Summerhall Arts’ inaugural Edinburgh Festival Fringe Programme provokes, innovates and celebrates with a packed programme
Summerhall Arts today launches its inaugural festival programme, and the 14th to take place in the now iconic Summerhall building, running from 1 – 25 August. Summerhall Arts’ 2025 programme is packed full of provocative, innovative and powerful theatre, dance and visual art, from both international and homegrown Scottish artists.
With work from Singapore, Brazil, New Zealand, Mallorca and more, just over 50% of Summerhall Arts’ 2025 programme is international. Summerhall continues to host diverse, intersectional work – with a 50% female-led programme; 20% of shows led by artists of colour, and 25% featuring an LGBTQ+ narrative.
Summerhall Arts’ programme reflects an eclectic body of work spanning theatre, performance art, cabaret, dance and comedy, encompassing themes from queer joy and gender exploration; intergenerational healing; working class identity; and female rage. Music of all types is celebrated throughout the programme, from a celebration of nightlife and club culture, to grunge music icons, Scottish folk, classical strings and the worst-best band in the world. Summerhall is also proud to welcome back international programmes including the return of Big in Belgium, Culture Ireland Showcase, Here & Now, Luxembourg Selection, Quebec Showcase, Made in Scotland, Singapore Spotlight and Sao Paulo Showcase. Recognisable names from theatre, comedy, poetry, and music include performance activists PUSSY RIOT, anarchic theatre company IN BED WITH MY BROTHER, cabaret icon and drag artist Jonny Woo, producer-turned-playwright Ellie Keel, late-night absurdist clowning from cult Fringe favourite Mr. Chonkers, and many more. Welcome!
Summerhall Arts Fringe Producer and Programmer, Tom Forster, commented: “As promised back in January, our 2025 Fringe performance programme continues to be exactly what we know and love. It’s the same beating heart – consisting of colleagues old and new – but underneath brand-new skin, an approach that denotes quality not quantity. By handing over the keys to the Demonstration Room and Old Lab for singular, breathtaking immersive experiences, we’re giving companies a better share of the industry marketplace and our audience’s limited time.”
Summerhall Arts Chief Executive, Sam Gough, commented: “The quality of work in this year’s programme is sublime, and we are so excited to be welcoming back old friends and can’t wait to make new ones. The Summerhall building will continue to be a home for incredible talent on and off stages and will provide a safe environment to those wanting to experience a true fringe festival. I can’t wait to see what collaborations and friendships are formed. There is truly no better place to be in the world than here in August.”
Summerhall continues to support exceptional artists with the Autopsy Award, made possible by Allan Wilson, which helps an artist making boundary-pushing performance work in Scotland undertake an Edinburgh Fringe run. Summerhall is proud to announce this year’s Autopsy Award winner, performance maker Ruxy Cantir. She presents Pickled Republic – an existential dip into the pickle jar bathed in a brine of confident absurdity, asking: what do you do when there’s nothing (left) to do? This year’s Meadows Awards – created to support Artists of Colour – is given to Miles. Created by first time Edinburgh Fringers DELIRIUM, it explores the life of pioneering jazz figure Miles Davis. The Melbourne Touring Award goes to Hayley Edwards, making their Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut with Shitbag, an unapologetically queer, darkly comic, solo show about Crohn’s Disease, mania and casual sex. For the first year, Summerhall Arts also presents the Guimarães Rosa Institute Award, awarded to an artist from Brazil. The inaugural winner, Gaël Le Cornec will bring Amazons to the festival, a stirring one-person exploration of Amazonian culture, colonialism and the fight for climate justice.
Summerhall Arts is proud to present its first ever co-production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – SKYE: A Thriller, the playwriting debut from acclaimed producer and Sunday Times Bestselling author Ellie Keel, directed by Matthew Iliffe. Set on the Scottish island, the show explores ghostly apparitions and family dynamics after loss, through a group of four siblings who see their father standing on a beach, five years after his death.
Ellie commented: “I’m very excited to be making my first foray into playwriting this year. I’ve spent many happy(ish) summers producing brilliant new plays in Edinburgh, and I’m thrilled that SKYE: A Thriller will have its première at the greatest arts festival in the world, alongside two wonderful plays I’m co-producing. It’s a bonus that SKYE will be a co-production with Summerhall, a venue I’ve always loved, as it enters a very exciting new chapter.”
Recipient of Summerhall Arts’ creative residency Emma Howlett of TheatreGoose returns with her third original play at Summerhall in three years, Aethēr, exploring humanity’s long history of attempting to understand the unknown. A paid opportunity to develop a show for August within the performance space, this residency underlines Summerhall Arts’ year round commitment to supporting and developing artists.
Emma said: “Summerhall Arts is already making a tangible impact on the ecosystem of new work, offering emerging and established artists exactly what they need most: space, time, and seed funding, with no strings attached. As the recipients of the first of these Summerhall Arts residencies, the TheatreGoose team and I have spent the last few days developing our third consecutive show for Summerhall’s Fringe programme in the very theatre it will debut this August; a rare and invaluable opportunity to productively experiment with new and ambitious ideas outside of the Fringe season. This residency has also deepened our longstanding relationship with the Summerhall Arts team and building, and we are thrilled to have the charity’s generous support as our company expands and our repertoire continues to grow in ambition and scale.”
