The poet and playwright claimed that she had been “wilfully misunderstood” over her comments in an interview about a lack of Scottish work, but went on to list a number of writers and productions that she said the National Theatre of Scotland had ignored.
Speaking at an event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Lochhead questioned why the work of the Scottish writers and directors Edwin Morgan, Daniel Jackson, Gerry Mulgrew and David McVicar, as well as some of her own work, had failed to attract more attention from the NTS.
She admitted that she may not have expressed herself “exactly the way I might have meant to” in the interview, but added that “to have been wilfully misunderstood as I feel I have been is quite upsetting”.
Lochhead said: “I love the work that the National Theatre of Scotland has done but I do not see why we shouldn’t have more work that also includes some of the great Scottish works of the recent past, for instance Edwin Morgan’s recent translation of Cyrano de Bergerac.
“I was part of the working party for the National Theatre of Scotland, and part of the remit was to revive recent classics like that and like my Medea, which won the Saltire prize. I was led to believe that they would probably revive it, but they never did.”
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Referring to Jackson’s Stewarton Trilogy, completed in 2010, Lochhead said: “It’s as good as John Byrne’s Slab Boys. It went through the National Theatre of Scotland. I can’t believe they just didn’t sniff the vigour in it.
“I really, really like [NTS artistic director] Laurie Sansom, and the fact that he’s not Scottish doesn’t matter if they’ve got somebody there looking after the Scottish side of the repertoire.”