News

The Made in Scotland showcase at the 75th anniversary edition of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe will see a feast of Scottish work presented to audiences from around the world and showcasing the tantalising wave of Scottish creative talent. The work, in a broad range of forms, engages with topics old and new as the world bounces back to its feet after the forward roll of the last two years.

The work from artists all over Scotland will take place across the capital in much-loved venues, exciting new spaces and online.

The Made in Scotland showcase features a kaleidoscope of shows across dance, theatre, music and multimedia interwoven with a myriad of themes, compelling storytelling and exceptional performance throughout. It will see eight world premieres in a programme showcasing the quality and profiling some of the best work coming from Scotland today.

The 27 artists, companies and ensembles who will present their work this year make up the largest ever Made in Scotland showcase since its inception in 2009. This year’s extended showcase celebrates the breadth of work from across Scotland at the 75th anniversary of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. 

The Made in Scotland showcase is made possible through funding from the Scottish Government’s Expo Fund and is a partnership between the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, Creative Scotland, Federation of Scottish Theatre and the Scottish Music Centre.

Culture Minister Neil Gray said: “We’re delighted to support this year’s Made in Scotland programme at the Edinburgh Fringe with £550,000 through our Festivals Expo Fund. As the biggest arts marketplace in the world and one of our greatest cultural exports, the Fringe is a wonderful showcase for the wealth of artistic talent we have in Scotland. After the difficulties of the last few years, it’s great to see such an exciting line-up of performances many of which will have the chance to tour to a wider audience at home and abroad. I would encourage people to support our home grown creative talent by going to see these world-class shows.”

Shona McCarthy, Chief Executive, Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, said: “It’s always such a joy to see the Made in Scotland programme launched, and I’m especially excited that such an incredible range of work from Scottish artists will feature in the Fringe’s programme during our 75th anniversary year. The Fringe is an amazing place for work to be seen, and as the world’s largest arts marketplace, it’s also an important platform for artists to make new connections, secure opportunities such as onward touring and to help sustain the lifespan of their shows. I’m looking forward to seeing these shows light up the Fringe’s stages this August, and to following the journey these artists will go on thanks to this fantastic programme.” 

Laura Mackenzie-Stuart, Head of Theatre, Creative Scotland, said: “This year’s Made in Scotland showcase will be particularly special as we welcome the full return of live theatre, dance and music to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August. Scotland’s artists rose to the challenge of presenting work digitally in 2021 and in doing so, made new and exciting connections around the world. While we anticipate that Edinburgh in August will once again be a phenomenal in-person gathering of producers, presenters and programmers from around the world, acknowledging the current climate emergency, we’ll also continue to use these digital skills as an important contributor to maintaining and extending links with the rest of the world in sustainable ways.”

Fiona Sturgeon Shea, CEO of Federation of Scottish Theatre, said: “We wholeheartedly welcome the return of live performance and the opportunity for theatre and dance in Scotland to once again present its work to audiences from all over the world. It’s wonderful to see the programme incorporating performances originally part of Made in Scotland 2020, and cancelled due to the pandemic, finally reach the stage in Edinburgh and, we hope, beyond. As the performing arts sector opens up to international touring, it needs the opportunity to develop and explore new partnerships in as sustainable a way as possible.”

Gill Maxwell, Executive Director, Scottish Music Centre, said: “In a long awaited and welcome return to live performance, Made in Scotland presents a series of shows highlighting the quality and diversity of Scotland’s composers, songwriters, musicians and artists.

"This year’s world-class music programme showcases new Scottish music from across all genres, from electro-acoustic multi-artist collaborations to solo instrumentalists, jazz fusion with Celtic / Indo influences to new traditional works inspired by Norse folk lore, via soundscapes reflecting urgent global themes.”

Theatre and dance

World Premiere
And
Charlotte McClean
Recommended age guideline: 14+
Venue: Dance Base
Dates: August 16 – 28
Category: Dance

And is a tribute to all that has graced this earth. To everything. Thank you.
And is a sacrifice to every emotion, even those we are yet to feel.
And is an homage to; the cosmos, the minuscule, the magic and every meaningless moment.
And is to observe, question, experience and fail. And is in between and something to believe in. And is hope.
And is the mothers and grandmothers who’ve danced before us, everyone we’ve ever known and the children we’re yet to meet. And is an auto-biographical performance about growing up and explores culture, identity, nationality and politics.

