The Canadians are coming, and they’re bringing a whole lot of entertainment with them. Canada House, the High Commission of Canada in the UK, is highlighting more than 50 acts coming to Edinburgh for festival season this August, with shows at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF), Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) and the Edinburgh Fringe.

From drama to theatre, engaging interviews to acrobatic circus acts, the spread put on by Canada House is quite a feast. We’ll be covering more Canadian shows over the coming weeks, but for now here are four acts that have got us excited.

Sarah Polley: What I Run Towards Will Strengthen Me

After decades as an actor and director, 2023’s Oscar nominated feature Women Talking has turned Sarah Polley into a household name. As she rides the wave of success and prepares work on her next film project, the live-action adaptation of Disney’s Bambi, she’ll visit EIF via remote video link to discuss her essay collection Run Towards Danger. According to a press release, the book ‘captures a piece of Polley’s life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a “reciprocal pressure dance.”’ She’ll attend the book festival on Sunday 27 August to discuss the book, her career and broader ideas about how to live.

Sarah Polley will talk via remote video link at Spark Theatre on Sunday 27 August.

Laura Ramoso: FRANCES

Channelling the best of sketch and improv comedy into a whip-smart 50 minutes, comedian Laura Ramoso’s debut hour FRANCES comes highly anticipated after making her name on social media. Featuring her most popular characters Italian Dad, German Mom and the Three Girls Who Just Got Back From Europe, this will be a test to find out if the current wave of social media stars can translate their short clips into a full hour. If anyone can, it’s Ramoso.
Laura Ramoso: FRANCES will be performed at the Pleasance until Sunday 27 August.

Habitat

Uruguayan-Canadian dancer Bettina Szabo will perform a mesmerising dance alongside a light-infused kinetic sculpture inspired by themes inspired by ideas of home, identity and the life cycle of hermit crabs. Szabo has choreographed the show herself to help her work within the limits of her hyper-mobility and scoliosis. With an aquatic-themed soundtrack from composers Ana Dall'Ara Majek and Joel Lavoie, this will be a performance quite unlike anything else you’ll see in Edinburgh this August. 

Habitat will be performed at Dance Base from Tuesday 15-Sunday 27 August.

God Catcher

Refashioning the Greek myth of Arachne into a modern feminist parable, God Catcher tells the story of the most famous weaver in all of Greece who is turned into a spider after beating the goddess Athena in a weaving challenge. But while the ancient tale ends there, this story goes further, using music and lyrics to question the perspective of those telling the story and finding new textures in the character of Arachne.
God Catcher will be performed at Underbelly, Bristo Square, until Monday 28 August.