BAFTA Rising Star Award Winner David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus; Rye Lane) makes his playwriting debut with PALDEM, an anti-romantic comedy that crosses the amateur porn industry, interracial dating, fetishisms and hook ups in the digital age. Centre of the Universe is for the TikTok universe – a search for meaning through a self help seeking, narcissistic world, written and performed by Gaia Mondadori (The Witcher, Everything I Know About Love).
Returning artists include the already announced Russian protest art collective PUSSY RIOT, with an updated version for 2025 of their touring play Riot Days; artist and comedian Sam Kissajukian returns with 300 Paintings, a cult hit of the 2024 festival; and The Ceremony welcomes audiences back through its doors, and it’s still not a cult. Songs of the Goat Theatre bring their first fringe show in over a decade, Hamlet – Wakefulness a prequel reimagining Shakespeare’s work in polyphonic song. While the Roundabout is off road, Paines Plough, Ed Edwards and Mark Thomas join forces once more for Ordinary Decent Criminal – where Thomas plays recovering addict Frankie as he enters a new, liberal prison experiment. Solo artist Hannah Maxwell brings BABYFLEAREINDEERBAG, a guide to making a successful Edinburgh Fringe sequel, after your last public overshare; and withintheatre return after last year’s hit adaptation of 1984 with a bold new adaptation Julia. After 1984, reimagining the dystopian classic through a feminist lens.
Immersive, site-specific and interactive work will span Summerhall’s sprawling footprint. Theatrical pioneers DARKFIELD return with their trademark shipping container, inviting audiences to experience EULOGY. For the first time, DARKFIELD will also take residency in Summerhall’s Old Lab – presenting three DARKFIELD RADIO shows simultaneously – DOUBLE, VISITORS and ETERNAL. Each its own world, small audiences will immerse themselves into darkness, aware that others in the space are experiencing something completely different. Twice daily in the Dissection Room, A Teen Odyssey from Mallorcan company LA MECÀNICA sees audiences use their smartphones to guide them through an immersive physical theatre landscape led by a teenage cast using local Edinburgh performers, where your phone becomes a beacon of light, sound and text. K Mak at the Planetarium will transform the Demonstration Room into a planetarium space with full dome video projection and surround sound, accompanied by electrifying live orchestral soundscapes; comedian and Chef Cory Cavin invites you to Enjoy Your Meal at the final service of his closing restaurant; Creative Electric’s BURST welcomes audiences onto the Summerhall decking to visit the Bubble Doctors for one week only; and free, site-specific dance performance Peregrinus from Teatr KTO will take over the Summerhall courtyard, gathering audiences for a an outdoor anti-capitalist potato head party.
Returning to the fringe for the first time since 2018, anarchic performance artists IN BED WITH MY BROTHER explode into Summerhall with Philosophy of the World, a grunge-filled show inspired by The Shaggs, three sisters whose father forced them to form a rock band, releasing one album only – Philosophy of the World – universally panned until Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain named them his favourite band. Sticking to the grunge theme, radical performer Emma Frankland presents No Apologies, a raucous theatrical cabaret exploration into what society could have looked like if Kurt Cobain was a trans woman, directed by Harry Clayton-Wright. Northern Irish theatre company Skelpielimmer return with Anthem for Dissatisfaction using music from Britpop and beyond as a shared language to explore the pervasive stigma facing the working classes from the 2000s until today.
A celebration of club life weaves its way through the programme: part of the Culture Ireland programme Anatomy of a Night by Dublin dance artist Nick Nikolaou takes audiences on a mesmerising journey through one night out, a euphoric celebration of Queer club culture; from New Zealand, The Butterfly Who Flew Into a Rave by Oli Mathiesen is an endurance dance piece set to a booming techno soundtrack from Suburban Knight; and Australia’s PUMP will bring audiences into an immersive night club experience in a celebration of coming of age on the dancefloor.
Comedy and classical music intersect, from the award-winning Chopin’s Nocturne by Aidan Jones, blending comedy, storytelling and stunning classical piano, to Delusions and Grandeur, an existential crisis set to Suite Number One in G Major by JS Bach, from LA-based cellist Karen Hall, who appeared on four seasons of Glee. Will Pickvance will perform two nights of his trademark immersive piano in the Dissection Room. Sold out in 2023 + 2024 at The Space, Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me but Banjos Saved My Life by Keith Alessi is a true story about the healing power of music and the arts and overcoming cancer. Since 2018 Alessi has donated 100% of ticket sales to cancer and theatre charities, and this run’s proceeds will be donated to Summerhall Arts.
