How Summerhall Arts are supporting artists like never before this festival
The Autopsy Award, made possible by Allan Wilson, helps an artist making boundary-pushing performance work in Scotland undertake an Edinburgh Fringe run. Summerhall is proud to award this year's Autopsy Award to Glasgow-based performance maker Ruxy Cantir. She presents Pickled Republic, a surreal one-woman theatre cabaret set in a pickle jar, which uses exceptional clowning, puppetry, mask theatre, and movement to portray a plethora of characters, asking deep existential questions and offering ridiculous answers.
Bathed in a brine of confident absurdity, pitch-black humour, and pulpy carnage, Pickled Republic explores the tragi-comic journeys of vegetable characters including a pickled tomato and a potato-headed lounge singer. Part of the Made in Scotland Showcase, the show toured Scotland in 2023 before selling out at Manipulate Festival 2024, Pickled Republic ferments somewhere between Eugène Ionesco absurdism and the smoky mystery of David Lynch.
Pickled Republic's creator and performer Ruxy Cantir said "I'm delighted to welcome Fringe goers to the critically-acclaimed, award-winning Pickled Republic. I promise 50 minutes of vegetable insanity and real feather boas. Though it's important to say the show's not for anyone who is afraid of tomatoes."
This year's Meadows Award - created to support Artists of Colour bringing work to the Fringe - goes to Edinburgh Fringe debutants :DELIRIUM: and their groundbreaking new production, MILES..Fusing live jazz and :DELIRIUM:'s signature theatrical style, MILES. Transports audiences into the creative chaos behind the making of Kind of Blue - the best-selling jazz album of all time. The UK's foremost jazz trumpet player, Jay Phelps, will play alongside actor Benjamin Akintuyosi - making his professional debut - representing Miles, together leading the audience through the creation of a masterpiece.
Written and directed by :DELIRIUM: artistic director Oliver Kaderbhai and co-produced with Lauren Reed Productions, MILES. uses Davis' own autobiography as inspiration, exploring addiction, reinvention, and the cost of being black in pre-civil rights America. Making its world premiere at Summerhall this August, MILES. is a visceral journey into the soul of an artist who redefined modern music.
:DELIRIUM: artist director and MILES. writer and director Oliver Kaderbhai said: "As a mixed-race theatre maker of Anglo-Indian descent, I am curious about identity - what drives people to do the things they do. We're interested in humanity under pressure. Miles was a complex man and we're going to explore how he became considered the genius we know today - how did his race, his circumstances, his upbringing impact his choices and would he have had the same success if he was a contemporary musician today?'
For the first year, Summerhall Arts presents the Guimarães Rosa Institute Award, awarded to an artist from Brazil. The inaugural winner, Gaël Le Cornec, brings Amazons - a stirring one-woman exploration of Amazonian culture, colonialism and the fight for climate justice.
Transporting audiences into the heart of the tropical rainforest, the real stories of generations of Amazonians are uncovered in this compelling, dark and humorous solo performance which blends live film and projections with storytelling and a capella Amazonian song extracts. Amazons follows a Brazilian woman, Gayara, as she unearths the untold history of her Amazonian ancestors, from those who watched the first Europeans lay claim to their land to the women fighting to defend the forest today.
Amazons writer and performer Gaël Le Cornec said: ''Amazons' started as an investigation into my mixed identity and my mom and nana's heritage, then it branched out into the history of the Amazon, not the version I learned at school, but the one remembered by the women in my family and lived by my indigenous and black ancestors. After three Edinburgh Fringe shows looking at the stories of women and girls overlooked in history (Frida Kahlo: Viva La Vida!, Camille Claudel and The Other) I'm back almost a decade later, with my first semi-biographical show. Looking into myself (which is scary!) and the Amazonian women who lived before me.'
This year's Melbourne Touring Award goes to another Edinburgh Festival Fringe debutant: Hayley Edwards, who brings her multi-award winning solo show, Shitbag, to Summerhall this August. A darkly comedic one-person play about Crohn's Disease, mania, and queer sexual exploration, Shitbag was a smash-hit at the Melbourne Fringe last year, where it sold out an extended run and won multiple accolades.
Delightfully self-aware, Shitbag is a deeply funny autobiographical show exploring chronic illness, invisible disability, mental ill-health, queer sex, and self-advocacy. Acclaimed genderqueer theatremaker Hayley Edwards is passionate about raising awareness for Inflammatory Bowel Disease, its associated cancers, and other invisible lifelong conditions - particularly in young 'seemingly healthy' people - and can't wait to bring her much-praised work full of shit-puns and intimate details of sex to Edinburgh this August.
