ALL EVENTS | 07 August, 2014 Order by:Date / title
Duck, Death and the Tulip
Little Dog Barking Theatre
A duck strikes up an unlikely friendship with Death. Magic and puppetry allow us to deal with this difficult subject in a way that is elegant and thought provoking. A story for adults and children!
Our Teacher's a Troll
Paines Plough / Half Moon
Two terrible twins rule their school until the arrival of a headmaster with scaly skin and a spiky tail. An outrageously entertaining comic caper from Dennis Kelly, the writer of Matilda The Musical.
Nothing
Barrel Organ
Join us in an exploration of nothing; from stalkers to cupcakes, pooing to daydreaming, as we ask what constitutes nothing? And what constitutes something? Nothing was the winner of four awards at NSDF 2014.
Jolly Jungle
Summerhall Kids
Throughout the festival Summerhall's Yellow Room Children's space will host Jolly Jungle, a drop-in play space for parents and carers to explore with their child. A perfect way to escape the festival fever and take a breather between shows, Jolly Jungle is brimming with toys, soft play, art and crafts and a story corner too for tiny tots, toddlers and pre schoolers to enjoy.
I Do, Do I
Greg Sinclair
How would a group of children write a Fluxus inspired musical score? Leave your grown up sensibilities at the door and join this musical journey through the whims and wonders of childish imagination. ‘Delightful’ (The Scotsman).
Chalk About
Curious Seed
A playful, funny and sometimes moving look at how we see ourselves and others, featuring dance, chat and one perfect scene containing everything you could wish for... ‘Brave, honest and delightful’ (The Scotsman). ‘Utterly engaging’ (The Herald). Part of Made in Scotland showcase.
Landscape with Skiproads
Pieter De Buysser, Margarita Production, Richard Jordan Productions and Theatre Royal Plymouth
On stage, a collection of objects. They were there when we became who we are today. With these, a boy and his horse are on a search for a lost future. A joyful journey’s taking off.
The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland
Ridiculusmus / Jon Haynes, Patrizia Paolini, Richard Talbot, David Woods
A family drama simultaneously staging the first onset psychoses of a mother and son as they navigate stress and change with fantastical results. Performed to separate but adjoining auditoria, audible but unseen.
Every Brilliant Thing
Paines Plough / Pentabus Theatre Company
You’re six years old. Mum’s in hospital. Dad says she’s ‘done something stupid’. You begin listing everything that’s brilliant about the world. Everything worth living for. 1: Ice Cream. 2: Rollercoasters. 3: Me. Written by Duncan Macmillan.
Now Until The Hour
The Little Clarendon Group
Now Until the Hour is a lyrical dramatic monologue starring the superb Jacquie Crago. In the spirit of Krapp’s Last Tape, this is one powerful stand before the dying of the light.
Near Gone
Two Destination Language / Escalator East To Edinburgh
Two performers, hundreds of flowers and a heartfelt story of survival - with gypsy music. Award-winning. Audiences say 'a reminder that even in our darkest times there is hope', 'immensely powerful and life-enhancing', 'brilliant, original, energetic and beautiful'.
Kid Box
Feng Dance Theatre (Taiwan) / Performance Infinity
Kid explores the relationship between mother and kid through lighting, sounds effect, shadow and extraordinary movement. Box breaks the barrier of dream and reality, bringing the world into this magical box. Where dance transforms poetry into body language.
Leaving Home Party
Catherine Ireton/Farnham Maltings/Harlow Playhouse/Escalator East to Edinburgh
Catherine never left home. She took a one-way Ryanair flight to Gatwick in 2005. Now she's got a flat, a job, a Tesco clubcard. Tonight she's having a party, to mark all the moments of letting go.
Head in the Clouds: The Peregrinations of Marie Marvingt
Broken Spectacles
Come on an odyssey of the sky with the Fiancée of Danger. The true story of one woman's yearning for the limitless skies.
The Initiate
Paines Plough
A British couple are seized by Somali pirates. In East London, a Somali taxi driver decides to rescue them. A thrilling tale of altruism, greed and the search for how to belong by Alexandra Wood.
Factor 9
Dogstar Theatre Company
A ‘furiously skillful’ (Västerbottens-Kuriren, Sweden) performance about the greatest medical disaster in the history of the NHS, the infected blood products scandal. Starring Stewart Porter and Matthew Zajac, multimedia theatre from the creators of The Tailor of Inverness.
