For the seventh time in program history, the Oxford High School Theatre program will be represented on the international stage as they’ll soon travel to Edinburgh, Scotland, to participate in this year’s Fringe festival.

The annual event showcases the best theatre talent from around the world.

This year’s trip kicks off July 26 and will run through August 8, featuring 14 students from rising sophomores to three incoming college freshmen. Together, they will perform Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, a sung-through musical based on the story of Joseph.

Public showings will be performed on Thursday, July 24 at both 6 and 7:30 p.m. at the Oxford High School Fine Arts Building’s black box theatre. All ticket proceeds will go toward this year’s Fringe trip. To purchase tickets and for more details, click HERE.

This will be the 132nd show directed by John Davenport, who has led the program to national and international prominence since 2000. He will be assisted by technical director Jordan Caviezel.

“The success we’ve had with (Fringe), I think the community is kind of accustomed to it,” Davenport said. “We have students coming into the high school wondering if they’re going to get that opportunity.

“It’s just so easy to see how it’s changed (the students’) world. It is such a great experience. That’s the joy I get, getting to share that experience and see how it changes their world. Taking a group of kids who love to perform and being part of arts, period, and we’re going to a festival that celebrates that, where a million people are there for the same reason. It’s just so overwhelming, joyfully so.”

This particular production will be tweaked slightly to accommodate the cast size and the staging area they’ll be working with, but it intends to deliver the same quality product nonetheless in an alternate setting.

“It’s unique because this show is usually so over the top and campy. It is that, but in a muted way, with what we have to work with technically. It’s still that campy fun story, but told in a slightly different way,” Caviezel said.

“The audience is a part of the story. Some audience members may be asked to join us on stage at certain times. Those who know the show, there will be many that do, they’ll appreciate what we’ve done with it because it is different,” Davenport said. “… It is set in an assembly in a Catholic school. The show is being performed by the teachers, which happen to be nuns and priests. That sets our aesthetic for it. We decided to go that route simply for the fun of promoting the show while we’re in Edinburgh. We have to promote our own show through busking. So the cast will get to walk around the city in their costumes.”

Since the beginning of July, this year’s cast and crew have been hard at work, rehearsing seven days and over 50 hours a week.

“A very pinnacle part of Fringe is that theatre becomes our entire focus and life for these 24 days,” senior cast and ensemble member Ann Hunter Bigham said. “I feel like it’s really important that we do have rehearsal all day long. It’s important to focus solely on each other and on this production for us to be the best we can be.”

Bigham, along with fellow seniors Alice Dabbs and Evelyne Denham, has devoted countless hours to Oxford High School Theatre over the last four years in various ways. This one last production together serves as a culmination of all their hard work and lessons learned along the way.

“This stage and this black box, I feel like it’s my second home because of the amount of time we spend here. It gives us something I feel like makes Oxford High School unique to us. When I walk away from Oxford High School, I walk away with the knowledge that we made an impact on one part of it… (Davenport) is the greatest mentor I’ve ever had and ever will have,” Bigham said.

“It’s special because kids from all different backgrounds come together for these shows. You meet people that you would otherwise never get to know if you didn’t do certain other activities. The theatre program brings everybody together to support one thing,” Denham said.

“It really is like a family. It has to be because when you’re doing multiple shows a year, you’re spending every night here. We’ve been in shows together since our freshman year, really since seventh grade,” Dabbs said.