In our ongoing Edinburgh Fringe 2026 interview series, we are speaking to artists and creatives who are bringing their shows to the Scottish capital this summer.
In this interview, we speak with the team behind PUTTANA to learn more about their show.
What can you tell me about your show?
Puttana is an immersive theatre piece about choices, judgement and prejudice, power, desire, and the desperate need to be seen.
The audience experiences the show through headphones, inside a world made of distorted voices and three-dimensional sound. The headphones are not simply a technical device, but an integral part of the dramaturgy: the audience hears the actress’s breath, thoughts and voice just a few centimetres from their head.
It is a violent and fragile story at the same time — uncomfortable, intimate and deeply human.
How would you describe the style of your show to anyone who has never seen you before?
I would describe our language as something between contemporary theatre, opera and a sonic hallucination.
The performance moves between deeply intimate moments and extremely intense and disturbing ones, using microphones, headphones and live vocal transformations to place the audience inside the protagonist’s mind and body.
We try to create an emotional and sensory experience that stays with the audience even after the performance has ended.
It is a theatrical language born in Italy, but strongly connected to certain strands of European and American experimental theatre.
What was the lightbulb moment that led to the creation of this piece?
The initial spark came from confronting prejudice.
Everything started with an article about a porn star who was unable to find accommodation because of the work she did. From there, many questions emerged: why are we judged for our choices? How willing are we to truly listen to someone before judging them? Does personal freedom justify every choice? Even prostitution? Even paying for sex?
These were the questions that led us towards Puttana.
Then came the desire to literally enter the protagonist’s mind: voices transforming in real time, sounds that — through the headphones — enter the audience’s head, disturb them and transport them elsewhere. The headphones remove distance and create a relationship that feels almost physical and impossible to ignore.
From there, the project slowly grew into something much darker, more fragile and more human than we originally imagined.
What makes 2026 the perfect year for this specific story or performance?
Because we live in a time where everyone seems to have an immediate opinion about everything, but fewer and fewer people are truly willing to listen.
Every day we judge other people’s bodies, choices, desires, identities and vulnerabilities through a screen, a headline or a prejudice. At the same time, we continue telling ourselves that we live in a free world. But are we really free if we constantly judge others and are constantly judged ourselves?
We seem to have very clear opinions about everything: about what is right, wrong, moral or acceptable. But perhaps we spend less and less time truly listening to the human complexity behind people’s lives.
Puttana was born inside this atmosphere. Not to provide moral answers, but to force the audience to stay close to something they might prefer to simplify, reject or judge quickly.
And perhaps today more than ever we need experiences that unsettle us instead of simply confirming what we already believe.
How will you mentally and physically prepare for a run at the Fringe?
I think the most important mental preparation will be constantly reminding ourselves why we said yes to Summerhall’s invitation to bring this show to the Fringe.
After the initial excitement — because not everyone gets the chance to win a prize like this in their lifetime — we immediately found ourselves asking a very simple question: “What do we do now?”
The Fringe is exciting, but also physically and emotionally intense, especially for a small independent company like ours. We will try to take care of each other, allow ourselves moments of rest, and not lose the joy of being there together.
Physically, the performance requires a great deal of concentration and precision, especially because of the live vocal and sound work, so finding a balance between energy, rest and daily routine will be essential.
And we will probably survive thanks to coffee, irony and a strong sense of togetherness.
If you couldn’t use a flyer to attract audiences, what ridiculous object would you hand out to people to get them into your show?
We would probably hand out earplugs and condoms.
The first because Puttana is also about the difficulty of truly listening to other people. The second… probably doesn’t need much explanation.
And in any case, both could be very useful during the Fringe.
What is the one item in your Fringe Survival Kit that you can’t live without this month?
We probably won’t forget our sense of irony.
And we definitely won’t forget the happiness and pride of being there, alongside companies from all over the world, all trying to survive the same chaos together.
More practically, though, our survival kit will definitely include about twenty windbreakers.
The Scottish weather is far more inconsistent than we are.
What would you deem as success at the end of the Fringe?
Of course we hope to have a full theatre every night. We have 80 headphones available, and we would love to see all of them being used every evening.
We hope to meet audiences, industry professionals and fellow artists: audiences to truly connect and exchange with, and industry professionals to help us continue bringing our work around the world.
After performing in Italian cities, some European cities and New York, we see Edinburgh a little like an airport. You can miss your flight and remain in a beautiful waiting room, or — with some luck and talent — maybe another plane really does take off. And that would be fantastic.
We are a small theatre company from Trento, and for us being at the Fringe is mainly about understanding whether a theatrical language born in a small territory can truly speak to people from completely different cultures and backgrounds.
If, by the end of the month, we leave Edinburgh exhausted, slightly transformed, and with the feeling that we created genuine connections with audiences and fellow artists, I think that will already be a huge success.
Other than your own show, are there any other shows you would recommend at the Fringe this year?
It would be too easy to recommend shows or artists we already know.
The truth is that one of the most beautiful things about the Fringe is getting lost. Meeting people. Being surprised. Walking into a room almost by accident, without really knowing what to expect, and coming out completely transformed by what you have seen. Those will probably be the shows we end up recommending.
So I would also like to say to fellow artists and companies: invite me to your shows. Besides being a director, I am also the artistic director of two theatres in Italy, and I am sure I will find something in Edinburgh that deserves to travel back with us.
The shows we will probably love the most are the ones we still know nothing about yet: small, strange, imperfect or fragile works that somehow stay with you afterwards.
And that is also one of the reasons why we wanted to be here.
What is one Edinburgh spot that you would recommend people to visit when they're not watching performances?
I probably don’t know Edinburgh well enough yet to give recommendations like a local.
But I think one of the best experiences will simply be walking around the city at night after performances, without a precise destination, ending up in pubs full of exhausted, noisy and happy artists from all over the world.
So I think the greatest attraction of a festival like this is simply humanity itself.
During the Fringe, the whole city probably becomes one giant place worth visiting.
Can you describe the show in 5 words?
Intimate. Violent. Distorted. Human. Alive.
What keeps you inspired?
For me, the answer is actually very simple: what keeps inspiring me is the same thing that made me start in the first place.
The desire to tell stories.
I love telling stories about emotions, prejudice and human contradictions. I like trying to reach the heart of things first, and then the heart of people.
I like when these stories — even uncomfortable or unusual ones like Puttana — destabilise people, raise questions, create discomfort or even indignation.
I love seeing audiences laugh uncontrollably and then, a moment later, become angry, emotional, guilty or suddenly feel free.
When that happens, I feel that theatre is still alive.
What would you hope someone takes away from seeing the show?
I hope people leave the performance with fewer certainties than they had when they entered.
Not because theatre should teach people what to think, but because I believe we increasingly need to slow down our judgement and truly listen to others, even when they make us uncomfortable or seem very distant from us.
And I also hope that someone might feel a little less alone afterwards.
Because beneath the sex, the prejudice, the violence and the provocation, Puttana is ultimately about human beings desperately trying to be seen, loved and accepted.
And I think, in different ways, that belongs to all of us.
When and where can people see the show?
Puttana will be performed at Summerhall – Red Lecture Theatre during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, at 21:15, from 6 to 31 August (excluding 17 and 24 August).
Every night, 80 audience members will enter this immersive journey through headphones and three-dimensional sound.
And honestly, we can’t wait to discover what will happen.
Tickets for Puttana are available from https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/puttana
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