Courtesy of the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge
In August, thirteen young theatre students from the Baton Rouge area performed onstage at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest performing arts festival in the world.
In August, the Scottish city of Edinburgh welcomed millions of creatives traveling from across the globe to hundreds of stages across the city. Held annually since the 1940s, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is today the largest and most prestigious arts and culture event in the world—revolving around thousands of performances of comedy, theatre, dance, circus, music, spoken word, visual art, and more. And on the first few days of the month-long festival’s programming, at the 600-person Central Hall auditorium, thirteen Greater Baton Rouge-area teenagers took the stage.
The students were part of the Arts Council for Greater Baton Rouge’s (ACGBR) BRIDGES Project, a regional youth theatre program launched earlier this year with an inaugural ensemble of student performers from across the council’s ten-parish area.
The program is overseen by Chris Adams, the Director of Technical Operations at ACGBR who, until recently, taught theatre at Baton Rouge Magnet High School. While teaching, Adams’s students were nominated through the American High School Theater Festival to submit an application to perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe—and became the first Louisiana high school to ever be accepted.
“We’re bridging the gap.” —Chris Adams
Having witnessed the impact that cultural exchange on such a grand scale can have on young creatives, Adams wanted to find a way to offer that opportunity to kids who had less robust theatre programs than somewhere like Baton Rouge Magnet. When he joined the team at the Arts Council, he proposed a theatre program that operated on a geographic basis, uniting kids from across the region.
“The name ‘Bridges Project’ came from the idea that we’re linking Louisiana through theatre,” said Adams. “We’re bridging the gap.”
The students in the final ensemble were selected by audition, representing Baton Rouge Magnet High School, East Ascension High School in Gonzales, Jewel Sumner in Kentwood, Lutcher High School, and Hanson Memorial High School in Franklin. And earlier this year, the American High School Theater Festival invited them to perform at the 2025 festival in Edinburgh as the first non-high school group to ever be accepted.
Courtesy of the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge.
Thanks to a grant from Shell Global, the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge was able to send the thirteen students of the BRIDGE Project to Europe, where they traveled throughout England and Scotland and performed at Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
For months, the group rehearsed the play they would bring to Edinburgh, a new work by Claudia Haase and Sara Grace Kraning called Soundscapes, which tells the story of a young girl struggling to make sense of her world through the lenses of synesthesia and neurodivergence. To accompany the students’ performances, the Emmy and Grammy-award winning Baton Rouge composer Mike Esnault composed original musical arrangements.
With the support of a $100,000 donation from Shell Global and the official title of Cultural Ambassadors of Louisiana, the students crossed the Atlantic in late July, many of them for the very first time, for a whirlwind cultural experience. They spent three days in London, seeing performances on the West End and at the Globe Theatre. “Many of these kids have only ever seen shows at their local community theatre,” said Adams, who prioritized opportunities for the kids to experience the novelties of one of the most culturally rich cities in the world. “Every museum in town, we were there,” he said.
In Edinburgh, they stayed in dorms, where they met with the more than 400 other students who had traveled to perform at the festival. “In the evening, we’d walk by the dorms and see our kids with other kids from five or six different schools, from all over the country, sitting around a piano singing showtunes,” said Adams. “Like, maybe more than anything, that was the purpose of our trip.”
Learn more about the BRIDGES Project at artsbr.org, and learn how you can support future cultural exchange efforts by contacting Adams at cadams@artsbr.org.
