Circus Maximus

In the quiet before The Fringe, Glasgow makes a last claim for itself as the festival city. Conflux, led by dark storyteller Al Seed, and The Merchant City Festival are taking over The Arches  and the streets of the West Coast's cultural quarter in a series of shows that merge live art, comedy and circus skills.

Conflux was the logical progession for Seed's ambitions, as a way to create a legacy for the 2012 Commonwealth Games. It brings together many marginalised performance arts as Seed himself says, from "Roman gladiators charging through the city centre, aliens blending with shoppers, performers taking to the river, willing participants being turned into a Jackson Pollock painting..." through to "jaw dropping Chinese pole and aerial work and, the chance to enjoy an experience which is unique to every visitor and exploits The Arches' maze-like spaces."

Seed is no stranger to The Arches experience himself; Danish company Cantabile will be taking over the building for the site specific  The Venus Labyrinth. Half psychological study, half psychedelic Greek mythology, the labyrinth houses twenty-eight performers in twenty-eight rooms, offering a series of intimate shows based on the brain's different areas.

Originally conceived in a former asylum, it has been called "A different and exclusive theatre experience for the daring. Theatre that incorporates every sense in you body: Sounds, lights, fragrances, tastes and touches," by Jakob Steen Olsen of the Berlingske Tidende

Under Jackie Wylie, The Arches has been restless in staging this sort of experimental yet accessible work: echoes of the earlier Derevo/Akhe collaboration are joined with memories of former artistic director Andy Arnold's forays into one-on-one theatre. Yet Surge promises another performance front, as the cabaret nights mix extracts from Germany's Dramaten latest Freakshow alongside vaudeville.

Conflux's further alliance with the Merchant City Festival sees the appearance of two other West Coast institutions: the redoubtable Mischief La Bas and Oceanallover. As always with La Bas, their event is free: a huge parade on Buchanan Street, starring the greatest of gladiatorial warriors: Truth, Beauty, Brain, Brawn, Honesty and Deceit.

Oceanallover have been down at Dumfries, exploring the meaning and patterns of tides and time: they arrive at Broomielaw pier with their kinetic sculpture and performers in an all ages showcase. Their last event at The Arches almost ended early when main player Alex Rigg walked out in front of a police van when his butoh inspired ragamuffin look was mistaken for a wandering drunk.

The Merchant City Festival has taken a risk by transplanting itself to July, and is filling the streets with Bollywood dancers, Mischief's merry makers and Suspended Motion's aerialism: yet the presence of Al Seed, Alex Rigg and Mischief's Ian Smith and Angie Dwight is a reminder that Scotland has become an international powerhouse for angular, alternative theatre. It also pushes away the myth that experiments are necessarily obscure and opaque. For all these artists' engagement with eastern aesthetics, rare emotions and twisted performance, they share a broad sense of humour.