Denver School of the Arts Students Perform re:ACTION

Their singing echoed down the cobblestoned streets of Edinburgh: an entire group of teenagers belting out musical numbers and carnival-barking at passersby. They were impossible to miss in bright, neon-green shirts emblazoned with QR codes, which linked to a website offering tickets for the teens’ upcoming performance at the Festival Fringe—the prestigious arts and theater gathering that takes place in Scotland each year.

“Just across the road, just around the corner!” they sang. “Wait ’til you see what’s next!”

Busking is a time-honored way for festival artists to market their shows, but these neon-clad teenagers drew so much attention that some local street performers felt threatened on their own turf and asked the kids to find a different spot to perform. But that wasn’t the locals’ only question. They also wanted to know: Who were these young upstarts, anyway? And where did they come from?

Last month, about 80 students from the Denver School of the Arts (DSA) made the trek to Edinburgh to perform at the highly regarded Scottish theater festival, which took place from August 5 to August 29. The festival is known for pushing artistic boundaries and being a platform for discovering new talent—like Phoebe Waller-Bridge, whose solo stage performance of Fleabag in 2013 later became a hit television series.