Over the summer, the cast and crew of the spring 2023 upper school musical, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” traveled to Scotland to perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world’s largest performing arts festival.

Due to the high number of performances taking place during the festival, groups are given a strict time limit to set up, perform and tear down their shows. To prepare, the cast and crew of “Putnam” spent months running through the production to make sure it stayed within the 90-minute time limit. The hard work paid off, as every show played to a sold-out house.

The visit also included an improvisation workshop with acclaimed comedy ensemble Baby Wants Candy and visits to many sites in and around Edinburgh.

Harker was first invited to Fringe in 2007 by the American High School Theatre Festival, and has returned every four years since, being one of just 33 high schools worldwide selected by AHSTF to perform this year.

To document the experience, students posted photos to social media and created a mini-documentary that can be viewed on YouTube.