All Rise for a little bit of politics
Political edge to EIF 2026 theatre programme
Under the festival theme of All Rise, the Edinburgh International Festival’s theatre programme challenges the myths and stories that the ruling class in the United States of America would like to tell for the country’s 250th anniversary of independence.
This is a festival which is big on staged performance, with 11 theatre productions, four pieces of dance and two fully staged operas – carrying out festival director Nicola Benedetti’s promise not to forget the theatre strands in her festivals.
Roy Luxord at the launch of the EIF 2026 programme. Pic: Thom Dibdin
Indeed, the theatre section is as strong as it ever has been, as the violinist is able to delegate the responsibility of programming it to creative director Roy Luxford.
The festival theme of All Rise is taken from Wynton Marsalis’s 12 movement jazz symphony which forms the opening concert at the Usher Hall (Sat 8 Aug) and is the festival’s first-ever jazz ensemble residency, from Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
Marsalis takes his inspiration from the 12-bar blues, but it is the theatre section that, as Benedetti describes it, “attempts to re-mythologize through art a truer, possibly messier American story”.
This is theatre which is unafraid to look at the lynching of Black Americans or reflect on the AIDS crisis and opera which looks at the Opioid crisis.
gut-wrenching
Flea Theatre’ s Hang Time, revived for the festival, shows three men who have been lynched and are hanging from a tree in some liminal space. Zora Howard’s directorial debut is a gut-wrenching, subversive perspective on the legacy of racialised violence in America.
There is more direct reflection on the current carnage at the helm of the USA in the return of Geoff Sobelle with Clown Show where the acrobats and jugglers have left the clowns to set up a “beautiful big top” in the wreckage of America.
Geoff Sobelle, The Clown Show. Pic: Maria Baranova
Scottish Opera are staging the EIF’s big commission, The Galloping Cure, is an allegory for the global opioid crisis, by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek.
The festival marks the reopening of the refurbished King’s Theatre, with the UK premiere of Internationaal Theater Amsterdam’s production Angels In America, directed by Ivo Van Hove, which will be staging both parts of Tony Kushner’s play in one, nearly five hour performance.
Scottish input to the festival is significant, with 700 of the 2,000 performers from Scotland.
Most are in the big choirs and orchestras, but a handful are performing When Prophecy Fails, a piece by Scottish company Groupwork which premiered at the Imaginate festival in 2025.
deftly put together
“That’s a brilliant example of where the International Festival can really augment a piece of work created in Scotland,” Luxford told Æ. “We saw it at Imaginate in May. Taking that rather bizarre starting point of the doomsday cult and turning it into a piece of more physical theatre.
“It is just a very deftly put together piece of work. A really unusual way to think about some of the American narratives we were thinking about for this festival. It is a great thing that the festival can offer a wider audience and another platform to that particular ensemble.”
It’s not all about the USA. Palestinian company Khashabi Theatre are performing the UK premiere of Al-Sirah, Al-Hilaliyyah, a 14th century poem; and Rwanda’s Woman Cultural Centre are staging Ingoma!, about women taking on the traditionally male role of drummers after the genocide.
Tickets for this year’s Edinburgh International Festival go on sale on Thursday 26 March.
See our dedicated EIF Listing for all the theatre, dance and opera: here.
EIF website www.eif.co.uk/whats-on
ENDS
