American Music Theatre Project returns to Edinburgh Festival Fringe for second year

Source: Midalia Nevarez

Members of AMTP gather in the airport before traveling to Edinburgh. This group of Northwestern students will perform in two musicals at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe through the month of August.

Ruiqi Chen, Reporter

Northwestern’s American Music Theatre Project is once again headed to Scotland for the world’s largest arts festival.

Eleven NU students will spend the last two weeks of July working with students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to produce two musicals that they will perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from Aug. 3 to 26.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is a three-week event that “opens the doors, streets and alleyways of an entire city to an explosion of creative energy from around the globe,” according to its website. Last year, over 3,300 shows were performed at the Fringe, showcasing a variety of arts ranging from comedy to dance.

This is the second consecutive year that AMTP is partnering with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. This year, students from both institutions will make up the casts of two productions that fall under the theme of “legacies.”

Producing Director Brannon Bowers (Communication ‘15) said the first play, “LEGACY: A Mother’s Song,” follows the stories of three mothers at three different time periods while exploring the conscious and subconscious weight of family legacies. In contrast, “LEGACY: The Book of Names” tells the stories of immigrants at Ellis Island in the 1920s and their attempts to establish new legacies in a new country.

“Both pieces offer a glimpse into the past to reveal something significant about the present, and more importantly, the future,” Bowers said in an email to The Daily. “I hope that audiences are able to see themselves, their family, their friends, their enemies on stage; that we complicate their worldview as they wrestle with their own assumptions about motherhood and immigration.”

During their time in Scotland, AMTP students will work closely with 19 Royal Conservatoire of Scotland master’s students. Bowers said he hopes his students will be able to develop new skills and “gain an enhanced worldview of theatre and their fellow artists.”

Communication senior Gabriella Green is in the cast of “The Book of Names.” She said she is eager for the opportunity to work with artists from around the world and engage in “cultural exploration” with others who are also interested in theater but have different backgrounds and educations from herself.

Green’s fellow AMTP member and Communication senior Ziare Paul-Emile, who will be in “A Mother’s Song,” said she looks forward to gaining professional experience at the Fringe.

“I’m super excited to… get into that routine of performing constantly especially because that’s something I want to do for the rest of my life,” Paul-Emile said.

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