The Edinburgh Fringe has always thrived on experimentation, but every so often something arrives that genuinely shifts the boundaries of what performance can be. This year, that distinction belongs to the Summerhall Sauna Theatre: a fully functioning, 82 person sauna transformed into an intimate performance venue. It’s an idea that sounds eccentric until you step inside and open your mind.
When I took the press tour the structures around the sauna were still being polished around the edges. Finishing touches were underway on the lockers and rest area, but the core is already fully operational: a sound booth with a window overlooking the sauna, cold showers for cooling down, two plunge pools capable of holding ice, and both unisex and individual changing rooms. Audiences are asked to wear swimsuits, and you’ll need two towels—one for sitting in the sauna, one for drying off afterwards. If you don’t have any you can hire and swimming suits are also available for sale. Water stations sit just outside the entrance, a reminder that this is theatre with a physiological dimension.
Aufguss: The Ancient Ritual at the Heart of It
Central to the experience is Aufguss, a practice with roots stretching back roughly two thousand years across Eastern and Northern Europe. Historically, saunas were communal and spiritual spaces—used for births, healing rituals, and preparing the dead. Over time, Aufguss evolved from a practical method of circulating heat into a stylised ritual led by a Saunameister. Today, it’s a choreographed art form: towels snapping and sweeping through the air, aromatic steam rising in waves, music underscoring the movement.
It’s part wellness, part ceremony, part performance. And in the Summerhall sauna, it becomes something else again—an expressive tool for storytelling.
During the press tour, performers demonstrated the technique with a kind of dance that sits somewhere between gesture and ritual. Towels became extensions of the body, which will be used to waft scent and heat around the room. It’s hypnotic to watch, and will be even more striking when you’re inside the sauna feeling the temperature shift with each movement.
A Taste of What’s On
One of the highlights of the preview was a performance by Nick Cazenbaum, known for Bubble Schmeises. His work—funny, sharp, rooted in Jewish identity—landed beautifully in the sauna’s intimate atmosphere. Accompanied by musicians, he delivered a story alongside a wonderfully off‑beat rendition of Consider Yourself, reimagined with a jazzy, klezmer‑inflected twist. It was warm, witty, and perfectly suited to the space.
But the programme goes further than comedy.
Alfgas x the Waves
Among the flagship productions is Alfgas x The Waves, a bewitching reimagining of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. Woolf’s novel is already fluid and sensory, and here it’s refracted through dance, heat, scent, sound, and light. The result is an immersive experience that feels less like watching a performance and more like being gently folded into one.
The sauna becomes a kind of emotional chamber. Heat rises and falls with the performers’ movements; scents drift in at key moments; light shifts in soft pulses. The effect is tender, atmospheric, and unexpectedly romantic—like falling in love on a summer afternoon, except you’re sitting in a sauna with strangers, wrapped in steam.
A Theatre That Travels
Perhaps one of the most exciting aspect is that the entire structure is mobile. Once the Fringe ends, the sauna theatre can be taken apart and transported to communities that may never have encountered anything like this. It’s an inclusive idea: performance that doesn’t wait for audiences to come to it, but instead goes to them.
It may take time for people to adjust to the idea of theatre in a sauna. But once they do, it’s easy to imagine this becoming a new kind of cultural space—one where storytelling is felt as much as seen. I love it!
Find out more and buy tickets here
Report from Pat Harrington