Antigone, Interrupted
Scottish Dance Theatre
Recommended age guideline: 12+
Venue: Dance Base
Dates: August 17 – 21, 24 – 28
Category: Dance

Antigone, Interrupted re-imagines a classic story for a contemporary world through the body and the voice of a single performer. Scottish Dance Theatre artistic director Joan Clevillé presents an intimate solo work created in collaboration with acclaimed performer Solène Weinachter.

Dreams of the Small Gods
Zinnia Oberski presented by Scissor Kick
Recommended age guideline: 18+
Venue: Summerhall
Dates: August 03 – 14, 16 – 21, 23 – 28
Category: Dance

Dreams of the Small Gods tells the story of the awakening of Wild Woman. Naked, unaware and unselfconscious, she explores her surroundings, more animal than human. Her growing consciousness attracts the attention of a creature from the spirit world, a primal deity who sparks her curiosity and compels her to transform. She changes her physicality, drawing power from the merging of animal, human and spirit self. Inspired by the timeless wisdom of faerie tales, mythology and ancient ritual, Dreams of the Small Gods is a blend of aerial circus, masked ritual and performance art.

World Premiere
Exodus
National Theatre of Scotland
Recommended age guideline: 16+
Venue: Traverse Theatre
Dates: August 06 – 07, 09 – 14, 16 – 21, 23 – 28
Category: Theatre

How far will a politician go?
Bold, satirical and uncomfortably funny, Exodus explores systematic deception and the indifference to human suffering. In her bid to become the country’s leader, Home Secretary Asiya Rao prepares to make a major policy announcement that will establish her as the front-runner of the political race. Alongside her cut-throat and calculating advisor Phoebe, she embarks on a publicity stunt starting with a photo shoot by the white cliffs of Dover. But rather than the tide washing her reputation clean, something else washes up… An omen or an opportunity? The women are determined to keep their eyes on the prize, no matter the cost, even if it’s a human one.

Fault Lines 
Two Destination Language 
Recommended age guideline: 14+
Venue: Zoo Southside
Dates: August 14 – 20
Category: Dance

A catwalk on the fracture between feminism and fabric. Five womxn take to the stage, garments flow and heart-throbbing energy fills the room. Bring your mobile and headphones (or borrow ours) to choose your sound journey for this visual and physical feast celebrating herstories, bodies and different identities.

Gayboys
Made in association with Tramway
Recommended age guideline: 16+
Venue: Summerhall
Dates: August 16 – 28
Category: Theatre

Two gay men are here to perform for your pleasure. They sigh, pout and flirt, caressing each other and objects from corporations that claim to adore them. Is this simply an intimate session for these boys and their fans, or is something more being consumed? Exhilarated and bewildered by what they are doing, the boys go through the motions, posing and selling themselves, trying to give you exactly what you want. But who’s it all really for? Both the celebration and exploitation of queerness take centre stage in this cheeky exploration of contemporary gay male identity.

Home is not the Place Resilience Part 1
Annie George
Supported by the Meadows Award, the National Theatre of Scotland, Queen Margaret University Edinburgh.
Recommended age guideline: 12+
Venue: Summerhall
Dates: August 03 – 13, 17 –27
Category: Theatre

A powerful production telling the remarkable story of the short life and lost work of Kerala writer PM John, shortly before India’s Independence from British rule in 1947, which unwinds a tale of Empire and migration across three generations of one family, in search of ‘who we are, what we are, what we believe’, and what home means. An intimate solo show about personal and political independence, painted on an epic canvas.

In The Interests Of Health And Safety Can Patrons Kindly Supervise Their Children At All Times
21 Common & Raw Material
Recommended age guideline: 12+
Venue: Assembly Rooms
Dates: August 15 – 21
Category: Theatre

In a room of questionable hygiene; in the dark of a fairy dell; in the tinkling omnipresence of ice cream and the alluring uncovered well... A place where children’s lives are unbounded by constant adult surveillance and all dominant generational power relations are destroyed. Do you dare to join us in our new world order?
Featuring very special dancers and very loud music, be prepared to come on in and raise Merry Hell. Are we living the dream or embodying the nightmare?

