On the poster for Tongue Twister, Greg Sinclair is peering out of a pink balaclava made from a spiky, squashy pattern of long knitted tongues. It’s one of many specially designed costumes in his colourful and rhythmic kids show, where he dances and performs tongue twisters in English, Gaelic, French, German, Yoruba, Ukrainian, Arabic, Japanese, Greek, Polish, Setswana, Urdu and Norwegian.

‘All of the tongue twisters in the show were gifted to me by native speakers of those languages,’ explains the performance artist, composer and cellist from Edinburgh, who has a string of community and theatre shows under his award-winning belt. ‘It was really important for me to actually connect with people through their language rather than just look up tongue twisters on the internet.’ The show features electronic dance music from sound designer Ben Fletcher and ‘amazingly creative and bonkers’ costumes by designer Alison Brown. ‘The costumes are an integral part of the work,’ says Sinclair. ‘Some of them are relatively simple, like the balaclava, while others completely change my entire body shape and movement.’

Tongue Twister will be performed at North Edinburgh Arts (Tuesday 27–Saturday 31 May), a community-owned space in Pilton, where Sinclair has staged shows in the past. This piece evolved from his short film Seashells, where he performed words taught to him by community members with English as a second language. ‘I love how the repetition of them and the inevitable mistakes makes unique performances each time,’ explains Sinclair. ‘The show, for me, is about the importance of listening to each other, making connections with people in your community and globally, through language. It’s about how languages can be heard as musical instruments with their own unique sounds and you don’t always need to know a translation in order to experience or understand. It’s also about failure and making mistakes. And it’s about celebrating my own queer identity and showing the children in the audience that it’s ok to explore your gender and self-expression through dressing up.’

Over at Assembly Roxy, some similar messages will be shared by performance artists Vee Smith and Sadiq Ali, who bring us their contemporary circus show, The Unlikely Friendship Of Feather Boy And Tentacle Girl (Monday 26–Wednesday 28 May). This is the magical, moving tale of two outsiders: a girl who wants to be a monster and a boy who wants to fly. The Unlikely Friendship… and Tongue Twister are two exciting new Scottish commissions from the festival’s producer Imaginate, supported by the Scottish Government’s Festivals Expo Fund, and each show will have toured Scotland before arriving at Edinburgh International Children’s Festival. And both focus on celebrating diverse cultures and accepting differences.

‘We really hope that kids see the importance of friendship, of lifting up your friends and of being able to have fun together, even if you are very different,’ says Smith who, alongside Ali, is originally from Edinburgh and graduated from the National Centre For Circus Arts in London. Both identifying as queer, they often felt like outsiders as kids. They explored those feelings of not belonging when they created the circus shows The Chosen Haram and The Kelpie And The Phoenix together, featuring impressive aerial rope and Chinese pole. 

‘We first started thinking about [The Unlikely Friendship…] way back in 2021,’ recalls Smith. ‘We were given an opportunity by Catherine Wheels Theatre Company who put out a call for artists who had never made work for young audiences before. We weren’t really sure exactly what we wanted to do, but we knew we wanted it to be circus, and we knew we wanted it to be very visual. We were then accepted by Imaginate as Accelerator Artists, and the show continued to develop from there. I would describe it as stunning, characterful circus.’ 

The Edinburgh International Children’s Festival’s 35th programme will feature 14 productions in total, from seven different countries. The third Scottish offering in the festival’s programme is The Show For Young Men (Thursday 29 May–Sunday 1 June), a beautiful dance show at The Studio which features 45-year-old choreographer and performer Robbie Synge and his 11-year-old sidekick Alfie. Dressed in blue Dickies boilersuits and soundtracked perfectly by Dolly Parton, Bill Callahan and Oasis, the pair dance and jump around the room. It’s a gorgeous duet about male friendship and a sweet antidote to toxic masculinity.

Edinburgh International Children’s Festival, various venues, Saturday 24 May–Sunday 1 June; visit the Imaginate site for Scottish tour dates; main picture: The Show For Young Men/credit: Andrew Perry.