Alan Cumming

In the pipeline is Avengers: Doomsday and a TV series based on his Club Cumming cabaret night. Then there’s the latest series of The Traitors US. All that is before we even get on to Cumming’s new role as artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre.

Leading from the front, the Aberfeldy-born star will play Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady; direct Simon Russell Beale in Martin Sherman’s I’ll Be Seeing You; star with Shirley Henderson in a revival of A History Of Paper directed by Dundee Rep’s Andrew Panton; and co-write I Can Die Too alongside its star, Frances Ruffelle. Somehow, he also has time to tour a musical version of The High Life for National Theatre Of Scotland. Does this man ever sleep?

Margaret-Anne O’Donnell & Gillian Garrity

They might not be household names, but increasingly, O’Donnell and Garrity are the forces bringing quality theatre to audiences in Scotland and beyond. Through their Raw Material production company, they’ve been behind everything from the large-scale tour of Death Of A Salesman, starring David Hayman, to the delicate physical-theatre shows of Ramesh Meyyappan.

This year, they’re reviving three hit works: Karine Polwart’s sublime Windblown, Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie’s irreverent musical Scots, and Rob Drummond and Dave Hook’s rapping history play Wallace. Additionally, they are backing Saint Joan, a version of the George Bernard Shaw play reimagined by the brilliant director Stewart Laing with Adura Onashile. And they also have a hand in the revival of Medea by Bard In The Botanics.

James Brining

He made his name as a director working with the Glasgow young people’s company TAG and then Dundee Rep before becoming artistic director of Leeds Playhouse, one of England’s major theatres. Back in Scotland, Brining is now in charge of Edinburgh’s Lyceum where he’s thinking big and developing commercial hits. His calling card came last October with a funny and elegant production of Chekhov’s The Seagull, starring Caroline Quentin.

Next on his watch, he has inherited One Day: The Musical from predecessor David Greig: this adaptation of the David Nicholls novel, directed by Max Webster, has ‘hit potential’ written all over it and should have them weeping in the aisles. After that, Brining is working with Deacon Blue’s Ricky Ross and playwright Gary McNair on the football underdog drama Black Diamonds And The Blue Brazil.

Jemima Levick

Settling into a second year at the Tron, Levick is building on her experience at Dundee Rep, Stellar Quines and A Play, A Pie And A Pint to extend the Glasgow theatre’s reputation for mixing classics with premieres, the familiar with the experimental, and the serious with the comic. Away from the Tron, she recently staged a handsome production of Cinderella: A Fairytale at Edinburgh’s Lyceum.

Now, she’s working with playwright and frequent collaborator Frances Poet on Stand & Deliver: The Lee Jeans Sit-In, a co-production with National Theatre Of Scotland that recalls the crucial factory strike of 1981 in Greenock.

Dominic Hill

In a nice piece of symmetry, the Citizens in Glasgow and Lyceum in Edinburgh are now led, separately, by the two men who used to run Dundee Rep together. Hill’s profile has been lower than usual because of the Citz’ seven-year refurbishment.

But he returned in style last September with Small Acts Of Love (Frances Poet’s requiem to those killed in the Lockerbie bombing) and then a creepy Beauty And The Beast. After the upcoming Waiting For Godot, he’ll be staging Denise Mina’s true-crime novel The Long Drop, adapted by Linda McLean.

Jackie Wylie

Wylie is leading National Theatre Of Scotland into its 20th-anniversary year. In the US recently, she was drumming up interest for the forthcoming revival of The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie in a production directed by Vicky Featherstone.

Aiming to appeal to the nation’s many constituent parts, Wylie caters to fans of Scottish literature with that show, while The High Life corners the popular market, Stand & Deliver: The Lee Jeans Sit-In plays to the politically engaged, and Martin O’Connor’s Through The Shortbread Tin asks questions about who we all think we are.

Brian Logan

Known as The Guardian’s no-nonsense comedy critic, Logan has a day job running the single most prolific theatre programme in Scotland. As artistic director of A Play, A Pie And A Pint, he’s responsible for a phenomenal amount of work: 17 new plays plus one revival between now and June alone.

As well as playing at Òran Mór, some of them will help flesh out the line-ups in theatres in Aberdeen, Ayr, Edinburgh and Pitlochry. This summer, after lunchtime dramas by the likes of Eve Nicol and Debbie Hannan, Logan will direct Nay Dhanak’s comedy Cry/Laugh as part of the PPP programme.

Main picture: James Brining / credit: Stuart Armitt.

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