Matthew Zajac returns to Summerhall with The Sky is Safe, Dogstar Theatre’s fifth Fringe production and a personal response to the unfolding Syrian tragedy. In 2012, Zajac spent nine days trapped in bureaucratic limbo in Istanbul, as his visa for travel to Iran was cancelled following a diplomatic crisis. Instead of travelling to take the lead role in a film, he found himself writing about chance encounters on Istanbul’s streets.

Earlier this year he returned to Istanbul to interview Syrian women, which became central to the creation of this new play, directed by Ben Harrison. ‘Amal, the female character in The Sky Is Safe comes from these interviews,’ he says. ‘She is essentially an everywoman, a composite character who embodies aspects of the female experience of the Syrian war.’ The engagement with migration goes beyond the story and into the production team: set designer Nihad Al Turk, a highly respected Syrian visual artist, came with his family to Scotland from a refugee camp in Lebanon.

Kamaal Hussain is also reflecting on his own personal experience, filtering his life-story through the tale of Sinbad’s seven voyages in Becoming Scheherazade. In light of Middle Eastern wars and terror attacks, he was keen to respond to the representation of Arabs in western culture.

‘I believe performance, especially live performance, offers an immediacy unparalleled elsewhere,’ says the writer, who is also artistic director of The Thief of Baghdad theatre company. ‘ As an audience, being in front of a real person, who is honestly presenting their truth, is an incomparable means of engendering empathy.’

Theatre is more often in the business of posing questions than providing answers: these performances offer insights into the lives and circumstances of contemporary migrants and refugees, with an emphasis on the human costs and consequences. Whether invoking mythologies or adapting interviews with immigrants, and placing the stories within their political context, these shows reveal the emotions and experiences behind the headlines, even reflecting how cultural heritage extends into the next generation and enriches British society with its distinctive perspective. From this, migration becomes less of a crisis than a process that is capable of inspiring change.