The piece, called "Signs of Our Occupy," is based on the Occupy movement. Taking the show abroad is an ambitious, expensive project. But they're hoping an online fundraising campaign will help.
The material for the piece came from down the street -- the Occupy Oakland encampment at City Hall. Real demonstrators' signs are the jumping-off point for monologues. The piece doesn't take a position, trying to show all sides.
Fourteen sophomore, junior and senior theater students are working all year to get the show to Scotland this summer as an entry in the revered Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
"Well, for me, this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Who goes to Europe to go perform a piece?" said 15-year-old Nia Lindkvist.
Parents are shouldering much of the cost. But through a Kickstarter online fundraising campaign, they could pull in the rest. They're 54 percent of the way to their goal in only six days.
"The show, the story is going to be told to people who aren't in our community," said 15-year-old Noah Baldwin.
"I've never been out of the North American continent so I've never been to Europe, I've never been to Scotland, which is where our final destination is going to take us," said 17-year-old Scionne Tollefsrud.
Clearly it's a priceless opportunity for the students, and maybe, for Oakland too.
"We want Oakland to have that sort of buzz about it, that it's a center for the arts, a center for creativity, that the way the world looks in the millennium, Oakland looks a lot like it," said Donn Harris, artistic and executive director at the Oakland School for the Arts.
The Kickstarter campaign ends in April.
