There are not many artistic epiphanies that begin with a stranger wafting you with a towel, but for director James Grieve, that is precisely how Sauna Theatre was born.
“I just said yes,” he recalls of the moment in a Swedish sauna in Karlstad when a woman walked in and asked him something he didn’t understand. “She started wafting me with a towel and it was very disturbing at first”, but as the woman began to dance, using her towel to circulate the fragranced hot air, something clicked. “I looked around and realised I am sitting in an auditorium, and somebody is performing a show for me. I’m in a theatre.”
That Swedish revelation eventually became Sauna Theatre: the UK’s largest sauna, and first purpose-built theatre sauna, arriving at Summerhall Arts’ venue this August as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Conceived by Grieve and designer Lucy Osborne, who also collaborated on the well-loved venue Roundabout, it seats 80 people in swimwear around glowing sauna stoves, with temperatures reaching 90°C and a programme ranging from Aufguss rituals (an immersive experience that blends heat, essential oils, and towel work into performance), to literary salons, mornings raves, and arts club nights.
The parallels between sauna and theatre, Grieve argues, are more obvious than they first appear. “They’re basically social spaces where people come together for a live experience. No phones, no distractions. Generally, everybody is facing towards a stage or sauna stove.” Osborne adds that the vulnerability of being in swimwear, far from being a barrier to the performance, may actually be the point. “There’s something about being in a really hot environment with steam, with lots of people around you, that makes music and performance feel much more intense.”
The format has been carefully designed around that intensity. Rather than transplanting conventional theatre into a hot room, each session is 90 minutes, structured into 10-minute acts with cooling intervals between (or a cold plunge if you’re feeling brave), a rhythm borrowed partly from the continent where Aufguss performances are typically 15 minutes or more. “You can’t just do Coriolanus in a sauna,” Grieve jests. “It’s got to be work that has been made specifically for that temperature.”
Of the nine shows announced, a few stand out as must-sees. Bubble Schmeisis (Remixed), a returning sell-out Fringe hit from performer Nick Cassenbaum, brings live klezmer, ritual, and personal storytelling into the heat. Aufguss x The Waves reimagines Virginia Woolf’s modernist masterpiece through dance, heat, scent, and sound, while Aufguss x Nils Frahm immerses audiences in transcendental piano compositions while towels twirl the rising temperatures.
However, it is the bookends of the day that Grieve and Osborne are most excited about. The morning sessions offer Fringe-goers a quiet Get Set For The Day sauna with curated music, or a more exuberant Morning Sauna Rave, providing a direct answer to the gap in the Fringe’s daily schedule. “There’s very little on in the mornings in Edinburgh for adults,” Grieve notes. “We hope those two sessions are going to set people up for the day and offer them something really good for their bodies and brains,” especially for the industry professionals and performers who often work punishing hours throughout August.
At the other end of the day, the Sauna Sessions Arts Club runs 9pm to 11pm each night, with a rotating lineup of opera singers, circus artists, and live music in what James and Lucy hope to be ‘a night out’ rather than a show.
It’s a bold proposition, and they know it, admitting that eyebrows were raised when they announced the next venue they would be building would be a sauna. But the pair built Roundabout in the same Summerhall courtyard in 2014 against considerable scepticism, and watched audiences fall in love with it.
“Build it,” James admits, “and they will come.”
Sauna Theatre, Summerhall, 6-31 Aug