Here & Now showcase aims to 'push boundaries' at Edinburgh Festival Fringe

For all the stress, expense and commitment of bringing a show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, there are reasons performers keep coming back. They include the excitement of participating in the world’s biggest arts festival, the chance to meet fellow artists and the opportunity to see great shows around the clock.

There is also something else: given the right conditions, a run on the Fringe is an invaluable way to be seen by the right people. If you are spotted by a producer, it can sustain your career for the rest of the year.

Kate Craddock, artistic director of Here & Now, a showcase of productions from England, gives an example. Last year, the choreographer Patrick Ziza performed Dandyism in Edinburgh and has hardly paused for breath since. “Their journey has just been incredible,” she says. “They’re going to Brazil, Toronto, Norway, and they’ve been in New York. They were all direct invitations from the Here & Now delegates. It’s extraordinary for them. And that’s just one example.”

Khalid Abdall in Nowhere | Helen Murray

Such success is not a given. The intention of Here & Now, which returns to the Fringe this August, is “to challenge ideas about what performance created in England might look like”.

It is not, in other words, a sturdy collection of classical dramas. No rounded vowels and grand soliloquies here. Rather, it is a line-up of theatre, dance and art installation that aims to surprise as well as to entertain.

“All the works are finished and ready to go but also they’re experimenting with form in some way,” says Craddock. “They’re pushing at the boundaries of what you might otherwise see at the Fringe.”

As with similar Fringe programmes from countries including Scotland, Belgium and South Korea, Here & Now presents a line-up of half-a-dozen shows that would normally be impossible for international programmers to see in such a short period. This year, it has invited a 30-strong delegation of its own, in addition to the many other programmers who will be in town. “The level of exposure is unbeatable,” she says.

So much for the industry. Craddock is adamant that Here & Now would be nothing if it did not connect with audiences. Brought up in Glasgow and now living in north-east England, she has fashioned a programme she hopes will have local as well as international appeal.

“It’s really important to me to make connections with people who are in Edinburgh year round,” says Craddock, who also runs the Gateshead International Festival Of Theatre (GIFT).

Andy Smith's A Citizens' Assembly | Ross Finnie

Nowhere more is that the case than in Andy Smith’s A Citizens’ Assembly, a climate crisis show that turns the audience into actors. The aim is to transform us from helpless victims of global heating into activists trying to do something about it.

“You’re inviting the audience to be the work,” says Craddock. “It goes from a scripted, constructed conversation to something that is free. I programmed it last year in Newcastle and it resonated with everybody. In Edinburgh, it will be presented in St Columba’s by the Castle and we’re already inviting climate justice groups and community groups who engage with the church.”

The season also includes the welcome return of Last Rites by Glasgow performer Ramesh Meyyappan in collaboration with George Mann, director of Bristol’s Ad Infinitum. Seen briefly in Scotland last year, it is both an exquisite portrait of a funeral ritual, as a son lays an estranged father to rest, and an angry condemnation of a society that discriminates against users of sign language.

Last Rites by Ad Infinitum | Mihaela Bodlovic

Elsewhere, Sleight of Hand by Jo Bannon is a sensory touch tour aiming to make us experience the world anew; Nowhere by Khalid Abdalla is a multimedia reflection on the 2011 Egyptian revolution (Abdalla will be familiar to fans of Netflix series The Crown thanks to his role as Dodi Fayed); and IV by SERAFINE1369 is a dance piece exploring stillness. “Politics are prevalent this year, and there is a breadth of lived experience and the communities being represented,” says Craddock.

At the meeting point of the personal, the political and the joyful is The Legends Of Them by Sutara Gayle. Running at Zoo Southside, it is a one-woman spiritual awakening that reflects a life of extraordinary highs and lows.

Once best known as a reggae singer, under the name of Lorna Gee, Gayle reinvented herself as an actor at the age of 40 and now has a CV that stretches from The Dark Knight to Ghosts. Tragically, in 1985, her sister, Cherry Groce, was paralysed after being shot by the Metropolitan police, a mistake that sparked the Brixton riots. As if that were not enough, Gayle's show also takes in stories of prison, sexual assault and a spiritual renaming ceremony.

Sutara Gayle in Legends of Them | Harry Elletson

With a mother who was part of the Windrush generation and a sister with a pivotal place in London’s history, Gayle sees politics everywhere. “Even the joyfulness is politics, man!” she grins with the infectious happiness of a woman who has come to terms with her past.

Rather than opening old wounds, she has found the process of revisiting these traumas to be liberating. “It’s proven to be very healthy,” says Gayle, whose show emerged from a silent retreat. “All these stories were coming to me; things I hadn’t thought about for 40 years. It was the first time I had been silent in my life and, all of a sudden, these things started coming up. I realised it was stuff I had buried.”

She continues: “Because things were quite traumatic, I chose not to deal with them. This is sometimes what we do. I didn’t want to feel that pain again. But if you don’t deal with it, it’s going to be there.

“I held shame for so many years. It stopped me from doing what I really wanted to do. I’m 62 and the rest of my life I’m going to live happy. Anything I do, I’m going to do from a place of joy and love, not fear. I’ve held on to fear for too long. There came a point when I thought I’m going to bare myself naked. It has been really freeing, a weight off my shoulders. And watching the show sets you free.”

The Here & Now showcase will take place in various venues around Edinburgh from 18–24 August, as part of this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. For more information, visit https://www.hereandnowshowcase.uk/artist-showcase-2025 This feature was produced in association with Here & Now