A chair, table, and bar of lights become the imagined settings for invasive body searches at Charles de Gaulle, ayahuasca experiments in the Amazon, KFC-smuggling in Palestine, and run-ins with Ace of Base on Croatian ferries in this engrossing look at the perplexing ins and outs of our fragile right of passage.

Metal claws into wood, with scraping sounds that are surprisingly whispering and soft, and through this slow destruction a startling disquisition emerges about female experience and the impossible balancing acts we are expected to maintain, by society, by other women, and by ourselves.

Witty, poetic and subversive, join the benshi for his commentary on Shadows and the lives of its fictional cast.

Part recital, part rehabilitation.

Genre-defying piano virtuoso and wit, Will Pickvance (creator of Anatomy of the Piano) has spent years grappling with his addiction to meandering piano solos and capricious musical mutations. Here he celebrates this very struggle, taking inspiration from Haydn's Creation through to Radiohead, with Fats Waller, Keith Jarrett and many others along the way.

Will asks Father Christmas for a spaceship - he gets a piano! This is a breathtaking adventure into the world of pianos, revealing where they come from, how they evolved and why they make a pretty cool Christmas present. Featuring Bach's cave piano, Beethoven's bad moods and a jam with 'Fats' Waller.

Internationally acclaimed performance from Herald Angel Award winner Spitfire Company influenced by the works of Václav Havel, especially by his play Audience and its legendary film adaptation. What happens when a brewer and a persecuted politician, alter ego of Václav Havel himself, meet on stage? Two actresses, a case of Czech beer, huge original masks and absurd humour.

Atomkraft is a performance with live music. Through a kind of joyfully awkward humour and audience participation it explores the itchy, antagonistic, dependent relationships between art, culture and the global systems of capital and power, as represented by the nuclear industry and large-scale urban development projects.

This bold new work written by Sue MacLaine is both duet and duel as two languages, one signed and one spoken, which are stretched to capacity and the trust between narrator and interpreter tested.

A baby chick is born and thinks the sky is falling down. On the way to tell the King, she meets Henny Penny, Ducky Lucky and Turkey Lurkey, but there's a shocking surprise! Chicken Licken grows up to be the Little Red Hen and asks her friends to help her make bread, but no one wants to play!

19th August 1978. Cinema Rex fire, Iran. Four-hundred and twenty-two dead. The year of Superman and an act of terror that sparked a revolution. Who will remember the dead? Shahrzad, a cat, bargains with Death for one more life.

Confirmation is a show about the gulfs we cannot talk across, and about the way we choose to see only the evidence that proves we are right. Working with research into the phenomenon of confirmation bias, Confirmation attempts to have an honourable dialogue, real and imagined, with political extremism.

Five women stand on a cliff-edge overlooking their village; a village which is soon to disappear. “Sometimes we need to do things like this; we need to step away from our daily lives, and look at them from a distance.”

Edinburgh’s finest purveyors of weirdo cabaret and decadent performance parties get a Summerhall Fringe residency. The queerest pick & mix of the Fringe! Live performance PERFORMANCE, MUSIC, SPOKEN WORD, COMEDY, LIVE ART and the occasional VOGUE BALL.

A curious tail of a talking pig. With music by the Tiger Lillies’ Martyn Jacques, it’s a magical entertainment cunningly fusing BSL, puppets, circus and storytelling. A feast for grown-ups and children alike.

J runs so fast she bursts in to a million tiny pieces, her atoms unknitting themselves and spreading across the universe. Blair stands on a broken pier with a glass of white wine in one hand and a pint of Guinness in the other, looking up at the stars.

Struggle, survival, sex, live music and a foot stomping, bath blasting, bone shaking hoedown. A wild tale about hope, and daring to have it, in the land of the downtrodden.

An investigation into what happens when we discover that our parents are flawed human beings. Intimate and funny, this play presents a lifetime of conversations, condensed into one hour.

A new virus has broken out. Everyone in the world starts weeping. Why aren’t you affected?
A show about the spread of disease, of panic, and of ideas, from the award-winning maker of The Price of Everything.

Creating an epic new ballad of the adventures of ordinary people over 22 frantic Fringe nights.

You’re the kind of person who never backs down from a fight. You were the kind of kid who licked the iron. The stories become who you are. This show is a conversation about whether that is useful.

Inspired by real heartbreak stories now and then; some given, some found, some stolen. An act of public self-help, melodrama and poetic meanderings around our perpetual preoccupation with this pumping organ.

Islands – an obscene, ink-black comedy about tax havens and greed from Olivier nominee Caroline Horton (Chrissy, Mess, Penelope Retold). Join her foul ensemble in Haven, a monstrous world, where no-one has to pay… for anything.

The prison van, fences high, a magpie. 'One for sorrow. Snatched the babies. The mother fought, but it was too big and flew too high.’ Devised by women from HMPYOI Low Newton and originally toured to male prisons.

Winner of six major awards including the Scotsman Fringe First and Stage Best Actress. Following sell-out seasons around the world, the critically-acclaimed sensation La Merda returns for its final Edinburgh performances.

Duncan Macmillan’s award-winning smash hit play returns to Edinburgh in Paines Plough’s pop-up theatre Roundabout. ‘The most beautiful, shattering play of the year’ ★★★★ (Sunday Express).

Mark asks the question: If the ramblers of the 1930's were here now what would they do to open up cities? How do we turn the skyscrapers and corporate squares into our playgrounds?

With absurd movie plots, dazzling vocal loops, and a sassy demeanour, watch Mitch span and conquer the genres with his pitches. Performance artist Eric Sigmundsson presents his Edinburgh debut with this hilarious and gritty loop-pedal driven show.