Scottish stories come to the fore in Cryptic’s Waxen Figures – part of the Made in Scotland Showcase – combining projection and sound to tell tales of Scottish Folklore Edinburgh theatre company 4PLAY make their fringe debut with Colours Run – a gritty comedy about Edinburgh football culture and the working class. Multimedia artist Mamoru Iriguchi brings back 2014’s PAINKILLERS, delving into physical and emotional pain through magic tricks and romantic memories and award-winning Palestinian choreographer Farah Saleh who is based in Edinburgh presents Balfour Reparations, a participatory dance performance lecture set in an imagined future 20 years on from the UK Government having promised reparations to the Palestinian people in 2025.
Continuing the dance and movement strand, Because You Never Asked from the team behind 2023’s Papillon, We All Fall Down, sets movement over text to tell the intergenerational story of a holocaust survivor and her grandson; award-winning choreographer Lea Tirabasso makes her Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut with In The Bushes, finding six dancers in a surrealist world devoid of stigma and shame. Herald Angel winner Tom Bailey returns with Wild Thing!, a gloriously silly and inventive embodiment of 48,000 extinct and endangered species.
Summerhall Arts also showcases the best of live comedy at the venue. S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger return to Summerhall with SLUGS, a comedy-music-clown-puppet nightmare for all the doomscrollers out there, following their late night cult hit Creepy Boys in 2023. Tees Valley Artist of the Year and award-winning actor, writer and theatre-maker Scott Turnbull presents Surreally Good, a riotous hour of gleeful oddity from the King of Teesside Surrealism. Expect lo-fi animation, catchy songs and unexpectedly tender stories told like you’re at the pub with Vic and Bob and The Mighty Boosh. Finally, curators of comedy excellence Impatient Productions present a selection of their best and brightest artists as part of Summerhall Arts’ debut Fringe offering. Both cult successes in their own rights, John Norris’ Mr. Chonkers is an absurdist clowning sensation in the form of a jobbing actor’s showreel whilst Derek Mitchell: Goblin, follows teenage emo-kid Eliot on a tragicomic journey of self-discovery. Rich Hardisty also returns for his second Fringe with POP, a rollicking real-life adventure about finding his biological father in a thrilling, funny story about family, trauma and redemption.
Summerhall Arts are proud to celebrate Queerness, Queer power and joy and it reverberates throughout this year’s programme. Iconic performance and drag artist Jonny Woo charts his life from a childhood in Kent to queer performance, clubbing and community in Suburbia, paralleled with a life that could have been as a cross-dresser living in the suburbs. New Queer-led producing company Second Adolescence presents Baby in the Mirror, asking the questions queer couples must explore before becoming parents, also starring Goblin’s Derek Mitchell. DELUSIONAL: I Killed a Man, by internationally acclaimed circus artist Diana Salles uses exceptional aerial skill, striking fashion and original music to explore Diana’s experiences as a trans woman, celebrating her strength and power.
Female rage shouts loud from within Summerhall. Chat Sh*t Get Hit dives into how women’s anger is fueled and suppressed, from writer and performer Martha Pailing, with dramaturgy from Annie Siddons and directed by multi-fringe first winner Ursula Martinez; Clean Slate holds up a mirror to male domestic incompetence; Big in Belgium’s Fatal Flower is a musical comedy ode to hysterical women performed by Valentina Tóth, a former classical music wunderkind turned actress, singer, theatre maker and songwriter; and from Singapore, Jo Tan’s King finds a new confidence to speak the truth through a male alter ego.
Bringing politics to the Dissection Room stage, Herald Unspun will see lively interviews and debates with party leaders including John Swinney and Anas Sarwar; top pollsters and award-winning journalists, exploring Scotland’s future and the world beyond.
Summerhall Arts’ year-round commitment to artist support, development and wellbeing will be paramount at this year’s festival. Previous Summerhall Festival Fringe initiatives will continue including; Summerhall Surgeries – a paid opportunity for artists to showcase their unfinished work to industry experts and peers; the Support the Artists Ticket Scheme which allows audiences to add a £2 levy onto their ticket purchase going directly to artists; an opt-in option for a 100% box office ticket split in favour of the artists; subsidised Lanyard Drinks for Edinburgh Festival Fringe performers and staff; and free shows for Scotland-based creatives and arts workers.
Summerhall Arts Chief Executive, Sam Gough, said: “SHA’ drive to support emerging artists and new writing will be at the forefront of this year’s festival, with many initiatives designed to support our fragile sector. Since the incredibly successful Summerhall Surgeries launched in 2023, 70 artists have taken advantage of this paid opportunity to showcase their ideas and of the 22 companies who have taken part, 17 have seen onward national and international touring, commissions or Fringe and festival runs.
2025 will also see new initiatives aiming to support the physical and mental health of our artists and staff. SHA will be providing free morning yoga and mindfulness sessions for staff and artists, as well as access to life coaching and mentorship.
The Summerhall Arts team remain dedicated to providing a safe space chock full of experimental and brilliant work. We can’t wait to see you here in August.”Tickets on sale from Wednesday 7th May, 11:30am via summerhallarts.co.uk