Nicola Benedetti on her first EIF: ‘The main thing is not to be boring, not to just tick every box’

“I’ve played at the festival many times and have a relationship to it from the stage predominantly,” she says. “I was approached about the job, headhunted I guess. I thought I was being asked to suggest other people, and it took me quite a long time to realise that wasn’t the purpose of the phone call. This is one of the greatest cultural institutions in the country, one of the great cultural institutions in the world, so to be able to contribute to that landscape, where an impact can be made in terms of the creative trajectory of where we want this part of the world to go, is a massive opportunity.

“Obviously it’s also a bit of a risk on my part, on a personal level, because I have so many commitments I’m not giving up. I’ll continue to perform. But it’s an opportunity to make an impact that is impossible to realise when you represent simply yourself. With each conversation, I was exploding with ideas and thoughts to share. I’ve been touring and performing since I was 14. That’s a long time existing within the performing arts, and there are so many parallels across all the art forms. I’ve seen how things are done around the world. I’ve observed a lot of things over the years that I think could be done differently.”

‘I have a strong civic leaning. That’s natural for Scottish people’

The title of this year’s festival is inspired by Martin Luther King Jr’s final book, published in 1967, entitled Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, which Benedetti read last year. It has also informed what she refers to as the three “invitations” that govern each week of the festival’s programming; not strict themes in themselves, but points of consideration for artist and audience. These are: “community over chaos”, “hope in the face of adversity” and “a perspective that’s not one’s own”, and they each feed into the EIF’s founding principles as a bastion of post-Second World War artistic fellowship.

The programme demonstrates that, as expected, Benedetti’s first festival has a strong classical music strand. The London Symphony Orchestra is one of three leading orchestras to each have a residency during the EIF, while the programme includes 22 symphonic concerts. Yet the first festival event in 1947 was titled the Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama, and the continuing presence of creative director Roy Luxford – appointed a decade ago by Linehan’s predecessor Jonathan Mills – ensures quality and continuity within the theatre programme.

“To be honest, there’s always an ebb and flow in dialogue with the festival director, regardless of where their particular specialisms sit,” says Luxford. “It’s been no different to Nicola’s immediate predecessors. This festival has been about looking for artists we’ve not presented under our auspices before, maintaining relationships with artists we’ve had a track record with, and also trying to find pieces of work that speak into some of these invitations.”

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Among the theatre works showing, Luxford mentions the UK premieres of Brazilian film and theatre director Christiane Jatahy’s Dusk, based on Lars von Trier’s film Dogville, “but in her version it’s transposed to Brazil, and the stranger who enters the community is a young woman fleeing growing fascism. It’s about how the community responds with both a sense of hospitality and distrust for the stranger,” he says. He describes writer and director Tiago Rodrigues’ As Far As Impossible as “a piece made out of interviews with humanitarian aid workers, which looks at global horrors but also those that work within those scenarios to bring a sense of assistance or reconciliation”. The programme also includes an appearance from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as well as the UK premiere of Barrie Kosky and the Berliner Ensemble’s The Threepenny Opera.

Dimanche, another UK premiere, is by Belgian mime and puppetry groups Focus Company and Chaliwaté Company, and is about a family’s response as climate change wreaks destruction around them. Meanwhile, Punchdrunk will bring The Lost Lending Library, its show for younger audiences, to Edinburgh.

Elsewhere, the National Theatre of Scotland’s Thrown is about five women who compete in Highland Games wrestling, and Geoff Sobelle returns with FOOD, which Luxford says is “an invitation to join him at his oversized dining table as he sends up contemporary restaurant dining habits, before the piece develops into a dissection of industrialisation, community impact and the real cost of the food on your plate”.

Amid the unpacking of Benedetti’s first programmed year, there is of course the matter of her being the EIF’s first female and first Scottish-born director. The former is simply long overdue; the parallel Edinburgh Festival Fringe was first led by a woman in 1986. The latter is more of an individual factor.

“I have a strong civic leaning because I’m from Scotland. I think that’s the natural tendency,” says Benedetti. “This summer for me will be posing a lot of questions, giving examples of where I think strong manifestations of community can appear through the festival. How do I feel about being the first Scottish-born director? Proud, happy… More than anything, I think the connection I’ve had to the people here for so long will hopefully serve the festival well.”

Edinburgh International Festival runs from August 4-27. For full listings, visit eif.co.uk