Assembly Festival will welcome back international performance to Edinburgh with a hand-picked selection of curated seasons to be streamed on Assembly Showcatcher. 

There will be online comedy with We Missed You, a theatrical film about the impact of the pandemic, created in lockdown and told through the eyes of clown couple Harlequin and Pierott. And a hit of the Adelaide Fringe 2021, Grief Lightning: A Satire is part-theatre, part-stand-up, part-PowerPoint Presentation. One lecturer desperately tries to prove a popular 'Grease' fan theory: that Sandy drowns in the opening beach sequence and the rest of the film is her coma fantasy.  

The Quebec Season opens Friday 6 August with a mixture of circus, dance and physical theatre to delight audiences at home and abroad. Featured in the season is 2019’s 5-star circus sensation La Galerie from Machine de Cirque; with more circus from Festival favourites FLIP Fabrique with Blizzard and Six°, and 7fingers’ Out of Order which is performed throughout a deserted and post-apocalyptic circus big-top. Also on demand will be contemporary dance Bones and Wires and GROUND unplugged from FOVE diffusion, and an explosive and visceral performance of Rite, the perfect balance of body, voice, guitar, and percussion from La Otra Orilla. A new play and talk, The Tarantula, rounds off the season which will be available to view on demand through Assembly Showcatcher.   

There will also be digital children’s shows on Assembly Showcatcher. Award-winning clown Gemma Soldati explores the source of imagination and the tick-tock of our internal clock in The Adventures of Sleepyhead, an otherworldly hour that promises better dreams and a good night sleep to adults and children alike. And there’s Something in the Water – For Kids!, an immersive and funny coming out story that uses puppets, live video and projection to go beyond the binary; available for children, and additionally as an accessible adult comedy (Something in the Water).  

Interactive experience Once Upon a Crime will run as a live online event, Wed – Fri from 6 August. Something's going down at the Impossible Things Detective Agency and only YOU can help bust open the case. Gather a team of between 2-6 people, and be thrown into this noir fairytale underworld this summer.  

The first tickets for the digital season on Assembly Showcatcher will be released on Thursday 8 July, with more shows being added in the coming days and weeks. The Assembly digital season will run Friday 6 August to Monday 30 August, with all shows being available to stream live or on-demand via Assembly Showcatcher.   

Assembly George Square Gardens will open on Friday 23 July with the Edinburgh Food Festival, with a live programme of cultural events from Thursday 29 July to Sunday 29 August. Assembly Festival has been awarded £162,962 from the Scottish Government and City of Edinburgh Council to help fund outdoor events and support the safe return of live events at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.   

For tickets and to keep up to date with the full programme at Assembly Festival this summer, visit www.assemblyfestival.com.  

Pictured: La Galerie, Machine de Cirque (photo by Emmanuel Burriel)