All Sam has ever wanted to do is to make people happy, but is giving one last performance to his loyal audience really the best way to spend his final hours on earth?

A Play, A Pie & A Pint - The Last Cabaret on Earth

Traverse Theatre

Spotlighting Scottish saxophonist & flautist Paul Towndrow, Chicago based trumpeter Chad McCullough and Slovakian vibraphonist Miro Herak, Atlantic Road Trip is a truly international phenomenon bridging Europe and America, and exploring the evolution and fusion of traditional indigenous folk musics from Scotland, Ireland and Slovakia, and their historical coalescence through the medium of contemporary jazz and improvised music.

Atlantic Road Trip

The meeting of four of the country’s finest players (Bethany Reid, Lauren MacColl, Anna Massie and Gilliam Frame), the quartet use just their fiddles to weave a tapestry of melodies, textures, layers and sounds.

RANT

Espen Eriksen Trio is one of the most popular piano trios in Europe. With it’s highly melodic and lyrical instrumentals and “less is more” approach, the Norwegian trio is often credited for its unique voice within today’s jazz scene by the international press. To quote BBC in their review of the trio’s second album “A wonderfully plaintive jazz record, abandoned to the lost art of melodic minimalism, stripped back and beautifully near bare. No smoke and mirrors, just the graceful chemistry of superb musicians at the top of their game”.

Espen Eriksen Trio

Positive Stories for Negative Times is an international participatory project by Wonder Fools in association with the Traverse Theatre. Season 4 is all about opening up exciting cultural opportunities, boosting the self-confidence of participants and changing the way we think about theatre for young people.

Positive Stories for Negative Times 4 - Launch Event

We’re combining speedy talks by creative professionals with a chance to meet some of the most interesting creatives in Edinburgh and beyond. Show off your own work and get a chance to shape the future of immersive experiences at the Festival!

Immersive Creatives

This year, the Studio reaches its 20th year of support and advocacy for Scotland’s playwrights, SSP commemorates its 50th anniversary with a year of SSP@50 Fellowships and events, and the Traverse itself is 60!

Playwrights' Studio, Scotland & Scottish Society of Playwrights - Anniversary Event

Explored through the dynamic of a mother-daughter relationship, In Two Minds is deeply personal, inventive, funny and life-affirming. From writer Joanne Ryan (Lustrum Award winner) and director Sarah Jane Scaife (Beckett sa Chreig: Laethanta Sona) comes a tale of an adult child and parent sharing the same home. Pom Boyd (The Dry) and Karen McCartney (A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings) perform a delicate piece grappling with mental health, love and humanity. In Two Minds finds insight in the darkness, humour in the pain, and tenderness in difficult family dynamics.

In Two Minds

Cyrano is the most interesting person in any room – a wordsmith, a charmer. She works twice as hard and runs twice as fast as the pretty boys, because she’s deeply ashamed of something about herself. Enter Roxanne: brilliant and beautiful, with a penchant for poetry and a way with words, just like Cyrano. But Roxanne only has eyes for Yan: hot, manly Yan; who is dumbstruck around Roxanne. Probably shy, right? Until suddenly he starts saying the most amazing things. But it’s not Yan writing these perfect love scenes, it’s Cyrano...

Cyrano

Remembering the tastes and aromas of her mother’s kitchen with live cooking on stage, she recreates the dishes of her childhood and homeland, building a new life and community around food.

My English Persian Kitchen

Natalie Palamides (Nate, Netflix; Laid, Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer) presents an achingly tender 90s rom-drom (romantic dramedy) which asks you to look at every argument from two sides.

Natalie Palamides: WEER

Women have long been locked up, medicated, pathologized and silenced by a simple label - ‘crazy’.

Batshit

When Milo invites his two best friends Davie and Liane around for a takeaway to meet his new girlfriend, it promises to be a great night reconnecting. They delve into the past and swap the same old stories they’ve been through a thousand times before; the night becomes more about those absent than present. Remembering who they have lost and who they were, or thought they were.

So Young

She knows that the army often drops small warning bombs on residential buildings in Gaza, giving tenants 5-15 minutes to evacuate before a rocket demolishes their home. So, she decides to train for the possibility of this “Knock on the Roof”, frantically (and often comically) practicing how far she can run in five minutes, and what she can carry to safety.

A Knock on the Roof

A joyful, heart-warming tale of hope, resilience, and triumph - inspired by the true lives of extraordinary women. This uplifting story brings together the lives of five women who, against all odds, unite on the football pitch to chase an impossible dream: to win the Homeless World Cup.

