Since closing its doors as a vet school in 2011, Summerhall has become a thriving arts hub full of exhibitions, installations and shows. Even so, some of the old operating rooms remain unused - or so we thought.
What drives young people to join violent organizations? A show exploring the effects that constant propaganda has on young lives, focusing on war propaganda in particular. We follow eight youths through 10 difficult years, seeing how they change.
While the police question the staff of the distillery, it is up to you to figure out the location of the next attack, discover the identity of an insidious mole within the company and – most importantly – save the gin.
An ensemble performance that travels back through seventy years of Sri Lankan history; through the recollections of those born in the 1930s, who lived through independence, insurrection, modernization and war.
Drawing inspiration from Under The Vaulted Sky, created for IF: Milton Keynes International Festival 2014, Rosemary has joined forces with film-maker Roswitha Chesher to create Liquid Gold is the Air.
Can you help Molly learn how to be a kid again? A larger-than-life story of family, friends and fitting in from Sarah McDonald-Hughes. Warning: contains dancing, chocolate cake and an epic car chase.
Tighten your laces, and don't let your knees hit the ground. There's live music and wall-to-wall dancing in this sweat-soaked marathon with Northern Soul. No Miracles Here is an anthem to feeling alive and keeping the faith.
An ensemble work, striving to recreate the original story of Medea. With intimacy and immediacy, visually translating the tale through physical illustrations and a playful, profound relationship between two performers who remain present throughout.
In 1896, Rosa Vaile's husband lost his job on the docks and then they lost everything else. Now their great-great-great-granddaughter would like to talk to you about class, work, mental illness, and how far we’ve come since.
The average person says 123,205,750 words in a lifetime. But what if there were a limit? Oliver and Bernadette are about to find out. A play about what we say and how we say it.
Cockamamy comes to Edinburgh after a sell-out run at last year's London Camden Fringe. A heartbreaking, hilarious story about the companionship between Alice and her granddaughter Rosie. This compelling new play explores the reality of living with dementia.
A show about tech savvy extremists, our collapsing world, digital fantasy and nightmare, and a generation of resentful, directionless, violent young men.
Funny. Tender. Moving. Looking down the barrel of her final fertile years, an Irish woman goes on a comical quest to uncover the hows and whys of reproducing her genes.
Thirty participants are invited into an intriguing theatrical game exploring security, profiling, freedom of expression and privacy in the age of cybersurveillance. Mobile throughout the performance, the participants collaborate, debate and spy on each other. Farsi, Arabic, English.
Following the success of EUROHOUSE, Bert & Nasi return with Palmyra, an exploration of revenge, the politics of destruction and what we consider to be barbarian. Palmyra steps back from the news to look at what lies beneath—and beyond—civilization.
Rebecca and Paul are running away. Away from memories and mistakes. They’re trying to save their relationship. They need time and space. An isolated house in the country is the perfect place to work things out. But you can’t run forever. Especially when you’re being followed.
This is a show composed entirely of crowd-sourced lists, from all kinds of people in all kinds of places – including from you the audience as you queue up to take your seats. In Lists…, the ordinary and the extraordinary, the profound and the ridiculous sit playfully side by side.
Join us for a tour of Summerhall Distillery as we raise the curtain on how award-winning Pickering’s Gin is made.
A journey to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. In February 2016, two artists got on a cargo ship to retrace one of the routes of the Transatlantic Slave Triangle – from the UK to Ghana to Jamaica and back.
Frank’s having trouble looking after himself. He’s not getting out much, not since his wife passed away, so he’s gone into a retirement home. Deeply intimate portrait of love, loss and the joys of amateur gardening.
A Young Vic Taking Part Production. It’s small versus big. It’s pressures of the future. It’s everything being stacked against you and all options feeling equally terrible. One step away from disaster, there’s only one instruction: start swimming.
Award-winning Nilaja Sun (No Child...) breathes life into a vibrant mix of Lower East Side neighbours as they prepare for a hurricane racing towards NYC.
Two performers express the inner conflict within a modern woman’s head: push and pull, past and present, progress and regression. Interweaving acappella harmony, text and physicality, Mouthpiece is a harrowing, humorous and heart-wrenching journey into the female psyche.
New contemporary all-female circus from award-winning company. No Show joyously and heartbreakingly reveals what lies hidden beneath the showmanship. There will be desperate attempts and heroic failures. For anyone who has tried, failed and failed better.
A storytelling show about words and love and the word love. Set in the same universe as Team Viking.
A twelve-year-old girl sneaks across the border into her own country. Her parents watch her on a computer screen. The works of a half-forgotten performance artist seem to hold the key to bringing down a brutal system operating on our behalf and under our noses.
Moving, truthful and darkly comic, Box Clever by nabokov’s associate-playwright Monsay Whitney, with music performed by Avi Simmons, is a new play about one woman’s experience of a refuge and a mother’s commitment to do the best for her daughter.
