Depart From: Depart from N. America for overnight flights to UK.

Arrive To: Edinburgh Airport. Transfers by coach to hotel.

Lunch: Lunch in the hotel dining room for those arriving in time for lunch.

Afternoon: Free time.

Dinner: In the hotel.

Evening: Welcome meeting with your Course Director and programme introduction at approx. 7:30pm.

Lodging: Holiday Inn Edinburgh

Meals Included: Lunch, Dinner

Why go to the theatre? Edinburgh Old Town walk./Whisky Heritage Centre/Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

Note: Stairs at Tattoo. Steep walk to Castle.

Breakfast: Full Scottish breakfast in the hotel.

Morning: Giles Ramsay discusses How we go to the theatre and why we bother! Lecture 2: What's Hot, What's not with a well known Scottish journalist.

Lunch: Excluded--participant's own choice to explore local restaurants.

Afternoon: The coach takes you nto the city centre at 12:30pm At 1:30pm assimilate the cultural layers that comprise Scotland's capital city as you walk Old Town and the Royal Mile followed by free time.

Dinner: Excluded. You should eat before the Whisky Heritage Centre tasting and field trip at 6:00pm.

Evening: Field trip to the Whisky Heritage Centre tour at 6:00pm with a tasting at 7:00pm. Performance--Military Tattoo. 9:00pm. From its early days, the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo has been an international favourite. Performers from over 40 countries have presented here, and around 35 per cent of the 217,000 audience each year are from overseas. In addition, the Tattoo has been televised in 30 countries. An annual television audience of 100 million watches the coverage worldwide. The international flavour of the Tattoo has been deliberately developed as a key element in its capacity to entertain a huge, cosmopolitan audience.

Lodging: Holiday Inn Edinburgh

Meals Included: Breakfast

Breakfast: Full Scottish breakfast.

Morning: Performance at the Fringe at 10:00am. Letter of Last Resort/Good with People at the Traverse Theatre Written by David Greig & David Harrower. From Helensburgh to Downing Street and back again. Two gripping stories trace the paths of personal and political destruction. An exhilarating double bill of short plays from two of Scotland's greatest playwrights, David Greig and David Harrower. The Letter of Last Resort by David Greig Director Nicolas Kent Cast Simon Chandler and Belinda Lang London, after the next election. In Whitehall the newly elected Prime Minister struggles to write a letter to be opened only if Britain is devastated by a Nuclear strike. But, in an unimaginable future where the only safe place on the planet is under the sea in a submarine, what should her orders be? The Letter of Last Resort was a highlight of the Tricycle Theatre's acclaimed production THE BOMB - a partial history, staged earlier this year. Good With People by David Harrower Director George Perrin With Blythe Duff I always felt stupid saying something intelligent here. Evan returns to Helensburgh, west Scotland; home to the nation's Nuclear defence programme and once a thriving holiday resort. A place he's been trying to avoid. Haunted by his past and afraid of his future, he finds Helen working at the Seaview Hotel. From the same place, but worlds apart, their evening fizzes and fuses. Will there be fallout? Good With People started life at Òran Mór and Paines Plough's 2010 season of a Play, a Pie and a Pint. Space: Traverse One Running Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

Lunch: Excluded.

Afternoon: Free afternoon.

Dinner: Excluded.

Evening: At leisure.

Lodging: Holiday Inn Edinburgh

Meals Included: Breakfast

Breakfast: Full Scottish breakfast.

Morning: Venture into the magestic countryside of the Borders and Traquair House, the oldest continually inhabited house in Scotland dating back to 1107. Traquair was originally a hunting lodge for the kings and queens of Scotland. Later a refuge for Catholic priests in times of terror the Stuarts of Traquair supported Mary Queen of Scots and the Jacobite cause without counting the cost. Everywhere are portraits, old prints and maps which refer to the history of the house. The entrance leads on to the main stone spiral staircase which goes up to the High Drawing Room, bedrooms, Library and Museum. The ground floor gives access to vaulted cellars and the Still Room which has a fine collection of blue and white china.