Same Team

'Hello Number 4, this is Number 6. Please could you SHUT THE **** UP? Ta.' Not a promising beginning, but... they meet, they fall in love, they get married.

A History of Paper

An Ivy League creative writing professor is captivated by a brilliant, rebellious freshman student. Delicate, provocative, bursting with wit - so begins the story of two outsiders on the threshold of breaking an indelible taboo.

The Sound Inside

As with their Scandinavian jazz cousins, Modern Vikings play music with a strong emphasis on melody with the added grooves, urgency and colours of the American jazz tradition. Drummer/composer Stephen Henderson leads a stellar line-up featuring Fergus McCreadie (piano), Graeme Stephen(guitar), Konrad Wiszniewski (saxophone) and David Bowden(bass). The band's music reflects Henderson's many influences and experiences from the beginning of his musical upbringing to present, creating a fresh sound that is unique, bold and emotive.

Soundhouse: Modern Vikings

Daniel is reading his daughter ‘The Three Little Pigs’, but his life is anything but a fairytale. Little does he know, two “wolves” will soon be banging on his door to pay him an unexpected visit.

A Play, A Pie and A Pint - The Wolves at the Door

Lou is a 28-year-old primary school teacher who wants to show her audience the exact moments in her relationship, breaking down the progression of coercion as Lou journeys from freedom to being trapped.

Ruckus

Search Party is a unique interactive experience where the boundary between artist and audience blurs into a dynamic act of creation. Ellams uses a lifetime of writings, from poems to plays and essays, all meticulously indexed and stored within his electronic tablet. Choose a word, any word, and watch as he navigates his vast archive, uncovering gems of written art — whether polished masterpieces or intriguing works-in-progress.

Search Party

Raised in Chicago, Baiman made her way to Nashville at 18 with the dream of being a professional fiddler and has since released two solo records and an EP, alongside session work with Kacey Musgraves and Molly Tuttle amongst others.

Rachel Baiman

After the execution of the entire Romanov family, rumours began to circulate that Grand Duchess Anastasia somehow survived. Four years later, in a Berlin asylum, Anna Anderson convinces the doctor she is that girl.

A Play, A Pie and A Pint - Anna/Anastasia

When oil giants Shell announce plans to dump the defunct Brent Spar oil store in the ocean, a small group of activists have other ideas. Under the cover of night, they sail out to the North Sea and occupy the structure. As their campaign gains momentum, pressure mounts on those in power and political battles ensue at sea and on land.

To Save The Sea

Jess and Iona are searching... for the greatest show, the finest view, that illusive best chip. As they wrestle with their past and try to avoid the future, they struggle to find the words to confess what they’re really feeling about each other.

A Play, A Pie and A Pint - Lost Girls/At Bus Stops

The band features Michael Aadal (guitar), André Kassen (saxophone), Audun Ramo (bass) and Gunnar Sæter (drums). Together they create a very unique and energising collective sound, inspired by artists such as Brian Blade, Bill Frisell, Daniel Lanois, The War on Drugs and Bon Iver.

Aadal

Between slogans and party-political hard lines, the people in the middle go unnoticed. The people clearing your plates, serving your drinks, your colleagues, your friends.

A Play, A Pie and A Pint - Detained

Based on a true story, Enough of Him explores the life of Joseph Knight, an African man enslaved by plantation owner Sir John Wedderburn and brought to Scotland to serve in his Perthshire mansion.

Enough of Him

Arán & Im is a theatrical performance in which Manchán Magan bakes sourdough bread while offering insights into the wonders of the Irish language – exploring potent words of landscape, terms of intuition and insight, and the many phrases that bring to life the mysterious glory of our natural world.

Arán & Im

Born in Australia before moving to the UK at 12, The Magic Lantern has toured the UK, Europe and Australia alongside This Is The Kit, Sam Lee and Alabaster Deplume.

The Magic Lantern

Inspired by the real-life experiences of Kyle Falconer (The View) and partner Laura Wilde, this ground-breaking and bold piece of gig theatre follows two new parents grappling with the challenges of parenthood and the weight of postnatal depression. Through a powerful blend of music, tears, and laughter, the audience is taken on a heartfelt journey as they navigate their new life together.

No Love Songs

Nathaniel is a serious romantic who sees love as a fine art. He’s looking for the Mona Lisa to his da Vinci, and tonight is the night: his date with Destiny…’s Child.

Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz

In their live shows, they play a game of ‘musical cat and mouse’; improvising and responding to each other, weaving virtuosic performances that are unique and in-the-moment as only two musicians highly accomplished in their craft can produce.

Will Pound & Jenn Butterworth

A three-woman, one-woman show about Multiple Sclerosis, MS for short, not to be confused with M&S or S&M.

