Theatre Director James Grieve takes us behind the scenes of Aufguss — the high-octane, theatrical sauna experience where Eurovision-level drama meets steamy wellness culture. In this exclusive look, James unpacks the spectacle, sweat, and storytelling behind this uniquely European phenomenon.
My first encounter with Aufguss was a decade ago in Sweden. I was reclining in contemplative solitude in a huge but empty municipal badstu when a woman entered and started wafting me with a towel. It was a very surprising and unexpected development, but since I couldn’t speak a word of Swedish and had presumably assented to said wafting by nodding like a typically moronic monolingual Brit, I thought I’d better grin and bear it.
When the initial surprise had worn off, the thwacks of warm air lulled me like a gently rocking boat and the delightful citrus infusion sent my head swimming to a Mediterranean lemon grove. I became transfixed by the towel which fluttered and furled and flew, masterfully manipulated by its choreographer. The dance, the heat, the scents… I realised I was the audience and this was a show.
That was something of an epiphany because I am a theatre director. I was in Sweden directing a new production of Les Misérables in the opera house down the road from the badstu. Previously sauna was my escape from theatre; the silent, always empty box by my gym swimming pool where I self-isolated for 20 mins every morning in the calm before the storm of the day ahead. Suddenly, in the jet stream of a Swedish towel, I realised sauna was a theatre, and the shows there were magical.
My colleague Lucy (Director of studio three sixty) is a theatre designer. Together we have spent much of our careers imagining spaces in which to give audiences amazing experiences, including the world’s first pop-up, plug-and-play theatre Roundabout . We started noticing more similarities between saunas and theatres… in the architecture, the auditoria layout, the focus on a ‘stage’, the purpose of congregation, the magic of escapism. As long-term advocates of the health benefits of arts and culture, we became hugely excited by the exponential power of combining the benefits of heat and art.
Last year we were invited to the UK Aufguss Championships at Galgorm Spa in Northern Ireland and our minds were promptly blown. Here was a festival of theatre like those we knew and loved with shows back-to-back all day in sweaty rooms watched by an excited crowd who had travelled far and wide to be there and who ended the day garrulously assessing the day’s events in the bar. Except here the sweaty room was a sauna and everyone was in swimwear. Between shows we hung out in jacuzzis and slurped sorbet. What strange, wonderful world was this? And where had it been all our lives?
Mostly our minds were blown by the artform. We had never seen Show Aufguss before. Here were performers in full costume telling fascinating, funny, moving stories in three acts using words, music, scent, ever increasing heat and dazzling towel waving. The UK competitors enthralled with tales of everything from 16th century Scottish Witch Trials to a modern day journey of migration from Italy, a retelling of Alice In Wonderland to a satire on Boris Johnson’s eco-credentials. Interspersed were spellbinding exhibition shows from Czech National Champions Eliška Blažková and Róbert Židek.
Show Aufguss is truly immersive theatre. You are completely embraced by its storytelling. In many ways it feels like traditional theatre – a story in a three-act structure, costume, props, light, sound – but in adding heat and scent, Aufguss has superpowers that traditional theatre cannot deploy. Every sense is stimulated. This was Theatre +. We were converts.
This year, UK Aufguss head honcho and sensei Deborah Carr kindly invited Lucy and I to spend two days with the competitors ahead of the UK Championships coming up on 18 & 19 May at ARC in Canary Wharf . The hope was we could share some tips and tricks from theatre with the Aufguss Masters turned performers. We talked a bit about performance technique from the importance of breathing, to vocal warm ups, to body language and posture. Lucy ran an amazing exercise to highlight the importance of set and props to live storytelling. We explored dramatic structure and story beats. We drafted in our brilliant sound designer friend Dan to work with the participants on voiceovers and underscore. Most excitingly for us we got to see the work-in-progress performances live in ARC.
In comparison to the very established Aufguss scenes in continental Europe and Japan, UK Aufguss is in its infancy but we think it has huge potential as an artform. Theatre is vastly popular in the UK – many more people watch a show in the West End each year than attend Premier League football – and we know from studies that going to the theatre helps you live longer . Another study shows every £1 spent on socially proscribing art and culture saves the NHS £11 . Now imagine the popularity and power of theatre combined with the profound benefits of sauna.
If you’ve never experienced Show Aufguss before you absolutely must and the UK Championships are the perfect opportunity. It’s been our great honour to meet and get to know the pioneers of the nascent UK Aufguss scene whose extraordinary skill, passion and dedication to their craft will wow you at ARC. You will see stories of love and loss, adversity and triumph, comedy and tragedy. You will see incredible storytelling flair and balletic towel waving choreography. You will be completely enveloped in a full sensory theatre experience like no other. Alongside the stars of the UK scene you will see exhibitions from the world’s best who deliver Show Aufguss of astonishing power. We’ll see you there. We can’t wait.
And if there are any other theatremaker sauna fans out there we’d love to hear from you. UK Aufguss will continue to grow and develop apace and we hope we can help bring theatre and sauna ever closer together to learn from each other and make sweaty stage magic together.
This article originally appeared in the British Sauna Society’s (BSS) May newsletter. We are reproducing it here with thanks to the BSS.