Students take to festival stage

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A new arts festival is taking place in St Andrews starring students from across Scotland.

The On the Rocks event will also showcase the talents of local children, community groups and professionals.

About 70 performances will be held across 12 venues and will feature theatre, comedy, dance and music.

Shows include Jerry Springer - the Opera, Shakespeare plays and an outdoor performance of Peter Pan, starring students and school pupils.

The author of the story, JM Barrie, is a former rector of St Andrews University.

There will also be a student film festival competition and Pixar animators who worked on Wall-e will choose the winners.

'Cess pit'

Festival organiser Philippa Dunn said: "It's going to be a really exciting week, this is the first time we've tried something on this scale here.

"It's a really exciting thing for the university, for the town and I really hope for Scotland.

"I want this to carry on in future years and grow and develop and hopefully be a cultural highlight of the Scottish calendar and not just something for St Andrews and the local area, but something for everyone."

Local school pupils will star in an outdoor performance of Peter Pan

The festival has caused controversy because of the staging of Jerry Springer - the Opera, a musical which features Jesus claiming to be a "bit gay", dancing Ku Klux Klan members and hundreds of swear words.

Christian Voice branded the university a "cess pit" and members will be handing out leaflets ahead of the performances.

National director of Christian Voice, Stephen Green, said: "The university and the students in it have rather lost touch with any notion of civilised behaviour.

"It's all very well for the principal to bleat on about freedom of speech, but freedom of speech comes with responsibilities.

"It's all very well for her to say we trust the students, but they don't trust the students enough to mark their own exam papers so there's a lot of duplicity and hypocrisy going on at St Andrews."

However, Ms Dunn defended the decision to put on the show.

She said: "It's the most challenging piece of musical theatre - it's an eight-part score and it's a phenomenally difficult piece of theatre to construct.

"I think it raised some really interesting questions about art and about what art should or shouldn't do and about the impact that art can have.

"We recognise that it's a very controversial play, it's also a play that's won countless awards."

Ms Dunn added that a debate highlighting some of the issues raised by the show would also be held.

The festival runs until 26 April.