About an hour before their last local performance, the students in Petersburg High School’s production of Dracula took their positions for a set dressing rehearsal.
They were practicing breaking down and setting the stage for the four shows they were about to perform at the world’s largest theater festival — the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.
The main set piece was a huge contraption made of black PVC pipes that the students hoisted into the rafters. Curtains hung down from the pipes to represent the walls of the set.
In a matter of minutes, the stage transformed into the Victorian-era Purley Sanatorium.
Director Elsa Wintersteen has been working to get her students to the Fringe Festival for the past two years. The opportunity came through the American High School Theater Festival, which has been sending student productions to the Fringe for over three decades.
“They wanted to know about our program, our school, and what made our program a good fit for something like this,” she said. “That was an easy sell for them. We’re a cool school.”
Since they had to pack the entire set with them, and because of fire codes overseas, they had to make a few changes to the production.
“Sadly, what we’ll have to leave behind, which is probably my favorite part, is the fog machine,” said Waylon Jones. He’s a rising senior at Petersburg High School. He played the fiancé of Lucy, a sanatorium patient who is suffering from a mysterious illness. For Jones, going to Scotland is a big deal.
“I’m a little nervous about being so far from home,” he said. “But also, my mom is gonna be there.”
Traveling this far was a big deal for a lot of kids in the cast. For most of them, it was their first time out of the country.
Remi Tolkachova just graduated and is going to college in the fall. They played Van Helsing, a botanist and monster hunter who is called to the sanatorium to care for Lucy.
Tolkachova hoped the festival would be a way to feel that electric, theater kid energy they’ve come to love, but on a much larger scale.
“The sense of community that happens during such a big festival because everyone who’s there, they are there because they’re theater kids at heart,” they said. “I’m excited to experience that.”
Wintersteen said her students’ dedication is what makes this group so special.
“The amount of time that they’ve put into this, the amount of passion they’ve put into this, any of them could pursue theater pretty much at any level after they leave here,” she said. “They’ve demonstrated they could succeed.”
Jones said he thinks this Petersburg production is so special because of the community support.
“Sometimes in smaller communities they don’t always have that support,” he said. “But I felt like people really made a conscious effort in our community to keep arts and theater alive, and especially in high school.”
And for this performance, the community showed up. As the curtain closed on the cast’s last local production before they shipped out, the audience gave them thunderous applause.
The students performed four shows on August 7, 8, 9, and 11 at the Central Hall Auditorium in Edinburgh. They return to Petersburg on August 15.
