Traverse Listings

Upcoming shows at Edinburgh’s New Writing Theatre

Traverse
10 Cambridge Street, EH1 2ED. Phone booking: 0131 228 1404
Website: www.traverse.co.uk.

The Traverse. Pic: Mihaela Bodlovic

The Traverse is Scotland’s leading new writing theatre. It has two performance spaces: Traverse 1 can accommodate 214-270 people depending on its configuration; the studio space, Traverse 2, seats up to 123 people.

Access: there is level access to the Box Office area and lift access to the Bar and theatre spaces downstairs. Full access guide here.

April 2025

Ivor (PPP)
By Jennifer Adam.
Tue 15 – Sat 19 April 2025
Lunchtime: 1pm (Trav 2).
What do you buy the kid who has everything for their 21st birthday Sarah’s got this one covered. She’s bought her daughter, Scarlet, something so momentous, so magnificent, so mountainous… All Scarlet needs to do is accept it. A surreal and darkly comic drama about sustainability and survival, that asks how far you are willing to go for the things you love the most. Book here.

Looking for Me Friend: The Music of Victoria Wood
By Paulus.
Wed 23/Thurs 24 Apr 2025
Evening: 7.30pm (Trav 2).
Featuring the star of BBC1’s All Together Now, Paulus The Cabaret Geek with Michael Roulston (Fascinating Aïda) on piano, this is an evening of pure joy filled with Victoria’s best-loved songs, including the iconic Ballad of Barry & Freda (Let’s Do It). Book here.

A Little Inquest Into What We Are All Doing Here (ThisEgg)
By Josie Dale-Jones, Abbi Greenland and Rachel Lemon.
Thurs 24/Fri 25 Apr 2025
Evening: 7.30pm (Trav 1).
In 2022 a show was cancelled while it was still in rehearsal. The idea of what the show might be created a demand for it to be left unseen. This piece of theatre – part autobiography, part fiction – questions the limits of performance: what we make it for, what we go to it for and what we are willing to stand up for. Book here.

Stupid Sexy Poem Show
By RJ Hunter.
Sat 26 April 2025
One show: 8pm (Trav 2).
This is a poetry show… But not as you know them. RJ Hunter takes you on a stupid, sexy, poetic journey through their life as a trans queer word-jester. Discussing transness, masculinity, femininity, relationships to others and herself and the beauty of the utterly stupid and pointless. Book here.

May 2025

Failure Project (Yolanda Mercy Company)
By Yolanda Mercy and Joseph Barnes Phillips.
Thurs 15/Fri 16 May 2025
Evening: 8pm (Trav 1).
Meet Ade – a writer who seems to have it all. But just when life seems perfect, things start to unravel. A raw, funny, and heartfelt exploration of what it truly means to “fail” – and how we rebuild from it. Ade’s journey is filled with humour, vulnerability, and unexpected twists that will strike a chord with anyone who’s ever hit a setback and found their way through. Book here.

You Don’t Have to be Mad to Work Here (Live Nation & Calm)
By Benji Waterhouse.
Sat 17 May 2025
Evening: 8pm (Trav 2).
NHS psychiatrist, award-winning comedian, and Sunday Times best-selling author Benji Waterhouse is going on his first book tour. Through a mixture of stand-up and chapter readings he unlocks the doors to the psych ward and answers life’s big questions. Book here.

Blinded by the Light (Sylvian Productions with the Barony Theatre)
By Sylvia Dow.
Tue 20 – Wed 21 May 2025
Evenings: 8pm (Trav 2).
Two parallel and intersecting stories, one set in 1982, based on a real incident in Bo’ness, West Lothian when twelve miners had a sit-in 2000 feet under the River Forth protesting against the mine closure. The other set in a future time in the same mine, where the descendants of survivors of extreme climate change have been living their lives. Book here.

Quines Cast Special (Stellar Quines)
Hosted by Hannah Lavery and Caitlin Skinner.
Fri 23 May 2025
Evening: 7.30pm (Traverse Bar).
Art? What is it good for? Join the Quines for this one-off Quines Cast Live special as we come together to explore the role of art to the feminist movement and the role of the feminist movement in art! A night not to miss, with a riot of feminist voices bringing down the house. Book here.

June 2025

Every Brilliant Thing (Second Half & Paines Plough)
By Duncan MacMillan with Jonny Donahoe.
Wed 4 – Sat 7 June 2025
Evenings: 8pm (Trav 2).
Ten years on from its first performances, the smash hit show by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe returns. You’re seven years old. Mum’s in hospital. Dad says she’s ‘done something stupid’. She finds it hard to be happy. So you make a list of everything that’s brilliant about the world. Everything worth living for. Book here.

Lear (Raw Material and NTS)
By Ramesh Meyyappan.
Thurs 5 – Sat 7 June 2025
Evenings: 7.30pm. Sat mat: 2.30pm (Trav 1).
Man. Father. Fool. In this dark and claustrophobic world, Lear is the all-powerful patriarch, but he is also his own fool. Being a fool is one thing. Having power and being a fool is quite another. What happens when the power we hold is taken away? Book here.

An evening with V.E. Schwab (Portobello Bookshop)
Mon 30 Jun 2025
Evening: 7.30pm (Trav 1).
Celebrate the launch of Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, from the No. 1 Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. A new, genre-defying, unforgettable novel to sink your teeth into! Book here.

October 2025

Black Hole Sign (Tron & Traverse in association with NTS)
By Uma Nada Rajah.
Wed 8 – Sat 18 Oct 2025
Tue – Sat: 7.30pm; Mats Sats & Thurs 16: 2.30pm (Trav 1).
When a hole appears in the roof of a crumbling and understaffed A&E department, patients, porters and nurses do what they must to make it through the night. Directed by Traverse AD Gareth Nicholls. Book here.