In the Weeds 
An Tobar and Mull Theatre
Recommended age guideline: 14+
Venue: Summerhall
Dates: August 03 – 14, 16 – 21, 23 – 28
Category: Theatre

Kazumi is hunting a sea monster. Arriving on a remote Hebridean island, he meets Coblaith, a local woman whose family have lived there for generations. But there’s something strange about Cob’s obsessive affection for the lochs and something even stranger about the way the other islanders treat her. Could it be that Coblaith is the mythical creature he has been searching for? Or are humans the real monsters after all?

Lots and Not Lots
Greg Sinclair and Scottish Theatre Producers in association with Lyra Young Artists
Originally produced by the National Theatre of Scotland as part of Futureproof Festival.
Recommended age guideline: 16+
Venue: Summerhall
Dates: August 16 – 21
Category: Theatre

A performance of thrilling extremes: lots of performers, lots of singing, lots of dancing. Choral singing blends with vocal weirdness, while formal patterns of movement transform into joyous line dancing. The stage continuously evolves in a spectrum of nothingness to fullness, darkness to colour, silence to music, as the exceptional young performers question the universe and their place within it. Created by award-winning performance artist and composer Greg Sinclair.

World Premiere
Ode to Joy (How Gordon got to go to the nasty pig party)
Stories Untold Productions. Written by James Ley.
Written on attachment to National Theatre of Scotland. Supported by Creative Scotland and Platform.
Recommended age guideline: 18+
Venue: Summerhall
Dates: August 03 – 14, 16 – 21, 23 – 28
Category: Theatre

Gordon is homonormative and fears he might be pathologically boring until he meets Cumpig and Manpussy at a sex party in Leith. When they tell him about Europe’s biggest gay sex party in Berlin, Gordon obviously wants to go, but can he really transform into a sex pig? A new LGBTQ play about love, friendship and Schokoladenkuchen written and directed by playwright James Ley (Wilf, Love Song to Lavender Menace), featuring a techno soundscape from DJ Simonotron (Hot Mess).

World Premiere
Pain and I
Creator and performer – Sarah Hopfinger. Music composition – Alicia Jane Turner
Recommended age guideline: 16+
Venue: Summerhall
Dates: August 3 – 5, 7, 9 – 10, 12 – 14, 16 –17, 19 – 21, 23 – 24, 26 – 28
Category: Theatre / Dance

Pain and I is a bold exploration into chronic pain experience, featuring playful choreography, experimental dance, intimate autobiographical text, and new classical music composition. This work unashamedly celebrates the rich complexities of living with pain and asks: what can pain teach us? You are invited to reflect on what it means to care for our bodies, ourselves, and each other in times of personal and collective pain. Diversely accessible – performance (live), audio experience (digital), visual publication (digital).

World Premiere
Sense of Centre
Jack Webb in association with Feral
Recommended age guideline: 12+
Venue: Dance Base
Dates: August 16 – 28
Category: Dance

Sense of Centre is a moving dance solo from award-winning choreographer Jack Webb. Dance, object manipulation and projection combine to explore our longing for home, need for connection and the body as a place of sanctuary from the modern world. A compelling meditation of our increasing sense of loneliness and isolation, and the basic human need for a centre of gravity. In a world that is fractured and breaking apart Sense of Centre is a powerful return to the simplicity of nature and the importance of belonging.

Strawboys
Rob Heaslip
Recommended age guideline: All Ages
Venue: Summerhall
Dates: August 17 – 21
Category: Dance

Rob Heaslip presents Strawboys, a vibrant and energetic pop-up performance, blurring the lines between traditional and contemporary dance and music. Featuring luminous straw dancers whirling to Balkan inspired beats, the work is a unique spin on the cultural tradition of Scotland and Ireland’s Strawboys, identified by their ornate straw costumes while out rambling streets, fields, towns and parks, parading their merriment to the joy of onlookers. Composers Zoe Katsilerou and Eilon Morris infuse lively Balkan vibes to match the colour popping costumes and woven masks of costume designer Alison Brown.

The Bush
Alice Mary Cooper
Recommended age guideline: 14+
Venue: Summerhall
Dates: August 16 – 28
Category: Theatre

Writer, actor and theatre-maker, Alice Mary Cooper, presents new show The Bush, following the success of her previous solo work Waves, described by The Observer as ‘a miniaturist gem’. In this one-woman performance, Alice recalls the inspiring true story of thirteen 1970s “housewives” who battled for 10 years to save bushland in their native Sydney – starting a nationwide movement of Green Bans, protecting land and the natural environment from destruction across Australia. A timely celebration of community environmental action that promises to entertain, encourage and empower

The Chosen Haram
Sadiq Ali
Recommended age guideline: 14+
Venue: Summerhall
Dates: August 03, 05 – 06, 09 – 13, 16 – 20, 23 – 27
Category: Theatre / Dance 

An award-winning queer Edinburgh-born artist. The Chosen Haram tells the story of two gay men and the barriers they must overcome. Expect a heady mix of love, drugs and Islam. This unique and complex take on circus, performed on two Chinese Poles, is emotionally candid with moments of humour and joy. There is no traditional dialogue here. It does not need it.