Shitbag creator and performer Hayley Edwards commented: 'Creating and performing Shitbag and watching its success back home has been an overwhelming and genuinely life-changing experience. I wrote this piece (my first ever play!) about one of the most turbulent periods of my life and I hope that it can continue to entertain, empower and educate audiences about chronic illness (specifically bowel diseases) and its mental health ramifications at this year's Fringe. It's queer, it's sexy, it's painful and ultimately very very real.'
Summerhall Arts' PANNZ Award - awarded to support New Zealand-based artists bringing work to Edinburgh - goes to another show making its UK premiere: relentless dance celebration of rave culture, The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave.
Created by award-winning queer, Māori choreographer and dancer Oli Mathiesen, and co-choreographed by Lucy Lynch and Sharvon Mortimer, The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave is a high-energy dance celebration that condolences the spirit of a three-day party into a relentless and seamless sixty minutes.
Creator, choreographer and performer Oli Mathiesen said: 'The Butterfly Who Flew Into the Rave is the come up and the come down all in one and highlights the beauty of feeling alive but all the consequences that come with it. I wanted to make something as an ode to the past 5-year marathon of losing societal morals and political structure. Our communal loss of work, time, love, sex, eating, fighting, cleaning, holidaying, sleeping, pashing, drinking, throwing up, everything, physicalised as an artifact of what we as a people have endured. And just like listening to a love song that sings to that one breakup you had, it's an acid house remix that screams f**k you to the pandemic."
Also part of Summerhall Arts' renewed commitment to artist support and development, Emma Howlett - recipient of Summerhall Arts' creative residency and artistic director of acclaimed theatre company TheatreGoose - returns with her third original play at Summerhall in three years. Aethēr is a brand new show about the unknown and humanity's insatiable desire to define it. Part-science lab on the cusp of discovery, part-Victorian séance, part-unauthorised Nobel Prize ceremony, Aethēr explores faith, physics, and magic in a rich theatrical spectacle.
Written by Emma Howlett in consultation with world-leading academics at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Stanford, Aethēr is a new work about the intersection of science and belief, and women who have been unrecognised for their scientific contributions.
Aethēr writer and director Emma Howlett says: 'This show is our most complex, expansive, and ambitious yet, and it has been one of my most thrilling experiences to research and write. Armed with my Particle Physics textbook, many Carlo Rovelli books, and a search history bursting at the seams, AETHER attempts to plumb humanity's most elusive scientific questions for their meaning in our lives, and to crack open the mysterious and wonderful world of Physics for even the most maths-averse.'
Summerhall Arts also presents its first ever co-production - 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 showexplores 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.
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 has organised a 25% ticket discount - checkout code: NEWWRITING - for working class audiences to attend the proudly working class work in this year's programme: Anthem for Dissatisfaction, Chat Sh*t, Get Hit, Colours Run, Get Off, and Scott Turnbull presents… Surreally Good.
Summerhall Arts Fringe Producer and Programmer, Tom Forster, commented: 'Since the inaugural Autopsy Award set up in 2012, it's remarkable to see how the diversity and number of our award strands has grown in the years since. While it does concern me that we as a venue must do so much by ourselves to address a vast array of imbalances across the Fringe landscape, to make it more accessible, I'm immensely proud of what these award strands have achieved over the years, and I hope they continue to grow. From forging new touring pathways with leading international festivals on the other side of the world; to working class theatre; to ensuring that unheard Scottish voices are platformed within the world's largest arts festival who wouldn't be able to otherwise: Summerhall Arts will always continue the work it set out within this building over a decade ago.'
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.'
The Summerhall Arts festival programme begins on Thursday 31st July with shows running daily until Monday 25th August. Tickets are available from www.summerhallarts.co.uk.
1 . Contributed
Inaugural winner of the Guimarães Rosa Institute Award, Gaël Le Cornec, brings 'Amazons' to Summerhall Photo: Submitted Photo Sales
2 . Contributed
Summerhall Arts PANNZ Award winning show: The Butterfly Who Flew Into A Rave Photo: Submitted Photo Sales
3 . Contributed
Melbourne Touring Award winner Hayley Edwards makes her Edinburgh debut with multi-award winning solo show 'Shitbag' Photo: Submitted Photo Sales
4 . Contributed
Autopsy Award winner Ruxy Cantir brings 'Pickled Republic' to Summerhall this August Photo: Submitted Photo Sales
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