When Gaby disappeared from her Scottish home, it was assumed her Pakistani father had kidnapped her. Headlines were only momentarily silenced when it emerged that Gaby may have chosen to flee. '...absolutely gripping’ (The Scotsman).

Last year's sell-out Total Theatre Award winner returns for just five performances.

Not just some flabby confessional monologue, but a real tour de force. A woman runs and keeps on running, like her life depended on it whilst trying to summarise everything from her smallest toe to her biggest fantasies.

Lost Dog's restaging of the creation of everything. A show for anyone who has created anything (child, garden, paper aeroplane) and then watched it spiral out of control.

‘The strength of the piece, lies in its humility: it doesn’t pretend to be definitive. It’s an attempt to look at Bacon from the inside, out’ - Syke on Stage

Gerling recounts the stories of people he met while walking over 3,500 km through Germany, creating photographic flip books. These magical studies inspire gentle, profound reflection upon our lives. 'Gerling’s flipbooks are... a poetic sensation' - Augsburger Zeitung

Eat your pill, put your flowery dress on, build a house and imagine, for just one instant, that gravity can disappear... Using manic physicality and hallucinogenic images, Project HaHa sees RemoteControl gripped in a danse-macabre with joy.

Ringside by Ellie Dubois: a one on one circus performance made just for you. A thrilling, death-defying solo trapeze act. A powerful female body up-close, personal, sweaty, stripped of sequins. Winner of 2015 Summerhall Autopsy Award for experimental performance.

Seven of Scotland's best spoken word artists: Rachel Amey, Bram E Gieben, Harry Giles, Jenny Lindsay, Ali Maloney, Rachel McCrum and Sam Small – present original solo shows. A different show every night.

Developed on the streets of Newport, Smash it Up explores the destruction of art, culture and public space. Inspired by the demolition of a piece of public art, Smash it Up asks what else is being destroyed?

Come and see where our handcrafted, small batch gin is made. You’ll learn about how we make our gin from start to finish, sample the finished product and end the tour with a perfectly poured Pickering’s & Tonic at our beautifully restored 1950’s Airstream cocktail bar.

How do we touch without touching? Without leaving your seat, join us in an empathetic, exhilarating, imagined touch. Fragile, funny and interactive.

Miraculous true story of four friends and their inspirational conversations with otherworldly beings during a time of great peril. A tour de force performance where audience meets actor for a life-changing spiritual infusion.

Puppetry, magic and science combine in this sculpture-performance for young audiences and families.
Mysterious visions of objects, luminescent liquids and magnetic animals emerge gradually to reveal their mechanics.

A wildly unreserved gig that reinvents Clytemnestra’s revenge myth, casting her Furies of vengeance as front women of a rock band. 'They use their voices and bodies as weapons' - Lyn Gardner, Guardian. British Council Edinburgh Showcase 2015.

Tommy leaves his town on the hill to see the sea. A journey through music history giving the floor to society’s outsiders. A coming of age performance told in songs and live drawings.

Join 2Magpies in the Summerhall café as they piece together the day Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in an aromatic blend of possibility, actuality, fact, and fiction. They will even provide the tea.

Jenny is a mischievous little girl who loves playing with her Dad. But he has to put on his business suit, pick up his briefcase and go to work. When Jenny grabs hold of his overcoat to stop him leaving, a thread unravels and becomes the start of a magical world of adventure and discovery.

Imagine a place better than where you are. Every day they try again, try to figure out how to live together, start to build something. The Paradise Project is full of wit, intelligence and humanity.

Sarah Cameron’s virtuosic solo performance is a feast for lovers of words. This fabulous tale of a man who turns into a chair is told in delicious Scottish dialect and served with tasty nibbles

This Wellcome Trust-supported ensemble performance explores, through song and body, landscapes where mental health and religious experience collide. With insight from psychiatry and anthropology, this show plunges soul-first into the human experience of demon possession.

The Voice Thief – a five-star promenade adventure about the mysterious Institute for the Encouragement of Vocal Harmony. For everyone aged nine and over. ‘Everything a piece of theatre should be’ ★★★★★ Guardian

Theatre Uncut present six of their most globally successful short plays in one sitting, followed by their signature post-show debates. Highly charged political theatre from writers Clara Brennan, Vivienne Franzmann, Kieran Hurley, Dennis Kelly, Neil LaBute and Stef Smith.

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream re-imagined as a modern-day musical cabaret turned bacchanal. Former principal performer with Poland's legendary Gardzienice Theatre brings you an engaging, funny, sensual and participatory night out with an amplified twist.

To Sleep To Dream tells the story of the last dreamers in a society where dreaming is illegal. Blindfolded and seated in a 3D array of 23 speakers, lose yourself in a vivid soundscape storyworld with locations, characters and live narration that unfold around your ears and imagination.

Tomorrow’s Parties is a compelling performance that imagines a multitude of hypothetical futures– a playful, poignant and at times delirious reflection on futures both possible and impossible.

Ventoux is the story of Lance Armstrong, Marco Pantani and doping in professional cycling; set on the most fearsome mountain in France, Mont Ventoux. Join 2Magpies as they restage the race that cast their careers in opposing directions.

Luke Wright’s theatre debut is a guitar-scored story of friendship, class and a really bad idea for a festival, all told in beautifully deft verse. ‘Some of the most incisive writing you’ll see’ (ExeuntMagazine.com)

A cross between a theatrical performance and a live gig. Mixing spoken word, music and dance, this new performance is an exploration into some well-known dogmas surrounding privacy and gender and how we can bring them to task.