Fest Best: The festivals within

Made in Scotland

www.scottishtheatres.com/madeinscotland

Now in its third year, this Scottish initiative finds and funds standout local theatre and ballet. Backed by Creative Scotland, the Festival Fringe Society, and the Federation of Scottish Theatre, successful shows are helped towards a full fringe run. But this is no home-town hokum, rather some of the Fringe’s most daring shows. They’ve a bulging trophy cabinet to prove it.

Battersea Arts Centre at Summerhall

www.bac.org.uk/ontour

From its lush lyceum in London, the BAC hauls up to Edinburgh some of their most avant-garde theatre. This year the BAC commandeers the new Summerhall venue for a week to showcase their artists in a litany of free performances alongside regular ticketed shows. Expect pretty thoroughly stuff from the people who nurtured Jerry Springer: The Opera.

British Council Showcase

http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts-drama-edinburgh.htm

The British Council Showcase likes to stick its fingers in all kinds of peculiar performance art pies. They’re especially endeared by experimental digital media. Curating a week-long wonder-fest, the BCS includes the likes of When We Meet Again; a Being John Malkovitch-type experience where donning 3D film goggles thrusts you voyeuristically into a stranger’s shoes. It’s typical of the bumper crop of quality theatre the British Council bring to Edinburgh every other year.