World Premiere
The Not So Ugly Duckling: A Play for Grownups
Supported by Magnetic North, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Luminate, Creative Scotland.
Recommended age guideline: 14+
Venue: Scottish Storytelling Centre
Dates: August 11, 13, 16 –17, 19, 21, 25, 27
Category: Theatre

We think we know this story. But when two older women retell a familiar tale, they find dark places and unanswered questions. Entering life’s gloriously chaotic duckpond, they celebrate the pains and joys of lives well-lived.

The Village and The Road
Tom Pow and The Galloway Agreement
Recommended age guideline: 12+
Venue: Scottish Storytelling Centre
Dates: August 17 – 21 & 23 – 29
Category: Theatre / Music

A personal and collective story about rural depopulation, told through storytelling, live music and theatre. Tom Pow draws on his travels for this emotive journey exploring the abandonment of the countryside, refugee crises and the ‘great thinning’ of the natural world, whilst The Galloway Agreement musicians draw on their wide experience of European musical traditions, enlarging the emotional landscape and driving the narrative.

This is Paradise
Traverse Theatre Company
Recommended age guideline: 16+
Venue: Traverse Theatre
Dates: July 30, August 04 – 07, 09 – 14, 16 – 21, 23 – 28
Category: Theatre 

10 April 1998, Belfast. The Good Friday Agreement is signed, promising peace to Northern Ireland. Across the city, Kate receives a call from a desperate young woman, compelling her to return to a relationship she left in another life, and embark upon a journey which risks the uneasy peace she has since made for herself. A powerful, intimate, dream-like monologue shimmering with the vibrancy of life, This is Paradise explores what happens when one woman is asked to rescue the man who promised to destroy her – and how we can begin again.

Twa Resilience Part II
Annie George and Flore Gardner 
Recommended age guideline: 12+
Venue: Summerhall
Dates: Aug 06, 08, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 24, 26, 28
Category: Theatre 

A twisted, memoiristic fairytale, blending theatrical storytelling with animated and live (onstage) drawing. A contemporary tale is interwoven with the gruesome Greek myth of Philomela, about women who have been silenced, but who find resistance through the creative act. Theatre and visual art combine to explore duality, identity, and other ways of saying things that cannot be said.

WhirlyGig
Daniel Padden co-produced by Catherine Wheels Theatre Company and Red Bridge Arts
Recommended age guideline: 6+
Venue: Dance Base
Dates: Aug 11 – 14, 16 – 21
Category: Dance

A madcap musical adventure for families. WhirlyGig is four brave musicians, 30 instruments, and countless musical puzzles to solve. Join us for an extraordinary theatrical experience where music will happen in ways you have never seen before. Musical maverick Daniel Padden comes together with award-winning Catherine Wheels and Red Bridge Arts to celebrate the thrills and spills of making music.

Music

Black Glass in Pieces
Michael Begg and the Black Glass Ensemble
Recommended age guideline: 6+
Venue: Queen’s Hall
Dates: Aug 16 – 17
Category: Music

Award-winning experimental composer Michael Begg’s groundbreaking Black Glass Ensemble reveals new music from the borderlands of classical and experimental music. Combining the cream of Scotland’s classical players with longstanding pioneers of the UK’s experimental underground, Black Glass present work – on and off the stage – that challenges the senses, confounds expectations and breaks open new sonic ground. Alongside dreamy strings and soulful brass expect earthquakes, polar ice melting and the lonely call of earth-monitoring satellites

D Ý R A
SHHE
Recommended age guideline: 12+
Venue: Summerhall
Dates: Aug 03, 05 – 07, 09 – 14, 16 – 21, 23 – 28
Category: Music 

How can we collectively manifest an experience of a landscape? A landscape that you can reach out and touch, feel remotely through sound and light, as if in semi-sleep?
Inspired by Dýrafjörður in the Westfjords of Iceland, SHHE presents D Ý R A; a sonic journey evoking landscapes and liminal states. Combining ambisonic and hydrophone recordings and presented in surround sound, D Ý R A is an intimate reimagining of the meditative Dýrafjörður landscape.

