found elsewhere in the city in August. Leith Theatre may be the home for that.

Financially, Mr Linehan says the festival is in reasonably good shape: they received Regular Funding from Creative Scotland, but a significant budget discussion with the city’s council also looms.

And this year’s programme has to sell.

Once again the Festival will begin with a free outdoor show, this time entitled Five Telegrams, with music by the electrifying talent of Anna Meredith, and the Usher Hall – after last year’s opening event in St Andrew Square – is again the backdrop, as it was in Linehan’s first festival in 2015.

There will be a theatrical aspect to the show, apparently, but the director did not say whether this will involve actors perched on the elegant architecture of the venue itself.

I suspect it might.