Domestic Labour: A Study in Love
30 Bird / Escalator East to Edinburgh
War, bicycles and the withdrawal method. A love story: man and woman, east/west, the mundane and the monumental, the dust behind the bed and the Iranian baby boom. ‘Rich inventive theatricality’ (WhatsOnStage.com)
Invisible Walls
Teatri ODA
An artistic journey based on real life situations of isolation - impossibility to freely move, threats of existence to being trapped because of bureaucracy, prejudice or fear leaving invisible walls, if not created for us, created by ourselves.
Shakespeare, His Wife and the Dog
Bated Breath
William has retired but all’s not well. In fact, Will’s losing it. Ann’s already lost it and what’s happened to the dog? A sleepless night in Stratford, the one hour traffic of our play.
ViewMaster
Ryan Van Winkle and Dan Gorman
A personal slideshow for your eyes and ears only. Poet Ryan Van Winkle and musician Dan Gorman lead you on a playful, sometimes surreal, journey to a distant land and bring you back in under 15 minutes. Part of the Made in Scotland showcase.
Elvis' Stardust
Teatro Delle Moire
Elvis lives! He has not left the building!
Elvis' Stardust is a short,melancholic rhapsody of small gestures, hidden glances and distant rhythms. Comical, poignant and ghost-like, amessianic star whose swift destruction left only stardust.
Malasombra
auMents Visual Dance Theater
An emotionally dark, richly visual fairytale for adults and heavy-metal kids. How would you feel if your shadow took over your soul and began exploring its own desires and urges? Beautiful shadow theatre from the internationally acclaimed company.
Where the World Is Going, That's Where We Are Going
Big in Belgium, Theater Aan Zee, Richard Jordan, Drum-Plymouth, Summerhall
Louise and Ans Van den Eede started off with Diderot’s novel, ending up writing a whimsical conversation between a man and a woman, 'who need to go somewhere else, urgently'.
Guinea Pigs on Trial
Sh!t Theatre / Escalator East to Edinburgh
Sh!t Theatre are trying to sell their bodies... to medical science. Delving into the murky ethics of Big Pharma, award-winning Sh!t Theatre ask: is guinea-pigging a good cure for an empty bank account?
The Man Who Almost Killed Himself
Hibrow Hour
Daniel tried to end his life many times. He failed in funny ways. Join us in Uganda as we re-live his journey. A comic true story featuring live music from Bafta nominated Ganda Boys.
The Future for Beginners
liveartshow
Bethan and Matthew share a dream: to end up together. They’ve taken chance out of growing old by planning their lives in great detail. But there's a problem: they’ve lost the plan for day one.
Tony and Mike - The Country Owl and the City Squirrel
Tom Frankland and Laura Mugridge
A new story, inspired by the Tale of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse from Fringe First Award winners Tom Frankland and Laura Mugridge.
KlangHaus
Neutrinos / Norwich Arts Centre / Escalator East To Edinburgh
KlangHaus is a 360° visceral, enveloping experience challenging conventions of the live gig.
Made in ILVA - The Contemporary Hermit
Instabili Vaganti
An international multi-award winning masterpiece of physical theatre, an innovative example of “contemporary bio-mechanics”, a perfect combination of physical actions, music, live voice and video, exploring the condition of alienation of ILVA steelworkers.
Theatre on a Long Thin Wire
Future Ruins
No actors. No technicians. Just you. And a phone that might ring. This is the theatre you don’t see. 'The level of risk-taking is staggering' Total Theatre on Exterminating Angel.
How does a Snake Shed its Skin?
Slip of Steel / Susanna Hislop
Margaret Thatcher is on a diet. Virginia Woolf is in a bucket. Marilyn Monroe is reading the dictionary. A show about making a one-woman show when you are not one woman.
Lands of Glass
Unfolding Theatre
Ever heard a glass orchestra? This wonderful theatrical adaptation brings Italian novelist Alessandro Baricco’s imagined world to UK audiences for the first time. Features live music on glass marimbas, chimes, even a Sauvignon- blancophone. ‘Thrillingly talented people’ (The Guardian).
Little on the inside
Clean Break
On a patch of green nowhere to be found here, two women provide a little comfort for one another. But how can they stay in a place that doesn't exist?
Klip
Livingstones Kabinet
Award-winning theatre from Denmark combining performance, dance and live music. A tightly choreographed and exquisitely orchestrated descent to chaos which has reduced audiences to both laughter and tears. Funny, provocative, disturbing and visually inventive with moments of great beauty.