Lunch: Excluded.

Afternoon: The excursion continues to 12th century Melrose Abbey, founded by Cistercian monks. Melrose Abbey is a magnificent ruin on a grand scale with lavishly decorated masonry. The Abbey is thought to be the burial place of Robert the Bruce’s heart, marked with a commemorative carved stone plaque within the grounds.

Dinner: Excluded

Evening: At leisure.

Lodging: Holiday Inn Edinburgh

Meals Included: Breakfast

Breakfast: Full Scottish breakfast.

Morning: Meet a theatre professional.

Lunch: Excluded-participant's own choice.

Afternoon: Free afternoon for you to explore the Festival on your own.

Dinner: Dinner out.

Evening: Performance. Macbeth at Lowland Hall, the Royal Highland Centre. An enormous three-story construction with multimedia screens is the set for 2008: Macbeth. With spectacular pyrotecnics, immersive video effects and an extraordinary layered soundscape that plays tricks on the ear, Shakespeare's web of politics is transformed into contemporary filmic theatre. Military commander Macbeth unleashes a nightmare of carnage and destruction. A war on terror that is a war of terror. Set in a contemporary and brutal Middle Eastern conflict, 2008: Macbeth is unflinching in its depiction of the machine of violence that, once set in motion, works faster and ever more efficiently. If killing in a war is justified, so is killing in the privacy of one's home. If you can kill men, why not also women and children? With spectacular pyrotechnics, immersive video effects and an extraordinary, layered soundscape that plays tricks on the ear, Shakespeare's web of politics, ambition and the supernatural is transformed into a contemporary, and highly physical, theatrical film. Acclaimed director Grzegorz Jarzyna "I am in blood Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er' Macbeth Act lll Scene lV Performed in Polish with English supertitles.

Lodging: Holiday Inn Edinburgh

Meals Included: Breakfast, Dinner

Breakfast: Full Scottish breakfast.

Morning: Lecture: Tudor Theatre: Background to Shakespeare.

Lunch: Lunch in the hotel.

Afternoon: Free time.

Dinner: Dinner out.

Evening: Performance at the King's Theatre. Electra's father is murdered by her mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, leaving Electra hysterical with grief, and with an obsessional desire for revenge, as she is made a prisoner in her mother's house. Her only hope is that her exiled brother Orestes will return and make her dark fantasy of murdering her mother come true. In Suzuki's staging of the Greek myth, the characters' interior world is deepened by setting the tragedy in a psychiatric hospital, one in which all of humanity is irredeemably trapped. One of the most enduringly influential directors and theatre makers alive, Tadashi Suzuki is also renowned for his writings and the Suzuki Acting Method. Here he combines Euripides's terrifying perception of human frailty with the operatic force of Hofmannsthal, Richard Strauss?s librettist. "Deprived of all familial ties, the heroine of my play lives in solitude, totally speechless, in a hospital. All she aspires for is revenge on the one who is the cause of this, her mother who abandoned her." Tadashi Suzuki Performed in Japanese and Korean with English supertitles

Lodging: Holiday Inn Edinburgh

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Breakfast: Full Scottish breakfast.

Morning: Course Round Up with course director Giles Ramsay.

Lunch: Excluded-participant's own choice.

Afternoon: Free afternoon. Pre-dinner Farewell meeting.

Dinner: In the hotel.

Evening: Performance. Straight from the heart of Rio de Janeiro, Deborah Colker Dance Company transports Aleksandr Puskin's classic tale, Onegin, from 19th-century Russia to contemporary, sultry Brazil. Typically explosive energy and choreography packed full of Brazilian colour and flair combine with compelling storytelling with a wonderfully inventive set to poignantly capture the intense emotional rollercoaster - from joyous elation to bitter disappointment.

Lodging: Holiday Inn Edinburgh

Meals Included: Breakfast, Dinner

Breakfast: Full Scottish breakfast depending on transfer times.

Morning: Coach transfers to Edinburgh Airport for flights to N America.

Meals Included: Breakfast