Exclusive:From panto cow to film star - Mark Bonnar to take honorary role at Leith drama club that launched career

Bonnar, who recently appeared in Celebrity Traitors and has starred in roles including DCC Mike Dryden in Line of Duty and as Lord Advocate Stephen Burns in recent Edinburgh-set Netflix drama Dept Q , is to become a figurehead for Edinburgh-based Leitheatre.

Bonnar began acting with Leitheatre in his early 20s after Mike Paton and Duncan Robertson, two colleagues at Edinburgh City Council where he was working in the town planning department, suggested he join the group.

Bonnar’s first role with Leitheatre was cast as the rear end of a pantomime cow in the club’s Christmas show in 1991. He went on to play bigger parts in club productions including Biff in Death of a Salesman and Dr Bradman in Blithe Spirit and later won a place at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow - then the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

The club, which is to celebrate its 80th anniversary next year, is made up of amateur actors and backstage volunteers.

Bonnar said: "I was really delighted when Leitheatre asked me to become their honorary president. It’s not just a place where you can learn and take part in their wonderful productions, it’s also somewhere you can make friends for life, as I have.”

In a video message released as he announced his new role, Bonnar urged people to join his former club.

“Tread the same boards that I tread many years ago,” he said. “It’s great fun.”

Susan Duffy, president of Leitheatre, said Bonnar would be the club’s first ever honorary president.

She said: “It’s amazing to think that someone we worked alongside all those years ago has gone on to achieve so much. We are really proud of Mark and we’re excited to have him as our honorary president in what is our 80th anniversary year.”

She added: “We’ve got a fantastic programme for 2026 - the disturbing and challenging One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in May, a production of Brassed Off to be set in the mining villages of Fife for the Fringe and an adaptation of a Christmas Carol written especially for us at the end of November.

“Having Mark as our honorary president really puts the icing on the cake.”

Leitheatre, which has been running since 1946, has no connection to the Leith Theatre building. It changed its name from Kirkgate Church Dramatic Society to Leiththeatre in 1973, months before the building then known as Leith Town Hall renamed itself Leith Theatre.

The club produces three plays a year, including a production during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Its most recent shows include plays It’s a Wonderful Life and Quiz at the Church Hill Theatre in Morningside and Calendar Girls, which it performed during the Fringe.

Last year, Leitheatre was the first ever amateur group to put on a production of Quiz, by celebrated playwright James Graham, who wrote this year’s Edinburgh International Festival hit Make It Happen. Coincidentally, Bonnar played Northern Irish TV producer Paul Smith in the ITV small screen adaptation of the play, about the Who Wants to be a Millionaire cheating scandal, broadcast five years ago.