Thirty years ago, a young KT Tunstall was doing what thousands of performers before and after her have done: taking a punt at the Edinburgh Fringe. This summer she's back, not as a solo act on a sticky-floored venue stage, but as a driving creative force behind The Singer, a new musical that brings deaf and hearing performers together in a single, unified production. The show runs at this year's Fringe, and it's already drawing attention well beyond the usual arts press.
The Singer is described as ground-breaking for the way it integrates British Sign Language and spoken performance without treating one as a translation of the other. Both languages carry equal dramatic weight. That's a meaningful distinction. Too often, deaf inclusion in theatre means a signer standing to the side of the action, acknowledged but separate. This production puts the ensemble at the centre, which is precisely the kind of creative ambition the Fringe exists to platform.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the largest arts festival in the world by programme size, with the Fringe Society reporting over 3,000 shows across more than 250 venues in recent years. Its economic contribution to Edinburgh is substantial. According to research commissioned by the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, the festival generates in excess of £200 million for the Scottish economy annually, supporting thousands of jobs in hospitality, transport, accommodation, and the arts. When a name like Tunstall attaches to a production, that reach extends further still.
Tunstall grew up in St Andrews and studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland before her career took off internationally. Her connection to this city and its creative infrastructure is genuine, not a PR positioning exercise. The fact that she has returned to the Fringe with a project centred on accessibility and artistic inclusion says something about where the conversation around live performance is heading. The British Deaf Association has long argued that deaf artists deserve full creative participation, not tokenism, and productions like The Singer represent the practical realisation of that argument.
For Edinburgh businesses, the Fringe is simply the biggest commercial event of the year. Footfall in the city centre surges, new audiences arrive from across the world, and the case for being visible, whether through sponsorship, hosting, or just being open late, is as strong as it gets. If you haven't looked at what August looks like for your business yet, now is the time. The Fringe runs from 1 to 25 August 2025, and the full programme is live at edfringe.com.