The MHS theater program attended the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, over the summer, where they performed their show “A Mess of Morality” and were exposed to a wide range of theatrical styles and performances, theater department lead Kaila Schwartz said.
After attending the festival in the summer of 2019, MHS was reinvited to perform the following year, Schwartz said. The theater program was originally supposed to go to the festival in the summer of 2020, but that plan was interrupted due to the COVID pandemic, she added.
“It was the best thing I’ve done,” Junior Nick Onalfo said. “I got to experience so many new things, and it felt really freeing.”
After preparations for the show began in January, the first step was to assemble a team of students who could write and perform the show, Schwartz said.
“I recruited trip participants from my pool of strong theater people,” Schwartz said. “I convinced their parents that it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and worth every penny.”
Once the group had come together, the next step was brainstorming and deciding what their theme should be for the show, Onalfo said. Their presentation dealt with the different types of morality present within people; it was a compilation of short scripts that included inner monologues, comedies, and hero-villain confrontations, he added.
“I played way more characters than I ever have in a single show before,” Onalfo said.
Most of the city of Edinburgh was taken over by the festival, Schwartz said. Due to the enormity of the festival, most conventional venues were unavailable, forcing the MHS theater department to hold their shows in a repurposed church cafeteria, Schwartz said.
“Our back room was a kitchen,” Onalfo said. “Everywhere they could make a stage, they made a stage.”
The show was well received by audiences, and they were very involved in the show, Onalfo said.
“There were people who were part of the American High School Theatre Festival, who were quoting lines from our show after they saw it,” theater director Kaila Schwartz said. “(MHS students) also formed a bond with a professional cast from London, doing a show called ‘Potty the Plant,’ and they became fans of our show.”
As they were performing for an international audience, the students didn’t know who would be coming to the show, senior Haleta Ayalew said. Because of that, some performers were nervous at the beginning, but they gained confidence as time went on, she said.
“I learned to put myself out there,” Ayalew said. “I would see kids with their musical instruments and random people performing on the street, and they were getting that much-needed publicity because they were putting themselves out there.”
Through watching other shows, the students also got to see what theater really can be, Schwartz said. Participating in this festival opened them up to different theatrical possibilities, she added.
(Fringe) “is the largest international Theatre Festival,” Ayalew said. “It’s an unforgettable opportunity.”