An interdisciplinary work from Turtle Island that takes shape around peoples and the land. Indigenous artists of Canada invite reputed artists of othered communities to collaborate in artful protest and celebrate the right to do so.
Join Amy on a videogame adventure like no other in a quest for sparks of joy in the darkness. A powerful, moving and humorous show for anyone that has ever battled their own demons.
Is the world out of joint? Who is torturing whom? How does it feel to be poor? Why is the water calling out? Where are you now, Woyzeck? Brand new from award-winning Finnish playwright/director Jari Juutinen.
A dark new myth about England, the bad things that happen to us, and the stories we make up in response. Highly physical storytelling and animation from the writer of sell-out hit 64 Squares.
A reclusive children's writer becomes wildly successful. Her books are treasured across the country. But when a troubling narrative starts to unfold, we find ourselves asking: what matters more, the storyteller or the story?
There’s no easy way to do this... An entire relationship lovingly created and destroyed over five hours. Come and go as you please and revel in the desperation, negotiation, devastation and emotional blackmail.
Few could have anticipated the events of 2016 and where they'd lead. Mark and his audience gamble on their predictions for a hilarious, fantastical and sometimes accurate vision of the world.
Being a small-time drug dealer is tough. Especially when your old man owes £6,000 to a loan shark who’s got a tattoo of Beyoncé on his neck. Comedy from acclaimed writer Alan Harris (Paines Plough, National Theatre Wales).
A witty and touching new play about class, friendship and absence, set in the forgotten town of Skelmersdale by award-winning writer and comedian Jackie Hagan.
What happens to romance when there's a machine who cooks and cleans for you, never forgets your birthday or how you like your tea, tells you you're beautiful, holds you when you're crying, and still makes you come?
Following Doubting Thomas, Jeremy Weller (winner of six Fringe First awards) and Grassmarket Projects return with part two of the real-life trilogy with Thomas McCrudden: a former gangland enforcer struggling to change.
A funny, frank, and occasionally explicit insight into heterosexual female desire, read out loud by a male comedian. MANWATCHING is a show about what one woman thinks about when she thinks about sex with men.
Part performance lecture, part karaoke party, deconstructing gendered linguistic histories and ripping apart contemporary language to find a new articulation of pleasure, anger and femaleness. From Julia Croft (If There’s Not Dancing at the Revolution, I’m Not Coming).
One woman attempts to articulate her experience of pain. Physical pain with no apparent cause. Also, she’s met someone and they want to make this work. A new show from this Fringe First Award-winning team.
Inside the mind of a pianist, looking out. Solos and stories from Will Pickvance, creator of sell-out Anatomy of the Piano and Pianomorphosis.
A sparkling comedy about first dates, followed by supersonic speed-dating to find that soulmate/casual partner/festival pal or bunch of unforeseen encounters (delete where applicable). All genders and ages (18+) welcome!
They meet in Istanbul: she a Syrian refugee, he a privileged westerner. Identity and power, choice and its absence, beauty and brutality collide in this poetic response to the Syrian tragedy by Matthew Zajac.
Presented by Trans Creative and Contact. When there’s no rule book, you have to write your own… Through song, dance, humour and hard-won wisdom, Kate shares the ins, outs, ups and downs of transitioning, asking: have you changed?
Leah and Chris were raised on Harry Potter, New Labour and a belief they would be special. Gig theatre about when dreams don’t become reality, from the team behind the award-winning Weekend Rockstars.
A show with lipstick on its teeth and Wotsits on its face. A rousing ode to friendship, kindness and belonging, set against the backdrop of a massive night out. Coming soon to BBC television!
This is a show about work. Some people work to make money. Some people work to feel fulfilled. Some people don't work at all. Workshy is a powerful and honest portrayal of the relationship between class, labour and aspiration.
Oh look, 2016 Fringe First winners Sh!t Theatre again. What is it this time? Is it unemployment? Is there a crisis? Did the government do something wrong again? No, it’s a show about Dolly Parton. We f*cking love her.
Roddy Bottum (Faith No More, Imperial Teen) presents the world premiere of a tragic and dark love story based on the folklore of Sasquatch, the elusive man-beast who silently stalks the forest.
Stagger me sideways! It's King Ubu's party and you're all invited. Using video mapping, puppetry, object manipulation, live sound collage… etc, etc. Ludens Ensemble transform Alfred Jarry's anarchic comedy into an absurd carnival for our times.
Morale is High will predict what could happen between now and the next general election in 2020, exploring the effects of popular culture, political policy and inane day-to-day actions on who we choose to vote for.
Late-night in Upper Church. The first performance based on the poems of Swedish Nobel Prize in Literature-winning Tomas Tranströmer. A fast-paced, visual and highly physical theatre piece exploring loneliness, anxiety and desire. Devised in Estonia.