Elsie Allen grads picked to perform original plays in Scotland

<p>Elsie Allen grad and playwright Yuxdi Farias didn't shy away from historical giants and weighty topics in her original play “Der Schnurrbart,” but she is still a bit anxious about her piece being performed at the massive Edinburgh Fringe Festival next summer.</p><div class="art_item art_item_inset art_item_facts"> <h3>Facts</h3> <h4>Fund-raiser to send students to Scotland</h4> <p>Elsie Allen High School's theater department will host a fund-raiser Thursday night at Rialto Cinemas Lakeside to support an upcoming trip to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2011. The event will feature a reception at 7 p.m. followed by the screening of “Dancing Across Borders” and a live dance performance by Cambodian dancer Charya Burt.<br>Tickets are $20.</p> </div> <p>“To think that my play is going to be performed on an international stage is absolutely overwhelming,” Farias said.</p><p>Farias, along with 2009 Elsie Allen valedictorian Jesse Nee-Vogelman, will join a current crop of Lobo theater students at the world's largest theater festival in Scotland next summer.</p><p>“It's really exciting for them,” said Farias, who is bound for the University of California at San Diego. “We are the first school in Sonoma County to be selected to go to the Fringe.”</p><p>Elsie Allen will be one of 64 high school programs featured in the three-week festival in Scotland's capital, an event that turns churches, street corners, school amphitheaters and traditional stages into performance spaces for thousands of thespians, musicians and performers.</p><p>“It's a huge honor,” said Jennifer Arrington, an account manager for the High School Theater Foundation.</p><p>The Charlottesville, Va., group selected Elsie Allen from among 2,000 nominees to perform in Europe.</p><p>Elsie's group will attend theater workshops at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London before traveling to Scotland, where they will not only perform their pieces but also have the opportunity to view hundreds of others.</p><p>“Edinburgh becomes this massive stage itself, where all sorts of places become converted into these performance spaces,” Elsie's theater director Rob Burt said. “I do know it's a pretty amazing place and will perfectly lend itself to what we are trying to do, which is brand new, cutting edge theater.”</p><p>Burt, Elsie's theater director since the school opened in 1994, said the Lobos were likely chosen from thousands of competitors because of the school's award-winning original playwriting program.</p><p>Each year, advanced students write a complete, one-act play and compete to be featured in a mid-year staging of original works. The top pieces from the last two years will be featured at the Fringe, along with an as-yet-undecided third piece.</p><p>Students from advanced theater and production classes will compete to have their piece chosen, Burt said.</p><p>“All of them who want to go will be auditioning in August, with a monologue and submitting an outline for an original play,” Burt said.</p><p>A decision on whose work will be featured alongside Farias' “Der Schnurrbart” and Nee-Vogelman's “The Land of Sunshine and Bananas” is expected in January.</p><p>In total, Burt hopes to bring eight students to Scotland at a cost of about $6,000 each.</p><p>“The whole thing is very exciting for us, but we have got to raise a ridiculous amount of money,” he said.</p><p>Fund-raising continues with tonight's staging of “Dancing Across Borders” at the Rialto Cinemas Lakeside in Santa Rosa. In addition to the film, the event will feature a live performance by Burt's wife, Cambodian dancer Charya Burt.</p><p>Tickets are $20.</p>