World Premiere
ESTHER SWIFT – SOUND EFFECTS
Esther Swift, Matthew Collings, Emma Lloyd, Patrick Kenny, Owen Williams
Commissioned by Celtic Connections New Voices.
Recommended age guideline: 8+
Dates: Aug 10, 17, 23
Category: Music 

Likened to Kate Bush, Anna Meredith and Bjork, Esther combines her love of folk, jazz, classical and all things in between in this brand new commission from Celtic Connections. Masterful instrumentalists Emma Lloyd (viola, violin), Patrick Kenny (trombone and alphorn), Esther Swift (harp and voice) and Owen Williams (multiple percussion and drums) share the stage with electronic musician Matthew Collings to explore intimate and epic soundscapes through rich harmonies, flowering textures, improvisations and pre-sampled soundscapes. Featuring settings of poems by Rachel McCrum, William Butler Yeats and Glasgow’s own Edwin Morgan.

World Premiere
Intercontinental
Brian Molley Quartet with special guest Krishna Kishor
Recommended age guideline: 16+
Venue: The Jazz Bar
Dates: Aug 19, 20
Category: Music 

Glasgow’s Brian Molley Quartet collaborate with world-renowned Indian percussionist Krishna Kishor in a highly original, innovative and exhilarating musical fusion. Performing a thrilling, genre- bending mix of jazz and world music which blends influences from Scottish and Indian folk traditions, expect everything from uptempo straight-ahead jazz to spiritual ragas, from energetic world-music beats to soulful ballads. A unique and groundbreaking collaboration, delivered with Celtic-Indo flair by a long-standing, multi-award winning, internationally acclaimed group and a world-class, guest percussionist.

World Premiere
Lost and Found: a Cellist's Journey
Justyna Jablonska
Recommended age guideline: Open to all ages
Venue: theSpace@Niddry St
Dates: Aug 22 – 27
Category: Music 

In her most intimate work, cellist Justyna Jablonska explores how identities are made, unmade and remade in music. Audiences accompany her on a personal and musical journey from Poland to Scotland. Evoking the physical space of a train station’s “lost and found”, she blends the raw melancholy of Roma and Jewish folk with electronica and the otherworldly tonal textures of the Communist-era’s “Warsaw Autumn”. This compelling new show combines virtuoso work on the cello with video and spoken word to create ethereal soundscapes where composed and improvised unite.

Sagas and Seascapes
Nordic Viola
Commissioned for Orkney International Science Festival 2021.
Supported by Creative Scotland, PRS Foundation’s Women Make Music and by The Ambache Charitable Trust - raising the profile of music by women.
Recommended age guideline: 14+
Venue: Scottish Storytelling Centre
Dates: Aug 15 – 18
Category: Music 

Norse stories form the inspiration for this performance by Nordic Viola. Award-winning Irish composer Linda Buckley’s Aud draws on the Icelandic Sagas. Lillie Harris’ Elsewhen seeks to capture the strangeness, wonder, and melancholy of Orkney’s ancient sites, whilst in Carry His Relics, Orkney composer Gemma McGregor describes a journey along the St Magnus Way. Faroese composer Eli Tausen á Lava draws on legends of the Selkies common across the North. The music is accompanied on screen by stunning video curated by Craig Sinclair and abstract art in response to the music by Orla Stevens.

Sagas and Seascapes (Online)
Nordic Viola

The Relentless Approaches of Better Times
Emma Smith
Recommended age guideline: 18+
Venue: Zoo Southside
Dates: Aug 14 – 20
Category: Music 

Relentless Approach of Better Times is Emma Smith’s testimony to the importance of galvanised positive action in response to forced mass migration, climate change, and political corruption. An urgent and compelling solo double bass performance with electronics, it features film and recordings from Smith’s work for Musicians Without Borders in Palestine and El Salvador. Emma gives space to reflect on the effects of trauma and invites you to experience how music is fundamental to our survival.

For full dates, times, and prices and more information on all of this year’s Made in Scotland showcase visit: madeinscotlandshowcase.com.

Thumbnail photo: WhirlyGig. Photographer: Colin Hattersley.