GARETH Machin, artistic director of Wiltshire Creative – Salisbury Playhouse, Salisbury Arts Centre and Salisbury International Arts Festival – urged audiences to let their imaginations take flight when he launched the 2025 festival programme, running from Saturday 24th May to Sunday 8th June.
He said: “A festival is an opportunity to let imaginations soar and this year we are definitely looking skyward with a programme full of creativity and originality. This year’s festival is designed to warm spirits, lighten hearts and inspire us all to lift our heads above the challenges of the current moment.”
Highlights of the festival include:
• Unity, a large-scale outdoor production combining immersive theatre, circus and community stories, in the Market Square from 24th to 26th May;
• A Beautiful Thread: Thomas Hardy in Words and Music, a performance blending Hardy’s life, poetry, and novels with a musical programme of West Gallery music, Holst, Warlock, and contemporary folk, with Anton Lesser, Lucia Bonbright and Orchestra of the Swan, staged in front of Stonehenge, on 28th May;
• Evensong, a service, led by those who keep the tradition and observance alive at the parish church of St Thomas’s, marking the 50th anniversary of the transformation of St Edmund’s Church into Salisbury Arts Centre, at the arts centre on Saturday 24th May at 5pm.
• Flight, a 30-minute experience set inside a 40-ft shipping container, exploring the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, in Guildhall Square from 24th May to 1st June;
• Festival favourites The Lord Chamberlain’s Men with Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at Rack Close on 6th and 7th June;
• Eagles, Birdsongs and Bach, presented by La Folia, with music by Bach and Vivaldi, and the world premiere of Howard Moody’s Eagle Concerto, played by Piers Adams on the Eagle recorder, on 4th June at St Thomas’ Church.
Other events include An Evening with Jacqui Dankworth, a talk by the much-loved best-selling author of Chocolat and other books, Joanne Harris, a solo dance performance by Aakash Odedra inspired by Sufi mythology, the Family Fiesta free afternoon at the arts centre, an outdoor family comedy show, and George Eliot in Words and Music at the Playhouse on Friday 6th June, telling the great writer’s story through music and readings from her novels, letters, journals, poetry and journalism.
Pictured: Anton Lesser with one of the musicians of A Beautiful Thread at Stonehenge; Jacqui Dankworth; composer Howard Moody with recorder virtuoso Piers Adams.