Misa-Lisin
Langasan Theatre (Taiwan)/Performance Infinity
Misa-Lisin means ceremonies in all seasons. Imagine the blowing wind stirring the grain, the mud wrestling from our childhood memory, the healing received from the ocean... Misa-Lisin, a performance shaped by the power of humanity and motherland.
The Object Lesson
Aurora Nova presents Geoff Sobelle
With boxes stacked to the ceiling, actor-illusionist- inventor Geoff Sobelle unpacks our relationship to everyday objects - a hilarious, heartbreaking meditation on the stuff we cling to and the crap we leave behind. 'Entirely unique....thrilling’ (EdgePhiladelphia.com).
Hymn to Disappearance
Theater Santuoqi
The ancient Chinese game of passing the flower leads to the telling of nine surreal tales which each reflect a moment in which people get lost within their own lives.
The Flood
Badac Theatre Company / Escalator East to Edinburgh
Set in the unspeakable nightmare of WW1 battlefields, switching between the visceral horror of war and an increasingly passionate and ultimately tragic love affair. An intense portrayal of the emotional and psychological effects of wars past and present.
Maria Addolorata
C&C Company
Winner Jury Prize HiverÔclites 2014 Avignon, France. Suffering has no linear narrative: it hits us unexpectedly, unforeseeably, unstoppably. A two- person investigation on trying to survive this tidal moment, when pain becomes the driving force behind physical reactions.
A Journey Round My Skull
KILN (formerly Kindle Theatre)
A beautifully wrought tale of a passionate affair, operating on the ears as well as the heart. A playful dissection of the pathology of who we are. A sonic experience of neurosurgery. ‘Wildly imaginative’ (The Guardian).
Blood Orange
Electric Theatre Workshop
Theatre at high octane speed, based on real events. The SDL try to shut down the local mosque, ending in a full scale riot. Blood Orange examines the turbulent rise of the new far right in modern Scotland.
Sister
Amy and Rosana Cade in association with The Arches
Amy, a sex worker, and her sister Rosana, a shaven-headed lesbian, explore their differing sexual lives in this powerful performance examining feminism and choice. ‘Strange, beautiful, disturbing’ (The Scotsman). ‘Leaves you caught between laughter and tears’(The Herald). Part of Made in Scotland showcase.
Anatomy of the Piano
Will Pickvance
Part piano recital, part fantasy lecture, Will Pickvance returns with his sell-out Edinburgh Fringe 2013 show of virtuosity, dissection and surreal humour. 'Very funny, this man is the Will Pickvance of his generation' (Dylan Moran)
Standby for Tape Back-Up
Ross Sutherland with Show And Tell
Sutherland takes an inherited videotape and remixes it live onstage, transforming old television into a dialogue with his late grandfather. ‘One of the stand out shows of the Fringe’ (Stage). ‘Touching, funny, linguistically thrilling’ (Exeunt).
Return to the Voice
Song of the Goat commissioned by Eleven and Summerhall
Internationally acclaimed, multi award-winning Song of the Goat present a passionate theatrical performance inspired by ancient Gaelic and Scottish musical traditions: laments, psalms, songs of exile.
Lady GoGo Goch
KILN (formerly Kindle Theatre)
A playful and mesmeric exploration of music, voice and cultural identity. Part cabaret, this show examines the lineage of one woman, with live music creating trance-like atmospheres. 'Fox's humour and passion, and Rocha's virtuosity, are unmistakable' (The Guardian).
Northern Idyll: New poetry and fiction from Europe's northern islands
Trafika Europe
Europe's northern islands have a timeless, enchanting atmosphere shrouded in mystery, expressed in beautiful poetry and stories. How is this tradition continuing today? Please join us for this very special Trafika Europe launch event with visiting writers from several countries, co-hosted by Edinburgh's own Poet Laureate Ron Butlin!
Biding Time (Remix)
Tromolo Productions
Musician Louise Quinn and Grid Iron's Ben Harrison's immersive silent disco remix of singer- songwriter Thyme's journey through the fame- factory. '...a vital piece that's musically compelling throughout' (The Scotsman). Part of the Made In Scotland 2014
ECAM - 10th Anniversary
Cinemaattic Productions CIC
ECAM (School of Cinematography of Madrid) celebrates this year its 10th anniversary.
Follow Summerhall
Social Links
Enquiries: 0131 560 1581