Festival season is here! With thousands of shows to choose from, the festival programmes can be overwhelming to navigate. As Scotland’s home for animated film, puppetry and visual theatre, we wanted to share a few ideas to get you started. Below is a small selection of shows that are on our radar this year; from dance and puppetry to clowning and animation, there’s something for everyone in this list. Have a great August!
A hypnotic reimagining of Bram Stoker’s immortal masterpiece from award-winning Plexus Polaire, the ‘exquisite’ (New York Times) creators of Moby Dick (Barbican).
Lucy Westenra is centred in this haunting reinvention of the heart-pounding gothic horror about obsession, control and the demon inside. Reality fractures as Lucy drifts between dream and nightmare, victim and liberator. Life-sized puppets and human performers collide with original music and cinematic video in an intoxicating descent into desire, fear and female emancipation. Dark, sensual and visually breathtaking, this wordless production blurs the line between beauty and horror, human and puppet, life and death.
Sophie Linsmaux and Aurelio Mergola immerse us in four modern fables, from an anniversary party to a hospital, a virtual reality experience to a family reunion.
Still Life’s non-verbal theatre with dark burlesque influences holds audiences captive in intense life experiences, playing between fantasy and hyperrealism to map human flesh from every angle. Told with humour and strangeness, stories of our relationships see flesh battered, bruised, alive and most importantly, embraced.
EIFF Animation Shorts Various
Various dates and times.
TICKETS
The EIFF 2026 Animation Shorts programme features an exceptional selection of nine short films, all UK Premieres.
Imaginative, unsettling, inspiring. This collection of global animation explores human connection in distinct, memorable ways, acting as a powerful reminder of how the medium can surprise and challenge in every genre. – Jake Cunningham
A cowboy is stuck in the desert. He’s got a price on his head: wanted – dead or alive. But right now, he needs water, shade from the sun and a chance to escape from those pesky snakes and vultures.
In this family-friendly one-man show, Olivier Rannou stars as a Spaghetti Western cowboy. Swaggering across the stage, he changes the set before your very eyes, creating a mesmerising performance. His horse transforms into the desert. Cacti become electricity pylons. A saloon becomes a bandit.
With French theatre company Bakélite’s commitment to the atrociously comic, get absorbed in this cowboy’s antics as he tries to escape the desert, strolling into saloons and facing gold diggers along the way.
Tell Me returns to Edinburgh after it’s Scottish Premiere as part of Manipulate Festival. Two timelines collide in this bold fusion of dance and circus, offering a fresh perspective on HIV. When Grace receives a diagnosis, she is transported back to the 80s alongside Michael, a gay man navigating a very different reality. Their journeys unfold through striking choreography, Chinese pole and aerial artistry.
Sadiq Ali Company, makers of five-star, award-winning The Chosen Haram, return to the Fringe with their new show Tell Me, part of the Made in Scotland showcase. ‘Stunning, soulful, a total triumph’ * (PinkPrinceTheatre.com). ‘Poignant tale of sex, revelry and glistening abs’ **** (Guardian). MadeInScotlandShowcase.com
Collaborator by Ockham’s Razor produced by Turtle Key Arts
6th Aug to 22nd Aug, Pleasance at EICC
Ockham’s Razor return with an intimate duet crafted and performed by Artistic Directors Alex and Charlotte. For 22 years they have been making circus together: lifting, catching and carrying; stepping on and around each other. They have been dropped and have picked each other up.
Featuring two performers, a suspended frame and a stage, Collaborator is an irreverent, highly physical and heartfelt dive into the negotiation involved in making something: a decision, a work of art, a life. Described as ‘warm, insightful and joyful’ by the Guardian, it celebrates creation, compromise and enduring partnership.
Hypnotic physical theatre and dazzling production design combine to tell the tale of a doomsday cult, and what happens when belief is shattered.
In a small town in the American Midwest, the disciples of a suburban housewife are convinced that the world is ending and that they alone know the truth that can save humanity. Discover the true story of the world’s first UFO doomsday cult, inspired by a groundbreaking 1950s study into the concept of cognitive dissonance.
Described as ‘near-perfect’ by The Scotsman, Groupwork blends movement, voiceover, music and stage and video design to present a woozy, melancholy tale of religious sects, clandestine observers and collective need.
Don’t Wait For Me… – France Showcase, Vera Rozanova
7th Aug to 23th August, French Institute in Scotland
In a world where houses grow legs, wings or sails, and travel at night, one morning a house disappears – leaving its child behind. A tender and poetic quest begins to rediscover what home truly means.
Through delicate glove puppetry and gently animated images, Don’t Wait for Me… unfolds as a dreamlike journey about loss, hope and belonging. Objects breathe, drawings come alive and the visible meets the invisible with quiet sincerity. Deeply human and emotionally resonant, the piece speaks across generations – a cross-cultural work designed to travel beyond borders.
Don Quixote (Is a Very Big Book) by Opposable Thumb Theatre and Nordland Visual Theatre
5th Aug to 31th Aug, Pleasance Dome
Following a sell-out run at Manipulate Festival, Don Quixote (Is a Very Big Book) is back in Edinburgh. Dik Downey’s mid-life crisis crashes headlong into Don Quixote’s crazed delusions. With a rogue’s gallery of puppets and desperate clowning, Quixote embarks on surreal, comic misadventures with sidekick Sancho Panza and decrepit horse, Rocinante. Dik fights to make this huge novel joyous to a contemporary audience. But as Quixote chases impossible dreams, Dik faces his own dwindling relevance and mortality.
A laugh-out-loud international co-production on the indignities of fighting the inevitable. ‘Show of the year… so funny that your face will hurt’ (Bristol247.com) ‘Slapstick comedy and touching vulnerability… outstanding’ (Scotsman).
Following a World Premiere as part of Manipulate Festival, The Raft of the Crab returns. When a crustacean gatecrashes your birthday party and drags you into an odyssey of the mind, recovery becomes anything but ordinary. This striking true story from Ninon Noiret explores her experience with cancer and her journey to recovery.
Told through “nasty” puppetry, contemporary dance and gravity-defying stunts on a five-metre Chinese Pole, The Raft of the Crab is a powerful exploration of the individual nature of physical illness and what it really takes to recover.
A traveller arrives at a border with a stack of battered cases. From within them, whole worlds will emerge… Trick of the Light (The Bookbinder) presents an eclectic box set of short stories. Dark, spiky and comic, it shifts from shadow play to storytelling, dancing disembodied hands to narratives crackling from a 1970s stereo suitcase.
‘A delight from start to end… all tied together with a slow burn reveal into a wickedly brilliant conclusion’ (NZ Herald). ‘Weaves a bright dark magic’ **** (Scotsman). ‘Innovative, dark, and delicious’ ***** (TheQR.co.uk).