Bright Places

Amber is trapped – by her family’s rules, by their expectations, by her own fears. But on the running track she is completely free. As her body speeds up, the world slows down. And the tangled, mixed up lines in her head get s t r a i g h t e r . . .

Run, Rebel

Inspired by English and Appalachian folk blended with alternative pop music, Amy Hollinrake draws on women’s stories within folklore and mythology and fuses them with a contemporary sound placing her at the forefront of the new era of feminist neo-folk.

Amy Hollinrake

Hannah is an award-winning musician, dancer, songwriter and singer, a creative force renowned for her work with Lady Maisery, Seasick Steve, Maddy Prior and Songs of Separation with Eliza Carthy, Karine Polwart and others. Toby is a globetrotting French cellist whose post-classical, inventive, improvisational playing combines beautifully with Hannah to create a charismatic, playful chemistry. If you’re looking for warmth, honesty and musical excellence, look no further. This folk is full of soul. Their debut album “Sleeping Spirals” has just been released to considerable acclaim.

Hannah James and Toby Kuhn

She’s decided she needs to help people, and maybe write a best-selling novel in the process, but what she hadn’t expected was Anne – her elderly shift partner, and the evening’s resident ‘Brenda’…

The Brenda Line

The Tailor of Inverness has entranced over 40,000 people, playing in a huge variety of venues in 12 countries, from prestigious theatres in New York, Adelaide, Kyiv, Malmo and Berlin to tiny village halls. This is a rare chance to see this unforgettable and moving story of displacement and survival in war-torn Europe, a powerful allegory for all victims of war, more relevant than ever, particularly in light of the current war in Ukraine.

The Tailor of Inverness

For decades, he’s been a globetrotting performer, ethnomusicologist and educator, a recording artist with an expansive discography including seven solo albums, well over a dozen collaborations and two Grammy-nominations. He’s also the classic “musician’s musician” – a man who’s received high praise from diverse fans and collaborators from Linda Ronstadt, Mark Knopfler, Donal Lunny,Andy Irvine, Bill Frisell and Jerry Douglas, a true country gentleman by way of the Big Apple aptly dubbed “the Rembrandt of Appalachian fiddlers” ( Darol Anger).

Bruce Molsky

Ryan Young, a multi award winning fiddle player, is injecting fresh and innovative ideas into the realm of traditional Scottish music. He has gained international acclaim for his captivating fiddle interpretations.

Ryan Young

Featuring James’ captivating mix of storytelling, comedy and music (as well as Shakespeare’s Hamlet) this remarkable road trip follows his critically acclaimed run at 2023’s Edinburgh Festival, the sell-out show Learning to Fly and The Songs of Friendship Trilogy.

Piece of Work

In a two hour laugh out loud extravaganza, Felicity Ward talks about something that no one has ever done before - she had a baby.

Felicity Ward: I'm Exhausting!

After releasing their debut album in November this year, Watson is excited to present his new, freshly polished material.

Ali Watson Quartet

Bringing together one of Scotland’s finest Gaelic singer-songwriters with one of the country’s foremost folksingers and accompanists, Rachel Walker and Aaron Jones celebrate songs from both the traditional and contemporary repertoire with a focus on sensitive arrangements with beautiful vocal harmony.

Soundhouse: Rachel Walker & Aaron Jones

After being tipped as one of Youth Music's 'One's to Watch' for 2024, Megan has gone on to win awards in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as being crowned 'one of the finest singer-songwriters working in Britain today'.

Soundhouse: Megan Black

From Scotland to Italy to Lithuania, Fergus McCreadie (piano), Mindaugas Stumbras (guitar), Michelangelo Scanroglio (doublebass) and Mattia Galeotti(drums) have forged a special connection over many years of playing together. Generated initially from a friendship between Mindaugas and Michelangelo, they met in 2018 for the first time in Florence and have since made music many times in their respective countries.

Soundhouse: McCreadie/ Stumbras/ Scanroglio/ Galeotti

This is the very special album launch for DWL’s new album Diminuet which is the second to feature the instrumental polymaths.

Traverse Theatre

17 - 21 Sep, 2024

A Play, A Pie & A Pint - The Last Cabaret on Earth

Sep 23, 2024

Soundhouse: Modern Vikings

24 - 28 Sep, 2024

A Play, A Pie and A Pint - The Wolves at the Door

1 - 3 Oct, 2024

Ruckus

Oct 4, 2024

Search Party

17 - 21 Sep, 2024

A Play, A Pie & A Pint - The Last Cabaret on Earth

Sep 16, 2024

Atlantic Road Trip

Traverse Theatre