‘Normal’, as so many have discovered, is something that can disappear quickly but return only slowly. Recovering from the uncertainty of complete shutdown was a gradual process for the Eastgate Theatre this year but with the generous support of friends, the hunger of people to experience creative activities and performances again, plus the continuing development of the programme, the theatre is now fully back up and running, welcoming regular customers and new visitors.

Musician and songwriter Jenny Sturgeon returns to the Eastgate Theatre later this month with The Living Mountain – a spellbinding audio-visual interpretation of what is widely regarded as one of the finest books ever written on Britain’s nature and landscape. Nan Shepherd’s book of the same name, written during the Second World War, describes the author’s many journeys into the Cairngorm mountains. Drilling down to the finest detail, her writing explores the rocks, rivers, wildlife and hidden aspects of the landscape to create a powerful meditation on the magnificence of mountains and our relationship with wild places.

Mountain enthusiasts have a chance to step into a world that few inhabit when The Alpinist – one of the most keenly anticipated climbing films since the 2018 Oscar-winning Free Solo – screens at the Eastgate next week. A gripping new documentary by Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen, whose previous films include The Dawn Wall and Valley Uprising, The Alpinist tells the story of Marc-André Leclerc, a young Canadian climber with a love of climbing remote, vertical walls of ice alone and without the safety net of a rope.